EZ Track DX?

[Machinereaper1]

I replaced a fuse in the upper left and the video card and got the screen to come on. However screen stops at Ramdrive version 3.07 vertual disk c: ect..... I have a picture of the screen if it will help. I'm new to the site and do not know all the buttons yet so bear with me. Also my typing sucks.
Thanks in advance, Mike

[machintek]

Sounds like your software is trying to load and is failing. Usually I see a RAM drive being created when a floppy is used in a DX machine and the hard drive cannot be found. Are you booting from a floppy?
If yes, why? A DX machine is supposed to have a hard drive.
Possible reasons are: Corrupted CMOS; bad hard drive; corrupted floppy; bad RAM;or bad IO board (if so equipped).

George

[One of Many]

Howdy Mike,

I would go into the CMOS on bootup and let it re-define the hard drive type automatically. If that proves successful, let it try to boot up normal through the DOS prompt or cnt-alt-dlt if you have a full keyboard plugged into it.

That will at least tell you if the PC portion is OK. The basic dos command set eludes me right now. I don't recall the startup file, but I am pretty sure autoexec.bat will do it, but there may be another that was made to kick start it. No matter because most of my trouble shooting experience is with the EZ Path and other DX32 controls. Very similar platform since they all have the BMDC board. Just different primary software and quite possibly a different command anyway.

If the CMOS battery is bad, this condition will re-occur if you shut the power down for any length of time, as if this is the only related problem. We hope......

Depending on the mother board configuration. Some batteries were rechargable nicads soldered in place and some were non-rechargable lithium replacable coin type cells. Replacing the coin type is a no brainer, but the solder types are getting hard to find and some solder skills will be needed. I have clipped the leads to the old nicad batts and soldered a connector lead to that for the newer style 3.6v batteries. Pay attention to polarity if you need to go this route. You can always check the batt voltage with the main power off to see if it is above 3vdc. Anything less, I would replace it.

It is a good idea for any older machine to make a hard copy record of the cmos setting just in case this very thing happens. Same for the backup disks and parameters. And remember this stuff is stored on medium that won't last forever. Restore it every 6 mo, to a yr. on a new disk or keep copies on another PC hard drive.

The bigger concern being what blew the fuse in the first place. Fuse in the Upper left of what? Any related clues that lead to the failed fuse? During a run, crash, lightening, power spike?

Got schematics to verify what the fuse was protecting?

DC

[Machinereaper1]

OOPSY Sorry about that- brain fart
When I turn the main power on machine loads to DRIVE NOT READY ERROR Insert Boot disk in A:
I put in the boot disk in then says "Starting MS Dos....."
Then "HIMEM is testing extended memory....Done"
"Ramdrive version 3.07 vertual disk c:"
"Disk Size:2060K"
Sector Size:128 Bytes
"Allocation Unit:8 Sectors"
"Directory Entries:256"
Has blinking curser and I have a key board plugged in (thanks to you guys on other threads with same type probs.)
I tried the Ctrl Alt Delete and it goes thru the same process as above.
I know of dos (Apple IIe & Bandit level III days) but not what you call dos literate. I think dos for dummies is in store for some bathroom reading.
I will check the Battery & See what fuse blew and get back to ya.
Also we did have a nasty electrical storm a few days back !!!

Mike

[One of Many]

Mike,

If the cmos settings have been corrupted, then it will always try and boot from the A drive. Basically, it has forgotten it even has a hard drive. The ramdrive might be created when loading from the boot disk. For now, I would ignore that message unless this is an SX machine that really uses a simm drive. Dunno if BP used that, but Milltronics did on their original PC based acro-loop machines.

Until the hard drive is restored to the system, either by the cmos settings, replacing the drive IDE controller board or the HD itself along with restoring all files and parameters. Using the ctrl-alt-del will always send it back through the same startup process as you describe. At this point, it can't complete what you want it to, due to its own brain fart! LOL!

Dos is Dos cept for syntax of the commands. Now that I think about it, you will need to go through the cmos by pressing del key on startup because you won't have access to dos if no HD access(duh). Correct the HD issue if possible, then have it store the changes and exit to DOS. If you get a DOS prompt of C:\ it should now respond to DOS commands. Try something like DIR /p to see a directory etc. If you can see things on the HD then the ctrl-alt-del should function as normal to now boot from the HD.

To be on the safe side around machines that use a floppy drive. I reset the cmos boot sequence to boot off the C:\ drive first, just in case someone leaves an infected disk in the A:\ drive and it boots. Yikes! Trust me, it happens!

