[SOLVED] Hard Disk Issue

[Richy1985]

Hi all,

I recently acquired a Viglen 486 motherboard (Socket 3). I have installed a 40-pin IDE Fujitsu M1606 TAU Hard Disk into the case which is known to be in perfect working order. To my knowledge, this hard disk does not have any jumpers for Master, Slave etc. presumably due to it's age. Unfortunately, I receive a Fixed Disk Failure error message even though the Hard Disk appears to be detected successfully in the BIOS.

I have put another IDE ribbon cable into the computer and have ensured it is connected correctly, with the red dotted line matching up with Pin 1 on the respective connectors but I still experience the same issue.

Can anyone assist?

Many thanks.

EDIT: Images are in the links below:

https://ibb.co/VYPwYVX
https://ibb.co/RgJSp6j
https://ibb.co/9yFzFMN
https://ibb.co/k8KP8hT
https://ibb.co/pW3NyBn
https://ibb.co/4gPYbYr

 

[CountMike]

Hi all,

I recently acquired a Viglen 486 motherboard (Socket 3). I have installed a 40-pin IDE Fujitsu M1606 TAU Hard Disk into the case which is known to be in perfect working order. To my knowledge, this hard disk does not have any jumpers for Master, Slave etc. presumably due to it's age. Unfortunately, I receive a Fixed Disk Failure error message even though the Hard Disk appears to be detected successfully in the BIOS.

I have put another IDE ribbon cable into the computer and have ensured it is connected correctly, with the red dotted line matching up with Pin 1 on the respective connectors but I still experience the same issue.

Can anyone assist?

Many thanks.

EDIT: Images are in the links below:

https://ibb.co/VYPwYVX
https://ibb.co/RgJSp6j
https://ibb.co/9yFzFMN
https://ibb.co/k8KP8hT
https://ibb.co/pW3NyBn
https://ibb.co/4gPYbYr

There are at least 3 types of ribbon cables, 40 pin and 80 pin and EIDE Ultra ATA DMA 33/66/100/133 IDE DATA Ribbon
If HDD doesn't have setting pins. it's default is Auto so safe bet is single connector cable.

 

[BFG-9000]

What's the IDE controller? The 82378IB Southbridge of the 420TX chipset you have there does not include any onboard IDE controller so it would be a separate chip or card, plus you have to keep in mind the BIOS is copyrighted 1993 which was before EIDE came out.

What a wonderfully weird very late model 486 (it came out the same year as Pentium!) with the first Intel chipset featuring PCI slots so an add-on PCI IDE/ATA controller would perform at least as well as any PCI-attached onboard one because the Northbridge itself is on PCI--provided of course if you could find a card that works in PCI 1.0. Or perform much better if the onboard is attached via 16-bit ISA bus, as the original IDE implementation was designed to be. Of course then you may as well get a more common SCSI card instead.

An add-in card would have its own BIOS (invoked with a key sequence on bootup), support higher performing (and less CPU consuming) DMA modes, and even allow 128GB LBA28 drives. I would not suggest larger drives because any Windows you would use on a 486 does not support LBA48 by default.

Beats trying to look for a VLB card anyday.

 

[Paperdoc]

It MAY be that this IDE drive was built only for use in a Cable Select mode - that is, there is NO jumper setting to specify Master or Slave, and that selection is done solely by how the data cable from the Controller is connected to the drive. IF that is so, then you MUST use an 80-conductor ribbon cable with THREE connectors. At one end is the connector for the Controller board header, and that one is BLUE. The other two normally are closer together near the far end. The END one is BLACK and is to be used for the MASTER drive. The GREY connector in the middle is for the SLAVE. In a one-drive system, that drive always MUST be the MASTER on the BLACK connector on the far end.

 

[Richy1985]

I've installed three different hard drives, all known to be working, two Fujitsu 1606's and one Western Digital Caviar 2700. On the 2700 I could specify Master or Slave with the jumper settings.

I have also verified that the drive parameters for all three drives I installed were correct. I also connected the IDE ribbon cable to what I believe is a Controller Card and I set the jumpers on the Controller Card to 'Primary'. When I booted up, the hard disk was found but the Phoenix BIOS claimed the configuration settings were incorrect.

 

[Paperdoc]

This is gonna get fuzzy because I am writing from memory about very old systems. For a long time now with IDE Hard Disks we have been accustomed to units with a tiny bit of "smarts" on them that allow them to respond to a query from the HDD controller with correct configuration parameters for Size, Cylinders, Heads, Sectors, Pre-load and Landing Zone. That allows the BIOS to set all those items with no intervention. But BEFORE that came into wide use, the USER had to enter those parameters manually in the first screen of BIOS Setup. You had to use the cursor keys to reach each field and type in the numbers. MOST HDD's came with a table of those parameters on them. You may NOT have to enter the Size - that usually is calculated from the Cylinders / Heads / Sectors numbers - but you need to check the result on screen against the value from the label.

You MAY have a BIOS and HDD old enough to require that manual entry process. Even if the screen shows you data there, at least check to be SURE that it agrees with what is on the HDD label. You MAY have to correct it.

Doing this CAN make any old data on the HDD unreadable, so if you have data you want from there, avoid doing this. There were cases (I ran into one many years ago) where the HDD had been used with a non-standard set of parameters and could not be recognized or read when the "proper" data from the label was entered.

If you can get that to work so the HDD is recognized, I hope you are familiar with the older techniques for Partitioning and Formatting an empty new HDD.

 

[Richy1985]

It's been a while since I posted but I have finally resolved the issue. The problem was a hard disk drive size limit of 500 MB. When I installed a drive under 500 MB everything worked and I was at last able to install an Operating System.

I have also had success installing an XT-IDE so I can use any drive without receiving the error message.

It would seem that a HDD/FDD controller card is not required on my late 486 motherboard.

Thank you to all that took the time to respond.