Hard drive not recognized after reset or soft boot(ctrl/alt/del)

[MOB]

I'm repairing and upgrading a Packard Bell system (PB 4220 CD) with a 60 MHz Pentium proc. and 433LX chipset for a friend. I replaced
the original 408MB HDD with a 2 GB drive, added more memory for a total of 40 MB ( originally was 24MB). While replacing the hard drive
found the 40 pin/wire ribbon cable torn across three wires (all 3 open). Replaced the cable did an FDisk and format in preparation to load
Win95 (upgrade from 3.1). However, everytime the system would restart, either automatically during the loading process or manually by me,
the hard drive would not be recognized by the BIOS, nor would it be after rebooting with the reset button or doing a ctrl/alt/del restart after
getting the message, "Drive Not Ready Error, Insert BOOT diskette in A:". Even after doing a restart from Win95, the same thing happens
everytime! The only way to get the hard drive to come up and boot would be after performing a power off routine by pushing the power button
off and on or doing a system shutdown from Windows and then powering off and repowering on again. Of course, this is an AT style mobo
and power supply, so the front panel power button is directly controlling (wired to) the power supply. I've tried every option in the CMOS
setup, which isn't a whole lot since an OEM version BIOS - AMI BIOS, 1.00.09 BCOR. I've tried setting the various timeouts and delays for
the HDD to different values, then when none of those worked, I reset the BIOS defaults. I configured the drive (both drives in fact, the original
and the 2 GB) manually and also let the BIOS do it automatically - NOTHING I've tried so far makes a difference! I replaced the 2 GB drive
with the original 408 MB drive, and replaced the ribbon cable again, all to no avail!
I'm tending to believe it's something to do with the motherboard like a jumper in the wrong place maybe - who knows!
There are several jumpers with no real identifiers except its jumper number (i.e., J12, etc.). The "CMOS CLR" jumper is labeled
as well as the "SETUP" jumper and "CLock" jumpers. There are two labeled, one is "PW", the other is "WP". Needless to say, I don't have
anything in the way of schematics, documentation or layouts on this system and its motherboard. I used to visit a web site called,
rayspackardbell.com (I believe that's the correct URL), but I can't seem to find it now - had great info and links dealing with everything
Packard Bell.
Other than this frustrating problem, the system seems to be working very well.
Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!!

Thanks - Mal

[ixl]

That's very strange... if the 408 does it also, I would do this:
Back out all the changes possible to see if you can isolate it. Take out the new RAM, maybe that (somehow?) is causing the problem?
I am not really sure what could be causing such behavior.

------------------
Charles M. Kozierok ( ixlubb@PCGuide.com )
Webslave, The PC Guide (http://www.PCGuide.com)
Comprehensive PC Reference, Troubleshooting, Optimization and Buyer's Guides...

[dale]

Sounds like your CMOS battery is probably dead and it can't store the data persistently. Given that the system is rather old, the battery probably has been dead for a while. Likely that the "Default" setting was set to recognie the factor drive supplied by Packard Hell .

dale

[MOB]

Well, I finally figured out what was going on. I was working on more than one system at the time and got myself a little confused at one point. I
had another system with a hard drive problem as well, and after troubleshooting, swapping cables, drives, and messing with conf./BIOS settings on two sytems at once, I made an error - first one in my life, believe me ;-).

The original 428 MB drive did work properly when I reinstalled it, both during a cold start and warm boot (although originally, it did have a damaged ribbon cable which I replaced). The AMI BIOS was dated 11/94 according to SiSoft's SANDRA information/diagnostic software. I know that any BIOS dated before August of 1994 was suppose to have the 528 MB barrier, but this BIOS was supposedly dated Nov. '94, and therefore(theoretically anyway, but with AMI and Packard Bell who knows),
should've been compatible up to the next capacity barrier of anything greater than 2.1 GB. Therefore, after installing the Maxtor 2.1 GB, partioning and formatting it without any problems I figured the BIOS was translating the drive properly. The full capacity was recognized (actually 1.918 GB after partion/formatting), the BIOS recognized it during cold start up and Win95 loaded and was/is running fine. Although the Win95 version I'm using is the 1st edition, or "A" version I think some people call it, so it also has a HDD capacity barrier of anything greater than 2.1 GB. So I figured if I had a BIOS problem, the drive would either not be recognized at all, the system would hang, or it would only format to the 528 MB limit. Since this was not the case, I got myself into a mindset that it had to be something else (i.e., jumper settings, BIOS settings, memory, add on cards, motherboard, cables, and finally power supply. Of course, some of these things I thought might be somehow causing the problem really felt like a strecth, but when you get a certain mindset and accompanying
tunnel vision while becoming desperate, you'll try just about anything! I tried a new power supply which made no difference, so I got the last resort
kind of idea to try a IDE controller PCI card with its own onboard BIOS. I had a Promise Technology card laying around so I popped it in and
guess what, the 2.1 GB finally would do a warm boot, a reset and windows restart, as well as the cold start. I'm still not 100% convinced that the
problem is in the BIOS. I still have a thought that a possible logic circuit on the mobo related to the reset, warm boot procedure may still be at fault, but it very well could just be the old AMI BIOS all by itself - really hard to know without detailed schematics and actually tracing logic
signals around the mobo. Definitely something I'm not inclined to do for time sake and migraine prevention.

And yes, it is a 60 MHz and my friend uses it for word processing, email, and his young children play simple games on it. It's sort of like a family
pet, they've grown attached to and want to keep it. They do have another system much more up to date - a 700 MHz Athlon T-bird system I put together for them.

Thanks for everyones input!

Mal