DC

[Machinereaper1]

Hi guys, back again I checked the battery on MB and meter reads 4.0 volts. The fuse that blew was for the 120 V receptical on side of cabinet, someone put a 3 amp fuse in it and should be a 15 or 20, I do not think it has anything with what is wrong.
I took hard drive out and took it down to the local computer geeks and had them check it out. I also had them make a CD copy of the HD files (only had about 4MB on it), they had no problem reading the files and said it is OK. I did not think of it till I got it back and installed, but I should have had a scan disk and defrag done, but with only 4MB I figured it's not worth the trip back.
Put it all back togeather fliped on the main swith and goes to the same place. Went to cmos and reentered the HD then auto detected the HD---NO GO
I asked-no I grilled- the operator on what the error was when it stopped. He said he walked away from the machine for awile when he came back it was stopped but spindle was running and had an error, did he write it down- of corse not. He said it was something or other had timmed out. This does not mean anything to me how about you guys?
Is there any way to check the IDE HD Controller or should I just get one from AMI?
What is involved with restoring files & perameters?
Also on the cmos's screen the second processor it reads none and C drive and D drive it has none also.
I have seen the Boot Seq. perameter and it is C then A.
I was lucky with the video card, the guy went over to a box of used junk parts and $5.00 and a 5 min. drive and screen was working. I tried it with the IDE controller board but no luck.
I mostly do mechanical, lite electrical type repairs & some machining when needed. I have tried to stay out of the electronic & computer stuff so I am probably over my head on this one.
But I am learning quite a bit and I feel I am getting closer to figuring it out, WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS.

Mike

[One of Many]

A few more suggestions:

4vdc? Was that with the main disconnect off? That just sounds like charge voltage, not 3 cells at 1.2v/cell.

If the cmos indicates no C:\ drive, is there any other setting to get it to recognise it? That still sounds suspicious.

The IDE controller should not be that hard to find and it should be cheap at any local PC store, I would think. I would also try moving it to another slot on the MB if possible. The floppy section of the IDE controller sounded like it was functional, but the drives do use different bus lines. I think there is a some small PC boot disks that give an abbreviated version of DOS to at least see files on the A:\ drive. A rather sneaky way to see if the IDE is even active. Maybe someone else has a better trick up their sleeve here?

Finding another mother board with the same footprint can be tough. As I recall they are XT type with a large keyboard connector. EMI has them too. Those guys have been a great help to use in supporting our BP's.

DC

[Machinereaper1]

Hi DC yea the main was off my digital meter rounds off I think, no decimal point.
I checked the 2 PC stores and neither has one in stock and one said he may be able to get one. But I think I will get it from AMI that way I know it will be the right one.
Too late to order one today so monday I will give them a call. I might check some garage sales for some junk 486's with ISA this weekend. LOL
I will take this back up next week. Thanks again for all your help.

Mike

[machintek]

It is getting difficult to find ISA slot I/O boards. Try Ebay as well.

George

[Machinereaper1]

Well I got the new I/O board I found on ebay and installed it. Still no boot up.
It goes to the same screen as before.
I have auto detected the hard drive and it says "not detected"
Tried auto config. using both bios defalts and power on defalts.
Does anyone know what is involved with restoring all files and parameters?
Could the RAM be at falt...?
Cmos settings...?
Bios settings...?
Chip set ect...?
How to check BMDC & mother boards....? Or do I just replace & hope it works.
We have 4 boot floppies and only one is accepted. We copied another disk from another shop and it will not load either, says non system disk error.
any ideas are greatly appreciated.
Been rode hard an put away wet but I am still not ready to give up.
Mike

[machintek]

There is the possibility that your hard drive is dead. Are you sure the "new" IO board is good? Are you sure the ribbon cable is pin 1 to pin 1 (red stripe).
This is where things get real muddy. BPT FDISKed all hard drives to a maximum of 504 MB. Older hard drives had even less capacity. Newer ones have a lot more but to be backward compatible to the old BIOS, they were FDISKed at the ceiling of 504MB. Setting CMOS to auto-detect may hurt you if you have a larger than 504MB hard drive installed as the Mother Board will write parameters for the size the HD has been made to (ie: 2 GB, 40 GB, 80GB, 120GB, etc). But because of the FDISK, it will not be written to read from correctly. Even using a newer MB and DOS, you would be limited to 2 GB partitions, for a total of 6GB (if I remember correctly) even if you have a 120GB hard drive. You need to educate yourself in all of this.
Floppy: In DOS you need to FORMAT a:/S which will make a floppy bootable. The S is the command to write the necessary system files (including the hidden files) to the floppy to make it bootable. Then transfer the contents of the donor floppy to yours. The exception is the copy disk command in the EZTRAK utilities. I have found that it copies bootable floppys correctly.
EZTRAK software up to version 3.08 will create a RAM disk if it does not find a hard drive or if the hard drive is set to NONE in CMOS.
Lets just get it running from a floppy first.

George

[Machinereaper1]

Still no luck on this thing, I did get it to go into dos but how I did it is kinda hokey. I put the disk in that stops after it loads virtual disk and as soon as the drive lite goes out during himem loading I remove that disk and install a later disk in. The screen lists a bunch of disk errors files and such but it goes by so fast I can't see it all. Then it stops on a directory list of about 30 files but you can only see the bottom 15 or so. Some of the files are the BAT, EXE, SYS,...Files.
At this point I think I need a new Boot Disk and will be ordering one on Monday. AS soon as I get it I will make at least a half dozen copies. I have 5 now and none work.
I looked on the net for a list of dos commands and tried to run the a couple of the programs and either got bad command errors or file errors. the only thing I really got to work is the dir command. If anyone has any more thoughts I would like to hear them.
OH, by the way George I took the hard drive in to a local PC repair shop and the said the drive is good. I also had them make a copy on CD, Thought it may come in handy at some point. The hard drive is a 256 Meg with only 4 megs used and loaded with dos 6.2. I estimate the machine to be a 1994-97.
Do you guys know were I could get an instruction book for setting up all the parameters in the bios, cmos etc.?
Mike