Yesterday I tested and bought a Windows 98 Pentium 1 (older than dirt!) from the thrift store (for $1.98, who could pass? ) and when I brought it home, I noticed that the serial mouse port was loose. so I opened it up, fixed it, started it back up again, and wouldnt do anything! The hard drive whirred like normal but there was no display on the SCREEN. So after numerous clicks of the power button, I used the Reset button and it finally came on. This is the sequence of screens I get-

(First. The normal boot up screen)


(Next, the Warmup screen)


(It then goes back to the boot up screen, then afterwards, it tallies up the memory on this screen)


(It will then go to this screen)


(I press enter, it goes here)


(It will the progress to this screen after pressing A)


After pressing any key, it will revert back to the first boot failure screen. If I enter system setup at the Mr Bios screens and turn off the FLOPPY drive, or unplug the floppy all together, it will go to this screen instead of the boot failure screen-


After that screen, it will lock up. I am stumped. I ALSO tried putting a functional floppy drive in it, and that was no good. Did I fry something when I repeatedly turned it on and off? Anybody got any ideas to fix this? Any help is appreciated.Probably nothing wrong quite yet...
That machine brings back memories !
Travel to bootdisk.com and DLoad a few bootdisks. Create the floppies and try again.
If it in fact has a HDD in it it was probably wiped clean before being sold so you will need to install an OS on there.
Win98SE will do fine or Win2K

patio.   8-)It does have Windows 98 on there, as it used to boot up to Windows before I fixed the serial port.How did you fix the serial port ? ?

If it was booting and now isn't it is not detecting the drive with Win98 on it....
Check in the BIOS to see if the drive is showing up

Hit Escape repeatedly on startup to get there.
Don't change any settings til you know more about them.Somehow, whoever owned it previously managed to get one of the female ends of the 2 locking screws rattling inside the computer, letting the port wobble around. It was just a matter of sticking it back where it was supposed to be and screwing it back in.

But anyways, what I decided to do was to swap HDDs with another working junker computer (I have about 11 computers) just to see what was on it.  Im just going to restore the HDD, strip the failure computer for any usable/salvageable parts and rebuild it completely. Thanks for all your help patio! If your INTERESTED in any parts, let me know and Ill see if I can hook ya up.