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Solve : HELP!!! MS DOS boot disk? |
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Answer» Hi, I have an old 486 40MHz computer (built in late 1993) w/all my business (Quickbooks, data base, etc) on it. It is the end of the year as we all know and I can't open any files. I screwed up my boot disk on my hard drive (C:) years ago and have been USING an old game disk on my A: 5 1/4 floppy drive to boot the computer. Now either the disk has worn out or floppy drive A: has failed. I need to find a boot disk and/or a floppy drive quick (3 Days to the new year). Can any one HELP PLEASE! Travel to bootdisk.com and DLoad the appropiate bootdisk file... Travel to bootdisk.com and DLoad the appropiate bootdisk file... Buy a box of floppies and make several. Get on your knees and pray hard that the hard disk drive lasts long enough for you to copy everything off onto another box or two of floppies. You are living on borrowed time.Quote from: Dias de verano on December 27, 2008, 02:00:41 PM Quote from: patio on December 27, 2008, 01:55:28 PMTravel to bootdisk.com and DLoad the appropiate bootdisk file... Wise words indeed... I just noticed that the OP mentions a "5 1/2 inch floppy" disk. There is no such thing. The standard floppy disk sizes were: 8 inch --- ancient history; used in the days of CP/M etc in the 1980s 5.25 inch - five and a quarter inch - howlingly obsolete 3.5 inch - three and a half inch - just obsolete If we are talking about 5.25 inch disks, then I wish you luck getting any blank disks! Even more luck getting a drive. You are going to need a lot of help quite soon! Quote from: Dias de verano on December 27, 2008, 01:58:11 PM This should be a lesson. Confucius was a very wise man. He said, "A man who trusts his business to a 15 year old PC is hoping to soon be in the bankruptcy court". But those of US who have been around since the 8088 days, at least know enough to Never trust our system and data to a 5.25" floppy disk!!! Every novice that ever used 5.25" disks, knows darn'd well that they forget. Those disks, many of them anyway, were so forgetful that they had to be re-written every few months, to maintain data integrity. The older they get, the worse they get. I still have about 500 of them, (5.25" diskettes) but I'd not trust them for an instant. At the very least, the 3.5" drive should have been made the A: drive, years ago. I guess it would be a good time to do that now. Him477 should just as well have asked for a boot disk for his Commodore 64 or TI-99. Time and technology move inexorably on and him who does not move along with it, is lost in the quagmire of ancient technology. Put that old PC in the hands of a competent PC Tech and maybe the data files can be extracted from that old HD. I would not advise any novice to even attempt it. Happy New Year! The Shadow PS: By the way Dias de verano, that was a great pictorial post. Great work! Oh yes, I've used many of those 8" disks in my early years as a tech. The disks didn't hold a lot of data, but the drives were built like an Army Tank and were pretty reliable. I loved those old "Winchester" drives. Quote from: TheShadow on December 27, 2008, 04:47:54 PM I loved those old "Winchester" drives. Those were the hard drives of the PERIOD. The IBM 3340 Direct Access Storage Facility, code-named Winchester, was introduced in March 1973 for use with IBM System/370. Its removable disk packs were sealed and included the head and arm assembly. There was no cover to remove during the insertion process. Access time was 25 millisecond and data transferred at 885 kB/s. Three versions of the removable IBM 3348 Data Module were sold, one with 35 megabyte capacity, another with 70 megabytes, the third also had 70 megabytes, but with 500 kilobytes under separate fixed heads for faster access. The 3340 also used error correction. It was withdrawn in 1984. Those were the days! |
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