Put Cdrom On Ibm Pc 300gl 6275-66u?

[whaywardj]

Apologies for popping in with a question before offering any solutions, but my employer has asked me to -- pretty damn quick -- recover data files from a defunct hard drive on an IBM PC 300GL. A command line interface isn't helping much, and I want to install a CDROM on the machine's secondary IDE to re-install Windows 98 and get into a GUI to peel off the files to floppy (or to a local drive on their LAN). Problem is, although it all looks pretty straight-forward, I just can't get BIOS to recognize the CDROM, once it's installed.

Is there a BIOS, IDE cable, or motherboard trick to this machine I'm not aware of? Master/slave settings and cable connections look fine. I just can't tell if the secondary IDE is firing up or not; or if pins on the IDE are somehow swapped so your basic IDE cable doesn't work.

Basically, anyone know the best way to install a CDROM on this machine?

Thanks in advance.

[dongfeng]

you would be better off putting setting the drive as a slave, then attaching it to a working PC. You will then be able to transfer the files from the dead drive to the good computer, assuming it is not dead due to hardware faults :)

[whaywardj]

That was my first thought. But I haven't authority (yet) to move the dead drive offsite, or to alter the architecture of other machines onsite.

[Druid6900]

Did you install a driver for the CD-ROM?

Things work a little different in DOS and without a driver for the CD, it may see it in the BIOS, but, it won't know what to do with it.

I'm assuming that you are stuck in DOS, of course and you have to work with autoexec.bat and config.sys, seeing as you stated that you have to install Windows to do the recovery.

Having the driver in the config.sys will by-pass what the BIOS thinks is there or not there.

You might have to use an old burner that still has DOS drivers around somewhere, and it might be a little slow, but, it should work.

The other thing to keep in mind is "Nothing is impossible to the person that DOESN'T have to do it"

[whaywardj]

Setting it up for CDROM in DOS also crossed my mind. But Partition Magic (PM) 6 reports the drive is formatted FAT32. DOS won't load. Got a command line from a Win 98 boot disk. Looked for scanreg.exe to run /restore, but the drive has only scanregw.exe (protected mode.) Won't run from a command line. Of course, the version of PM I have that will convert FAT32 to FAT16, so I could load DOS without whacking the data, is on...a CD.

Machine boots to Windows, then fails at "Explorer caused...a page fault...at module explorer.exe," then shuts down.

[chuckcmagee]

There are DOS Fat32 drivers available. Load em in config.sys and you can access the fat32 hard drive.

[whaywardj]

Reading your replies just prompted a thought: What if I were to install the CDROM on the secondary IDE per usual (or on the second plug in the HDD cable), and use the Win 98 boot disk to boot the machine to a command line prompt with CDROM support? Think that would work, regardless of whether BIOS was reading the CDROM?

[Druid6900]

It should, and you could probably re-install Windows as well as it shouldn't change anything on there.

Basically, it would be an in-situ repair of the operating system. I didn't know how far gone the computer was or I would have suggested that.

Just watch carefully. If Windows decides it's not formatted, it'll try and format it, just reset.

In theory, and I've used this theory a lot, it'll replace all the OpSys files and leave everything else intact. You'll be back to a non-upgraded version of 98, but, it should be good enough to get the files you want off on to the burner.

[whaywardj]

Maybe I'll try that this evening. As I recall, though, I think Win 98 INSISTS on reformatting the HD, and doesn't offer any option NOT to.

Thanks for prompting me, guys.

[Druid6900]

No, I just did a 98 re-install a couple of days ago and it didn't want to reformat. I think you'll be safe.

[dongfeng]

Or as mentioned before, just boot from a Windows 98 bootdisk. Then you can transfer the important files to backup floppies, or a secondard slave drive.

www.bootdisk.com