awhite@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Andrew J. White) (05/24/91)
I have an Everex STEP 286/12 computer with an MFM hard drive. I am trying to replace the hard drive with a Connor CP3104 (100MB IDE) drive. I purchased Conner's own controller card, and used drive type 31 (98 megs), which is what Everex tech support told me to use. Here's what happened: The drive (which according to Conner should *not* be low-level formatted) was partioned with FDISK and then formatted. Everything seemed to work AOK until either (a) FORMAT would finish and give the error "Error Creating FAT" or, (b) FORMAT would choke in the beginning and say "Invalid drive selection" (in reference to drive C:) as if the hard drive were not recognized. SpeedSTOR and Disk Manager also choked. So, I'm thinking, BIOS upgrade. The current bios is a special version of AMI Bios for this computer dated 2/89. Problem is, Everex does not sell a more recent BIOS, nor does AMI. AMI says the problem is the BIOS. A generic AMI Bios will *not* work in the computer because of the weird display window on the front of the computer. So, who knows how to get it to work? A different IDE adapter? Strange jumper settings on the Conner? Conner advised me to upgrade the Bios :-(. -- __________________________________________________________________________ Andrew J. White | U. of Pennsylvania | awhite@eniac.seas.upenn.edu Comp. Science 1993 | School of Engineering | whiteaj@clutx.clarkson.edu
umcarls9@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Charles Carlson) (05/25/91)
In <43702@netnews.upenn.edu> awhite@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Andrew J. White) writes: >I have an Everex STEP 286/12 computer with an MFM hard drive. I am >trying to replace the hard drive with a Connor CP3104 (100MB IDE) drive. >I purchased Conner's own controller card, and used drive type 31 (98 megs), >which is what Everex tech support told me to use. Here's what happened: >So, I'm thinking, BIOS upgrade. The current bios is a special version >of AMI Bios for this computer dated 2/89. Problem is, Everex does not >sell a more recent BIOS, nor does AMI. AMI says the problem is the >BIOS. A generic AMI Bios will *not* work in the computer because of >the weird display window on the front of the computer. A friend of mine just went through all this with Everex. He has a client he sold a 386/16<not step> to that wanted an IDE hard drive. When he tried to install it he had various problems that all came back to the BIOS. Naturally he called Everex for an upgrade and they basically told him 'hahahahhahaha, you've got to be kidding! That machine was our economy machine of two years ago! We don't have an upgraded BIOS for that! <click>' Last time we buy anything from Everex needless to say.
quimby@madoka.its.rpi.edu (Quimby Pipple) (05/31/91)
Everex, in addition to making the boards for their Steps, makes boards for other OEM's. I'm pretty sure they were making OEM motherboards for a couple of years before the Step line came out. It's unusual to have problems with their tech support staff, and it's very unusual to have compatability problems with their motherboards. The main difference between the Step and OEM boards, in the 386 machines, is the caching system. I've never had any reason to try it, but I would suspect that plain a vanilla BIOS would run on a Step 286, although it wouldn't drive the "star wars" panel. It's also interesting that your dealer doesn't seem to enter into the picture (although I could be missing something here). One of the great things about a dealer is that they're the ones that are supposed to handle the hassles of getting everything to fit together correctly. If they don't, they're not doing their jobs, and you should be shopping around. (Or complaining) Quimby -- quimby@mts.rpi.edu, quimby@rpitsmts.bitnet