Cheap Solution Needed.

[StillBlue]

O.K. Got an AST BRAVO LC 4/66D. Has 16mb Memory, 486 processor, 513mb HD. What should I do. (I know, I should throw it out). Need something for a couple of months. Problem being the AST 2.02 bios won't allow a hard drive with more than 1048 cylinders (Does this mean that the largest HD I can put in it is around 500mb?). A evergreen or powerleap adapter should take it up to 133mhz.

Also I have no idea how to add a CD drive to it.

Help me.

Blue

[Jon]

You don't have an extra IDE for the CD? My old 486 had one...who knows?

Might need to get an IDE card for it. SIIG makes some that would probably work with an old PC.

As far as 1048 cylinders go, you're not going to find many that will work with that thing. 513MB isn't bad though. Big enough for NT or Win95.

[StillBlue]

I have 1 IDE on the motherboard which has a cable with 2 IDE plugs on it, but it only seems to want to accept Hard drives on it, when I plug the CD drive in it fails to recognise it, it does mean though that if I can get another 1048 cylinder HD I can get to 1gb of HD space :D :D :D . There is one other port on the motherboard that has slightly more pins (I think 30) and the lead connected to that has like a centronics plug on the end of it. Not sure what that is though. One thing I have found is that I have an Castlewood Orb Drive (2.2gb) which plugs into the parallel port and I can install that using the software that comes with it to mimic a 2.2gb IDE Hard Drive. Is there any way that I can use any software so that I can use the 1048 cylinder HD to start the computer up with, then have some software boot up so I can use a larger HD on my spare IDE plug?? (Does that make any sense.)

Blue

[RED Hot Machine]

On my old 386 i had a 800mb drive. It came with a floppy that had a program that allowed me to get around the 500mb limit.

How are you trying to detect the cdrom?

[StillBlue]

Sounds like the sort of software I need to find. The bios seems to autodetect, and if it doesn't like it, it kicks it out and say's it is not a valid HD, and it doesn't have a cdrom option in the bios that I can see of. The CD Drive is a 52X Creative drive that I acquired (No documentation). With your 386 I take it the floppy booted up allowing the computer to access the HD. I will have a search round the net.

Blue

[RED Hot Machine]

The floppy disk installed software onto the harddisk, I didn't need the floppy to boot. I'll see if i can find the disk.


CDROM Prob, what os are you currently using? if its dos have you tried loading mscdex.exe (i think thats how its spelt) and see if it finds the cdrom?

[StillBlue]

Didn't think of that I will give it a go. Win98 probably, although it seems a little unstable on the machine (perhaps because its a 486) so I might use 95.

Thanx.

Blue

[StillBlue]

O.K. I have managed to get the computer to recognise the CD drive using mscdex, but when the CD drive is plugged in it will not recognise the HD. The jumpers on the HD were set to master, but when the computer started up it did not detect the HD at all, the light on the CD drive went on and off and the draw kept opening and closing. There is only one other setting on the HD (which is a Maxtor) and that is to remove the jumper making the HD either a slave or multiple HD's attached, this caused the CD drive to do nothing on start up but the computer could not recognise the HD, even when I set the HD settings up manually in the bios settings.

So the story is so far that the computer will not detect the HD when the CD drive is plugged in on the same lead as the HD. The CD drive is detectable when you boot the computer up with a floppy disk.

The other lead I mentioned that has a sort of centronics looking plug on the end seems to go to the floppy drive first.

Blue

[StillBlue]

Right, I think I have an answer to the HD size problem, the packages I have found that should sort this out are:-

Ontrack's Disk Manager
MaxBlast
EZDrive

There are also some cards for the problem:-

Promise's DriveMax board & I think I have seen one from Ontrack or it might have been Pheonix.

I will let you know how I get on.

Blue

[StillBlue]

Excellent, I now have the CD drive and a 1gb HD set up with no problems (Now running Win95). I have only 8mb on the motherboard now as the other 8mb kept failing making the system unstable. The full information on the system is:-

AST Bravo LC 4/66d
CPU IBM (Blue Lightning)
Cyrix 80486DX2 66MHz 3.6V CPU PGA168
MOTHERBOARD 202688-105 PCBA MBD BLC4-0 0MB/1M 0CCYX
237 Pin Grid Array Zero Insertion Force Socket 3

Now I need some more information on what I should do to make this go a little faster. (E.g. Overclocking or Powerleap/Evergreen Adapter??) Will naturally put as much memory as the motherboard supports on it (64mb).

Also could do with knowing some more information about the motherboard (Manual would be good) There is a strange socket on the motherboard that I would like to know what it is (looks a little like a PCI slot). It only has ISA slots, but I would like to add USB ports (Is that possible) Also would like to know what the strange looking plug that looks like a centronics connector on the end of the same lead that go's to the 1.44mb floppy is.

Thanx.

Blue

[RED Hot Machine]

Originally posted by StillBlue
Excellent, I now have the CD drive and a 1gb HD set up with no problems (Now running Win95). I have only 8mb on the motherboard now as the other 8mb kept failing making the system unstable. The full information on the system is:-

AST Bravo LC 4/66d
CPU IBM (Blue Lightning)
Cyrix 80486DX2 66MHz 3.6V CPU PGA168
MOTHERBOARD 202688-105 PCBA MBD BLC4-0 0MB/1M 0CCYX
237 Pin Grid Array Zero Insertion Force Socket 3

Now I need some more information on what I should do to make this go a little faster. (E.g. Overclocking or Powerleap/Evergreen Adapter??) Will naturally put as much memory as the motherboard supports on it (64mb).

Also could do with knowing some more information about the motherboard (Manual would be good) There is a strange socket on the motherboard that I would like to know what it is (looks a little like a PCI slot). It only has ISA slots, but I would like to add USB ports (Is that possible) Also would like to know what the strange looking plug that looks like a centronics connector on the end of the same lead that go's to the 1.44mb floppy is.

Thanx.

Blue

The other connector I would have thought is for a 5 1/4 inch floppy drive.

[StillBlue]

That would make sense. The computer is certainly old enough to have been around when 5¼ inch drives were still being used.

Any ideas for the other stuff.

Blue

[foxforcefive]

Use it for a gateway. Go to http://www.clarkconnect.org and get the software. Works great, and it will run on just about anything.

My .02.

BL

[StillBlue]

Wanted to use it as a home computer for now. The odd letter/fax etc... Bit of surfing the web, build the odd web site and to run Cisco Network Designer. Currently half way through Semester 3 of a CCNA course so need to use it for stuff like that.

Seems that Powerleap make an adaptor that will take it from 66mhz up to 133mhz. Not sure if anyone can do any better. Is it possible to overclock it once you hae a powerleap adaptor in it?

I could really do with having USB ports, but the motherboard only has ISA ports and a strange port that looks like a PCI but it is not quite as big. Any idea how I might add USB ports?

Blue