5.25 Floppy Drives won't read any disks

[theredx219]

I recently got a vintage computer from somebody. It's an HP 9836C. It powers up fine but I cna't boot it up because none of the disks can be read. Obviously its some sort of issue with the floppy drives. Are they just dirty? How can I fix this? I hope I didn't put this in the wrong thread, I didn't see one that fit all that well. Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[USAFRet]

That PC is 30 years old. Likely the disks are dirty/corrupt/unreadable. Or the actual drive is dead.

http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=3
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=141

 

[swifty_morgan]

if you can get into the BIOS disable the floppy and remove it from the boot sequence. save settings and let the machine reboot.

 

[USAFRet]

if you can get into the BIOS disable the floppy and remove it from the boot sequence. save settings and let the machine reboot.

That is an early HP-UX machine from 1983. Running a HP proprietary Unix. It may well have no hard drive (a $3000 option), and runs completely off the 5.25" floppies.

 

[theredx219]

I tried about 20 different disks. How can they all be corrupted?

 

[USAFRet]

I tried about 20 different disks. How can they all be corrupted?

It needs the boot disks first. Without the OS running (HP-UX), the system has no idea how to read any others.

 

[USAFRet]

Or, the actual drives are dirty/toast.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

if you can get into the BIOS disable the floppy and remove it from the boot sequence. save settings and let the machine reboot.

Machines of that era didn't have BIOS as you know it today. DIP switches or jumpers were the order of the day.

 

[swifty_morgan]

yeah. you need the boot floppy.

any possibility of hooking up a cd-rom and running an ubuntu disc to boot. and then maybe the diskette will be seen or found......... and then maybe you will be able to pull stuff off..........................???................. but back in my olden days with limited use of 5.25's I think I still need the original operating system to access the disks............. I recently picked up WP but now I can't remember how I had my floppy hooked up in xp machine. ............. those dos days..................( insert groan of Lurch here.)

 

[ex_bubblehead]

yeah. you need the boot floppy.

any possibility of hooking up a cd-rom and running an ubuntu disc to boot. and then maybe the diskette will be seen or found......... and then maybe you will be able to pull stuff off..........................???................. but back in my olden days with limited use of 5.25's I think I still need the original operating system to access the disks............. I recently picked up WP but now I can't remember how I had my floppy hooked up in xp machine. ............. those dos days..................( insert groan of Lurch here.)

It's a 68000 based machine, from WELL before Linux even existed. Good luck with that.

 

[theredx219]

I have the boot disk, it's just not reading it. So I guess that that being corrupted could definitely be the issue. Anybody know where I can get a new one, or a compatible OS?

 

[USAFRet]

yeah. you need the boot floppy.

any possibility of hooking up a cd-rom and running an ubuntu disc to boot.

That will not work. Not even a little bit.
When this system came home from the store, CD-ROMs didn't exist yet.

 

[swifty_morgan]

my knowledge of that older stuff just isn't here. i knew nothing the first time i sat in front of a machine at college. it wasn't until i started gaming on pc's that i got into the hardware end. after the new millennium.

back in the 70's the machines were 5 feet tall, spun big wheels and printed everything on big sheets of paper from information hole punched into cards.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

yeah. you need the boot floppy.

any possibility of hooking up a cd-rom and running an ubuntu disc to boot.

That will not work. Not even a little bit.
When this system came home from the store, CD-ROMs didn't exist yet.

Neither did IDE.

You had your choice:
A) RLL/MFM/ESDI
B) SASI/SCSI
C) Proprietary