Sony PCG-705 150mhz Pentium HDD issue.

[Bladerunner56]

Hello everyone,

I hope you can help me.

I wanted to get my old Sony PCG-705 150mhz Pentium I Laptop to recognize the
newer drives originally it came with the 2.1gb drive however I had to replace it
with a newer ATA drive but its bigger.

I also am trying to put the right setting in the bios to recognize 60gb drive and
fool the bios to thinking it's a 2.1gb drive. I been having issues having
the laptop to recognize the hard drive and getting the bios to recognize as
well. There may be some way of using a special cd with diagnostics to help
me get this to work.

Here are all the specs below of my laptop and any help would be appreciate it.

i wanted to display this laptop for show and use as well.

Thanks!
Paul

Pentium with MMX Technology (150 MHz, internal 32 KB cache)​

430TX PCI chipset​

256 KB (pipelined-burst SRAM)​

16 MB (standard) expandable to 128 MB (SDRAM)​

128-bit high-speed graphics accelerator​

12.1-inch SVGA TFT color LCD​

800 x 600 (-260,000 colors) 640 x 480 (-260,000 colors)​

One 3.5-inch drive (1.44 MB / 1.2 MB / 720 KB), removable​

2.1 GB​

Max 14.5x (average 12x) Multisession compatible, tray type Removable​

One keyboard/ mouse (PS/2) interface One serial port One printer port One infrared port One USB port Audio input One composite video input External display output connector One headphone output jack One docking station connector One modular modem jack​

One Type III or two Type II​

SoundBlaster PRO compatible, stereo speakers​

33.6 Kbps (V.34) / 14.4 Kbps (fax)​

 

[daveybrat]

Did you suddenly time travel forward into the future?

What possible 'use' could a laptop that old be to you?

 

[sdifox]

Err that's probably a PATA system

 

[Bladerunner56]

Im using this for some old win programs with dos programs I wrote as well that will not run in Win 7 or 10. I have a newer laptop works okay but need to get some old stuff working again as well as some statistics and neural network programs.

Thanks!
Paul

 

[VirtualLarry]

Many popular BIOSes of those days had ACTUAL LIMITING BUGS in them, and could not be configured for larger drive sizes.

Some people had some success with "disk overlay" software, that installs a TSR from the physical HDDs boot sector as a sort of BIOS overlay.

That said, try toggling BIOS LBA MODE: ENABLE.

 

[Bladerunner56]

Many popular BIOSes of those days had ACTUAL LIMITING BUGS in them, and could not be configured for larger drive sizes.

Some people had some success with "disk overlay" software, that installs a TSR from the physical HDDs boot sector as a sort of BIOS overlay.

That said, try toggling BIOS LBA MODE: ENABLE.

Thank you very much for your response. I really appreciate that. I use this older stats and nueral network programs since these originally had their own more simple algorithms. Most software of that type except for 1 I have for my newer laptop are more complicated and harder to get results that I want. I really appreciate that. What settings should I use for Bios for hard drive I can format partition also to a 2.1 gb size so bios sees that as well. I was looking for a cylinder, heads and sector data to input to user setting in the phoenix bios. I also will try cd diagnostics software dic that i think i found or saw to try to boot to usb for the bios like mine of course that don;t have that setup to boot to usb ffd. I will let you know what happens. You mentioned LBA enable. Thanks. Paul

 

[CU]

Large Disk HOWTO: History of BIOS and IDE limits

Explains some of the limits over time.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Instead of wasting so much effort on an older system, why not simply run your software inside a VM? It would run much faster too.

 

[Chapbass]

Instead of wasting so much effort on an older system, why not simply run your software inside a VM? It would run much faster too.

I, for one, loved going to make an entire English breakfast in the time between power button and usable desktop on Windows 95...

 

[Bladerunner56]

Large Disk HOWTO: History of BIOS and IDE limits

Explains some of the limits over time.

Thanks for the link.

Paul

 

[bba-tcg]

Hello everyone,

I hope you can help me.

I wanted to get my old Sony PCG-705 150mhz Pentium I Laptop to recognize the
newer drives originally it came with the 2.1gb drive however I had to replace it
with a newer ATA drive but its bigger.

I also am trying to put the right setting in the bios to recognize 60gb drive and
fool the bios to thinking it's a 2.1gb drive. I been having issues having
the laptop to recognize the hard drive and getting the bios to recognize as
well. There may be some way of using a special cd with diagnostics to help
me get this to work.

