My Police Computer

[erik_james]

Delete please

[Terry Yager]

What a kewl-looking computer. I love it!

Anyways, the error message indicates that the operating system needs to be re-installed because the hard drie was either wiped or removed by the police dept before they sold the thing, to protect sensitive data that was on it.

--T

[erik_james]

Hmm I figured it would be something like that. Is it possible to reinstall the operating system? but first of all, I dont even know what the operating system is. Or how I am suposed to reinstall it if I dont have a disk. Can I do it though the serial port?

Any help would be appreciated.

Erik

[Terry Yager]

You'll have to:

-Aquire a bootable disk, they can be bought on eBay or downloaded from numerous websites such as www.bootdisk.com.

-Test the computer to be sure it boots to a DOS prompt from the floppy and functions correctly.

-Check for the presense of a hard drive, either physically, by opening it up to look, or possibly by running FDISK. If FDISK sees a drive, okay, but if it doesn't see one, it doesn't mean there isn't one there, and you'll still have to look inside.

-Having done all of the above, report the results back here, and someone will advise you on how to procede.

--T

[erik_james]

Please Delete

[Lisa]

your police computer sounds like a wintel, it may not have a floppy, your best bet is to crack it open and see the innards...

[erik_james]

Please Delete

[Lisa]

that's not a flash drive, that's an ethernet card.

you're looking for something more along the lines of this

http://cgi.ebay.ca/4Mb-Fast-Flash-Memory-SMART-PCMCIA-Card_W0QQitemZ5239248456QQcategoryZ3710QQrdZ1QQcmd ZViewItem

the card shown is for an Apple Newton, but I think you get the idea.


you may be able to put a hd inside the case. how ever it might want a laptop drive which will probably be lots of fun finding the right one

[erik_james]

Please Delete

[Terry Yager]

Ok, a bit of an update.

I took the computer down to the computer shop in my area and the guy seemed quite interested in it. He told me that the disk drive on the side is a pcmcia flash drive (only problem is that the computer cannot properly boot without it) so he showed me a flash drive that he had instock but he explaned to me that my computer is not compadible with the newer type flash drives (like the disk fit's inside properly but it has something to do with how many bits are on the flash drive) long story short, I need to find a 16 bit pcmcia flash drive (which he told me would be quite hard to find) I found this one on ebay but I'm not sure if its compadible with my computer or not (and I cannot go back to the computer store becasue he will be closed sunday and monday and the auction ends tommrow)

http://cgi.ebay.ca/NEW-SOHOWARE-16-BIT-ETHERNET-PC-CARD-PCMCIA_W0QQitemZ5806155981QQcategoryZ64051QQssPage NameZWD2VQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem#ebayphotohosting

I know the flash card on the link is a 16 bit so it looks like it should be fine.

Here's some info on the computer itself (so maby someone can help me out)

Main Processer : 80386SX Base Memory Size : 640 KB
Numeric Processer : None Ext. Memory Size : 3456 KB
Flopy Drive A: : None Hard Disk C: Type : None
Flopy Drive B: : None Hard Disk D: Type : None
Display Type :VGA/PGA/EGA Serial port(s) : 3F8,2F8
AMIBIOS Date :06/06/92 Parallel Port(s) : None

Erik,

Where to begin? Oh well, let's try this...
There are 3 "Types" of PCMCIA cards, called (surprizingly enough) Type I, Type II, and Type III. There are also two different data widths, 16-bit or 32-bit, which is also known as "Cardbus". The 32-bit is a newer standard, so it probably wasn't invented yet when your '386 was born, so anything that is Cardbus won't fit in your 16-bit slot. Every Flash RAM card I've ever seen is either Type I or Type II, but there are also mechanical hard drives, usually Type III, that will fit a PCMCIA slot.
Flash memory cards also come in several different flavors. The most common, and therefore, most likely to be compatible, is "Linear Flash," aka "Intel Standard" or something similar.
Some PCMCIA Flash cards are ATA cards, which the system sees and treats just as it would an IDE drive, but other cards use "Flash File Systems," which also come in several different (incompatible) "standards," such as "TrueFFS" or some other.
Also, some cards are DRAM and others are SRAM, and they have different uses, so they are not compatible with each other either. If your computer needs DRAM, an SRAM card won't work.

I guess the point I'm making here is that we need more info about your PCMCIA socket(s) before we can advise you any further. Can you tell if the PCMCIA slot is single-height or double-height? The thickness is important in determining the Type of card it will accomodate, as Type III cards are double the thickness of a Type II card. A picture of the slot might be helpful, if you can post one.

--T

[erik_james]

Please Delete

[Terry Yager]

Ok, if the two slots are stacked on top of one another, then you can probably use a Type III drive. These can be purchased on eBay for $5.00 - $25.00, depending on capacity, but most of the same "rules" apply to mechanical hard drives as with Flash drives, however, you can usually get the mechanical drives for less $$$, expressed in bytes-per-dollar. Solid-state drives are still rather expensive.

--T

[erik_james]

Please Delete

[Terry Yager]

So would this type of card work? (I wont it off ebay) It's designed for an apple computer but im sure it would be easy to reformat.

http://cgi.ebay.ca/4Mb-Fast-Flash-Memory-SMART-PCMCIA-Card_W0QQitemZ5239248456QQcategoryZ3710QQrdZ1QQcmd ZViewItem

I'll try and get some actual pics of the disk drive within the next few hours so I can show you exactly what im working with.

and yes the 2 shots are stacked on top of each other.

Erik

I dunno, there isn't enough information in the listing or in your description of your computer to tell if they're compatible or not.

