Forum Home
Press F1
Thread ID: 22732	2002-07-29 02:45:00	A Curley One	B.M. (505)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
66366	2002-07-29 08:42:00	That’s encouraging. Well, seeing my games are temporally suspended I’ll go back to the 486sx Ok, the message is “Disk Boot Failure” ROM ISA BIOS (2c4x2m31) Award Software Co. “C” Drive Seagate ST251-1 42meg “A” Floppy 5 ½ inch CMOS set to boot A C CMOS Drive “C” set to type 40 40meg 6 head 820 clusters which is the settings used on the old 286. Right, I put the original DOS boot disk in drive “A” and got the “Disk Boot Failure” message. OK, took the disk out, hit ctrl-alt-del and got the same message. Now, there is a OS on the Hard Disk (MS DOS 3.1 if I recall correctly) so in the absence of a disk in Drive “A” I would have expected it to boot from “C”. Not so unfortunately. Other clues? Well, lights come on and go off on both drives as though they have been located. Drive “C” seems to make “familiar” rattling sounds. (What recall) The POST seems ok to the point of one Beep and memory tests etc. all passed. Any further suggestions??? “Disk Boot Failure” appears the only clue??? Cheers Bob	B.M. (505)
66367	2002-07-29 19:51:00	Hi Bob, just thought of another thing you could try with the game. How about downloading the latest patch for the game from the sierra site? By installing an update it may fix corrupt files etc. Yup a long shot but hey ya got nothing to lose :-) www.sierra.com cheers Parry.	parry (27)
66368	2002-07-29 22:02:00	Good thought and well worth a try Parry. Unfortunately, although they had a patch for my version, when I went to install it I got the message "Product to be patched is not installed" Found out the computer had been cheating at bridge though! Never had these problems with those old DOS games. Tsk Tsk. Cheers Bob	B.M. (505)
66369	2002-07-29 22:21:00	Bugger. Yep those damn computers cheat all the time, at least thats what I tell myself when I cant win :-)	parry (27)
66370	2002-07-30 06:53:00	You can get a problem if the 5.25 is a 1.2MB and the BIOS thinks it's a 360kB. Or vice versa . But getting the same error off the HD is odd. The controllers are separate, though they are probably both in the same centipede package. (1) Check the jumpering of the floppy drive. All 3.5" drives are set to DS1, and most don't even have a jumper. They must have the twisted cable. 5.25" drives have select jumpers. If the cable is a "single" one with two connectors and no twist, the drive has to be set to DS0 (or DS1 if the select positions are 1,2,3,4 rather than 0,1,2,3). If the cable has a twist, it has to be DS1 (or DS2 if ...). That is, if the floppy is set to drive B, the boot code won't see it. (That might stop the booting process before it even looks for the HD). (2) The disk controllers are likely to be on a multi I/O card ... try "half pulling" the card and reseating it, to wipe the ISA bus contacts.	Graham L (2)
66371	2002-07-30 09:04:00	Well Graham I can’t say I’ve spent a lot of time on this little project but at the moment it’s got me. Mind you I’ve disturbed colony’s of silverfish as I dug out old DOS books which I never really understood anyway. What I have done since our last communication is hook up a 3 ½ inch drive. I hooked it in after the twist, changed the CMOS for A drive to 3 ½ 1.44m and turned the “Winchester” off. Then told the CMOS to boot A,C. Now, the only bootable 3 ½ inch disk I’ve got is win98 start-up. Oh well, give it a go. Same as before, “Disk boot failure” grrrrrr! Now, the only explanation of this phenomenon I can find, in the home of a deceased silverfish, is that the bootstrap routine could not load one, or both, of the two start-up files. Hmmm????? Also, I’ve changed ISA slots for the Hard/Floppy controller, still no luck. Oh, I found a backup 5 ¼” DOS Disk which had never been used. No luck there either! Got me licked for the moment Graham! Cheers Bob	B.M. (505)
66372	2002-07-30 10:19:00	Hey Bob, I've got a Classic Card and Board Games CD full of shareware games (not Hoyles) . If there is anything on it that you are wanting I'll be happy to email it to you . What are you actually after?	Susan B (19)
66373	2002-07-30 21:55:00	Thanks Susan, Actually The game I liked was Euchre. (yes I know, another indicator of a misspent youth) Whoever wrote the programme for Sierra was right on to it and must have been a bit of a gun at the game. No doubt I'll find the CD when I'm looking for something else. Isn't it usually the way? As you can see I'm just having a bit of a run at the moment with little if anything going my way! Cheers Bob	B.M. (505)
1 2