Here are all the specs below of my laptop and any help would be appreciate it.

i wanted to display this laptop for show and use as well.

Thanks!
Paul

Pentium with MMX Technology (150 MHz, internal 32 KB cache)​

430TX PCI chipset​

256 KB (pipelined-burst SRAM)​

16 MB (standard) expandable to 128 MB (SDRAM)​

128-bit high-speed graphics accelerator​

12.1-inch SVGA TFT color LCD​

800 x 600 (-260,000 colors) 640 x 480 (-260,000 colors)​

One 3.5-inch drive (1.44 MB / 1.2 MB / 720 KB), removable​

2.1 GB​

Max 14.5x (average 12x) Multisession compatible, tray type Removable​

One keyboard/ mouse (PS/2) interface One serial port One printer port One infrared port One USB port Audio input One composite video input External display output connector One headphone output jack One docking station connector One modular modem jack​

One Type III or two Type II​

SoundBlaster PRO compatible, stereo speakers​

33.6 Kbps (V.34) / 14.4 Kbps (fax)​

You can also google "HPA editing". You would probably have to edit the HPA with the drive connected to another machine if you're going to use it with a laptop that old.

 

[sdifox]

What about using a usb drive as boot disk? Assuming your bios allows that

 

[Bladerunner56]

You can also google "HPA editing". You would probably have to edit the HPA with the drive connected to another machine if you're going to use it with a laptop that old.

Thanks. I been having problems trying to that that bios to see the 2.11 gb drive. I always gat hard drive disk error not showing up. There is software diagnostics written to get around so you can boot to a USB drive even though the BIOS does not suport it. Ill look into HPA editing and Bios settings issue. I know one thing it seems like once it worked but when you replace the hardrive to something else except for the original it came these old laptops are being stubborn to commicate with it thru the bios. If the bios is not set up just right then its a real problem too. Ill have to fool it thinking the newer larger drives are 2.1gb.
I had a 10gb work but not for long lost the boot info on it. Ill check on this HPA editing issue. Thanks!

 

[Bladerunner56]

What about using a usb drive as boot disk? Assuming your bios allows that

I would have to use a special software diagnostics that get around the BIOS so I can boot to a ready made usb OS like tiny xp which I know worked well at one time on it with cd to original hardrive! I will have to go on internet archive to find software diagnostics for old pcs with phoenix bioses for 150mhz MMX Pentium 256mb ram.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I will have to go on internet archive to find software diagnostics for old pcs with phoenix bioses for 150mhz MMX Pentium 256mb ram.

The very first Hiren bootcd may have what you seek.

A link to version 3.4 here at the bottom, with the github links starting from V5: https://gist.github.com/SMUsamaShah/301994b39334ac2515224b92afb72403

 

[Bladerunner56]

The very first Hiren bootcd may have what you seek.

A link to version 3.4 here at the bottom, with the github links starting from V5: https://gist.github.com/SMUsamaShah/301994b39334ac2515224b92afb72403

Thank you so much for that information! You were very helpful and everyone else here on these posts.!!!!

 

[aigomorla]

Im using this for some old win programs with dos programs I wrote as well that will not run in Win 7 or 10. I have a newer laptop works okay but need to get some old stuff working again as well as some statistics and neural network programs.

Thanks!
Paul

DOS?

Why not RPi it then? or use some form of ARM with better compatability.
Id assume you could even use an old Atom, a D525 as i think those were limited to 32bit operations, and had no issues running old DOS stuff.


You can find these guys cheap on ebay:

https://www.newegg.com/p/1JW-000T-008K3?item=9SIAKVHH1M4952&nm_mc=knc-googleadwords&cm_mmc=knc-googleadwords-_-motherboards%20-%20intel-_-intel-_-9SIAKVHH1M4952&utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic+shopping&utm_campaign=knc-googleadwords-_-motherboards%20-%20intel-_-intel-_-9SIAKVHH1M4952&source=region&srsltid=AR57-fDMnQk9jOgUOJUkWxbGtwhX5ix8169QFTWV0xK7vdBIBEw3sH2W06Y

Personally id VM it in DOSBOX, for the best compatibility.
But that would require you to know how to setup a VM machine with Esxi or VMbox.