mark@vehka.uta.fi (Marko Jauhiainen) (07/20/90)
Hello, I had two ST-138 32 Mb harddisks in my Express (286 machine), and I removed the other one. I managed to boot it from a floppy disk but when I tried to boot it from the hard disk it simply said 'NO ROM BASIC, SYSTEM HALTED'. I thought that I got my cables mixed so I checked them and now it won't even boot from a floppy anymore :( Any idea what causes the message ? Another question: if I have a fixed disk (32 Mb) with 2 (16 Mb) partitions, is it possible to format (high-level) just one partition without data being destroyed on the other partition ? I'd be very grateful for any help you can give, thanks ! Mark -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Marko Jauhiainen, Dept. of Computer Science | Don't talk unless you can University of Tampere, Finland | improve the silence. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
mark@vehka.uta.fi (Marko Jauhiainen) (07/23/90)
Thanks to everyone who responded to my question about ROM BASIC and the problem I had. In case I wasn't the only one who did not know it, here is the story in short: The BIOS tries to find a disk with a boot block; first it searches floppy and then hard disk. If it cannot find the boot block, it searches for the ROM BASIC (loaded immediately above the BIOS), which original IBM's have but most clones don't. At this point, if no ROM BASIC is found, the system is halted :( What I had to do to make things work on my computer was to run FDISK and make one of my hard disk partitions active. Then I checked and double- checked my floppy drive cables and got it working, too. I also removed the extra data cable ( for drive D:) from the controller board but I am not sure it affected anything. As to my other question, a high-level format can be done to each partition separately but a low-level format treats everything as one big disk. I kinda knew it but I wasn't in a mood to experiment ( when things start going wrong everything can happen ;-). Thanks, Mark -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Marko Jauhiainen, Dept. of Computer Science | Don't talk unless you can University of Tampere, Finland | improve the silence. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
emmo@moncam.co.uk (Dave Emmerson) (07/30/90)
In article <1433@kielo.uta.fi>, mark@vehka.uta.fi (Marko Jauhiainen) writes: > > I had two ST-138 32 Mb harddisks in my Express (286 machine), and > I removed the other one. I managed to boot it from a floppy disk but when > I tried to boot it from the hard disk it simply said 'NO ROM BASIC, SYSTEM > HALTED'. I thought that I got my cables mixed so I checked them and now it > won't even boot from a floppy anymore [...] You probably haven't modified your system's CMOS ram to show that you now have only one drive, or possibly you've removed the bootable one. The error message is totally misleading. Consult the manual for 'Configuring the system', this normally involves holding down Alt-S, Ins, or Del during power-up and ramtest. The floppy problem is a separate issue, re-check your cables. > Another question: if I have a fixed disk (32 Mb) with 2 (16 Mb) > partitions, is it possible to format (high-level) just one partition without > Careful! The safest way is to just erase everything from the partition, but you can also use some drive configuration software to redefine the partition, but I cannot guarantee that the other partition(s) will remain intact. (Why reformat it?). Note also, that if you define a non-standard partition, you will probably have to load a driver for it in your config.sys file. In any event, the standard advice is applicable : BACK UP EVERYTHING FIRST! ^^^^^^^^^^ Dave E.