If you have Type III slots, then something along these lines will probably do you more good:

http://search.ebay.ca/pcmcia-hard-drive_W0QQfromZR40

--T

[Terry Yager]

Erik,

All of the prices in the above link seem to be higher than "normal" except for this one, whih is in the price-range they usually sell for:

http://cgi.ebay.ca/Integral-Viper-340E-8340E-340MB-PCMCIA-hard-disk-drive_W0QQitemZ5241416975QQcategoryZ56084QQrdZ1QQc mdZViewItem

--T

[erik_james]

Please Delete

[Terry Yager]

Ok, true enough, you could probably use two SRAM cards, but you're probably better off using a PCMCIA hard drive in those slots, if it'll work. You need to find some documentation on that computer before you can know for sure what will or will not work with it.

--T

[erik_james]

Please Delete

[Lisa]

Erik, some computers require a certain brand or type of card to boot, ie our ricoh requires a type III hard drive of a particular brand. Others will not work, even thought they are the same size.

Same for the IBM 730t tablet that we have, it will mostly only boot from IBM PC card hard drives with out some hacking.

the 4 meg card that you bought probably won't work in anything but a newton (another wonderful piece of tech).

[erik_james]

Please Delete

[Terry Yager]

Lisa,

Is your Ricoh the tablet PC with the built-in CD? Does it have any other quirks I should know about? (It's on my wish-list, so (hopefully) I'll have one soon).
BTW, I never had any problem getting an IBM 730TE to recognize any of the several PCMCIA drives I threw at it. The IBM 360PE is another story though, as it is somewhat picky about what drives it likes, including the internal IDE, not just the PCMCIA ones.

--T

[Terry Yager]

Erik,

Unless your computer has some kinda program built into it, you won't be able to access the serial ports without an operating system. Some computers do have such software in ROM, but usually you'd know about it cause it would probably boot up to a menu of some kind to allow you to use the ports.

--T

[katey]

If you get one let me know I have all the drivers etc for the tablet to get the pen working. I'm running mine under win95 with an 802.11b card.

These are kinda picky about what drives they like to boot from and they won't boot from cdrom at all how silly. Anyways what I'm doing with mine is using a 2.5 laptop to CF board attached to the cdrom's cable. This allows me to use a CF card as my boot device. Fast low power draw and not likely to get toasted when dropped :)

There are some memopry tricks with them to that I'm fiddling with now as a few more MB of ram would be nice.

Oh yeah I've found that on my 730T it's fine as long as the drive's first partition is under 512mb, not an uncommon limitation in older hardware.

Lisa,

Is your Ricoh the tablet PC with the built-in CD? Does it have any other quirks I should know about? (It's on my wish-list, so (hopefully) I'll have one soon).
BTW, I never had any problem getting an IBM 730TE to recognize any of the several PCMCIA drives I threw at it. The IBM 360PE is another story though, as it is somewhat picky about what drives it likes, including the internal IDE, not just the PCMCIA ones.

--T

[Terry Yager]

Ok, I'll keep that in mind if I get a chance to pick one up. I've seen a couple come up on eBay, but for some reason missed 'em.
BTW, what kind of processor does it run? (I'm thinking 5x86 or Pentium).

--T

[erik_james]

Please Delete

[Terry Yager]

You still need software of some kind to access the serial ports. Some computers have a terminal mode built-in, but yours doesn't sound like one that does.

--T

[erik_james]

Please Delete

[katey]

Just an old 486dx2-50

katey

Ok, I'll keep that in mind if I get a chance to pick one up. I've seen a couple come up on eBay, but for some reason missed 'em.
BTW, what kind of processor does it run? (I'm thinking 5x86 or Pentium).

--T

[erik_james]

Please Delete

[Terry Yager]

You need to install "card & socket services" on the computer before the PCMCIA slots can be used under DOS. You can get the C&S programs from the manufacturer's website. There will usually be a card driver, a socket driver, an ATA driver, some kind of drive initialization (format) program, and mebbe some other stuff. If the card is brand-new, it'll certainly need to be initialized before you can use it. (Assuming it's the right type in the first place). Is there a battery slot on the card anywhere. If so, then the battery may need replacing, and if not, it's the probably wrong type of card. (SRAM vs DRAM). Also, check for a "write protect" switch, and be sure it's set properly.

--T

[NathanAllan]

SOmething you may want to try is get a flash/sd/smc/etc memory card for a camera or something and a pcmcia adapter for it. I use a smartmedia on my laptop for quick and painless transfer of files from laptop to laptop and whatever has a card slot on it. That way you'll have no problem putitng dos on it as your laptop will see it as a new harddrive (just like mine does) and treat it as such. Then you can put the dos files on it and even win3.1. When I saw that you got an Apple card for an IBM compatible I wondered if it would work. Apple stuff and IBMpc stuff normally don't like to talk, but then again ram is ram and memory is memory so it might with some sweet-talking. Plus, those cards and adapters are pretty common and SmartMedia (as opposed to other types like SecureDigital and CompactFlash) is cheap cause it's considered obsolete (go figure). Still works great though. Just my $0.02.

Nathan

[Computer Collector]

What kind of police car is this?

note:
impersonating a police officer is a crime and you can go to jail

[NathanAllan]

Erik,
Any news on your police computer? Were you able to get an OS for it installed or anything?

[erik_james]

Please Delete

[Terry Yager]

You shouldn't need any special drivers for that card, just the normal Card & Socket Services for your computer (usually available from the manufacturer, dependant on the p'ticular PCMCIA hardware installed).

--T