Looking for Packard Bell PB430 Motherboard Bios. Help!!!

evgeniy_xp · Mon Mar 15, 2004 7:51 pm

Mon Mar 15, 2004 8:00 pm

Tried our Manufacturer links?

http://www.wimsbios.com/HTML1/packard.html

BiosMan · Mon Mar 15, 2004 8:30 pm

PB430 is not flashable...I have one of these.

What are you trying to do?

evgeniy_xp · Tue Mar 16, 2004 4:45 am

Tried our Manufacturer links?

Sure, but it seems http://www.firmware.com/ is dead

PB430 is not flashable...I have one of these.

What are you trying to do

There is some strange thing. I think it's because of BIOS. System isn't boot from hard (just crashed and screen flashing) but boot from diskette. And hard is visible and accessible from Dos after booting from diskette!!!
What is this?!

Thanks for help.

BiosMan · Tue Mar 16, 2004 4:51 am

Do you have their BIOS Upgrade kit (P4HS10)?

evgeniy_xp · Tue Mar 16, 2004 6:06 am

Do you have their BIOS Upgrade kit (P4HS10)?

No.
So, you think it might be because of BIOS? And its upgrade/replace can fix the problem?
And where I can get that kit and how much it costs?

BiosMan · Tue Mar 16, 2004 1:32 pm

You can boot from a floppy and see the HD, but you can't boot from the HD itself...correct??

What size HD, and is it setup correctly in the stock BIOS (which is what version BTW)? Will the drive pass a Scandisk/NDD test from DOS?

The only reason you would need the Micro Firmware BIOS is if you want to add a larger HD, and make the BIOS "flashable"...though they haven't released any updates for this BIOS in some time now.

What CPU are you running BTW? OS?

evgeniy_xp · Wed Mar 17, 2004 4:43 am

You can boot from a floppy and see the HD, but you can't boot from the HD itself...correct??

Correct

What size HD, and is it setup correctly in the stock BIOS (which is what version BTW)? Will the drive pass a Scandisk/NDD test from DOS?

520Mb. Now I don't know because I can't to enter to BIOS, nothing keys works (for enter to it), and the system was working normal before (I mean before this problem with booting). Version is PhoenixBIOS A486 v.1.01.E. Drive passes normal.

What CPU are you running BTW? OS?

486 DX. Windows 95

BiosMan · Wed Mar 17, 2004 12:58 pm

OK...that BIOS is what mine had before I upgraded to Micro Firmware's BIOS. The only reason I upgraded was to install a (bigger) replacement HD (the original one was failing slowly), since no one was making compatible ones (small) anymore.

I have a P-83 in mine, Win95B, 16MB FPM, 128K External Cache. At one time it was running an 8MB HD with 64 MB FPM (Cache removed), but the thing was really slow...95B is much better. The board is limited to PIO-0, which really hurts things. Also the External Cache stratagy doesn't allow that much RAM (Micro Firmware has a whole writeup on this)...things slow WAY down because of that as well.

<Ctrl><Alt><S> to enter the BIOS.

When it starts up on the HD...how far do you get? Any error messages?

It doesn't seem like a BIOS problem since you can see the HD when booting from a test floppy. I assume "drive passes normal" means it will pass a NDD or Scandisk test...

evgeniy_xp · Thu Mar 18, 2004 5:12 am

Thank you KachiWachi for your time.

I have a P-83 in mine, Win95B, 16MB FPM, 128K External Cache. At one time it was running an 8MB HD with 64 MB FPM (Cache removed), but the thing was really slow...95B is much better.

You mean Win95 was running on 8MB HD? Interesting

.

<Ctrl><Alt><S> to enter the BIOS.

That's doesn't working! I tried all possible combinations.

When it starts up on the HD...how far do you get? Any error messages?

It's no starts on the HD at all.

Nothing messages, just silence and screen is flashing with snowing hyphens...

I think this stuff wants on a dump

And I'm losing hope to repair it. It's no cost to waste time and forces. Better buy something newest than this old calculator

Thank you KachiWachi!!!

BiosMan · Thu Mar 18, 2004 2:19 pm

8GB

I'm still confused about what happens during your booting.

If you have the HD connected, you can start up off of a floppy and get to a command prompt...correct? You can then see and test the HD. This would lead me to believe that it is connected properly (pin 1 is towards the motherboard power connector).

If you then remove the floppy and try to start up using the HD, you get no POST at all, or things stop after seeing that (no OS load)?

<Ctrl><Alt><S> is correct for entering the BIOS (just looked it up to be sure). You should be able to do this from the DOS prompt after booting from the floppy. Once in there, check and make sure the HD parameters are setup correctly.

If everything is setup correctly, then something might have happened to the HD so that it no longer starts up on its own. NDD might be able to fix that, depending on what actually happened. Otherwise, a reload may be in order.

What HD tests did you run BTW??