I plan to use this computer for many of my vintage computing needs, so I'll have more confidence in this system if all the drives are replaced with new ones.
Starting first, the case needs to be opened. It's rather straight forward, there are seven screws on the back of the computer.
Starting first, the case needs to be opened. It's rather straight forward, there are seven screws on the back of the computer.
The case then slides back slightly and then can be lifted off. The drives are located in caddies where circled.
The hard drive and 1.44mb floppy are located together. It's removed by removing two screws and then by sliding out and up.
The installed Quantum Fireball 3gb drive was replaced with a HEWLETT PACKARD 10.1 GIG IDE HARD DRIVE DTLA-30510.
MS-DOS has a 8.5gb limitation. At most 1024 cylinders (numbered 0-1023), 256 heads (numbered 0-255), 63 sectors/track (numbered 1-63) for a maximum total capacity of 8455716864 bytes (8.5 GB). This is a severe limitation in regards to today's hard drive needs, but in this case, it should be sufficient.
The hard drive also needs to be recognized by the computer's BIOS. The jumpers are positioned as indicated by the chart on the drive. In this case, the drive is set up as DEVICE 0 (MASTER). It will be the primary drive.
If the jumpers are set incorrectly, the computer's BIOS may not recognize the hard drive or the computer's BIOS may not load at all, and the screen will remain dark with no activity.
The 1.44mb floppy is replaced with a NEC FD1231H 3.5 1.44MB Internal Floppy Drive. This drive can support the following formatting:
720 KB mode = 720 KB
1.44 MB mode = 1.44 MB
The CD-ROM and 5.25" floppy drive will slide into the drive caddies after the old CD-ROM and ZipDrive are removed. To get to these, the front panel must be removed. There are four screws located at the inside corners holding it in. The two on the left can be seen in the below image.
The panel cannot be removed completely because of a series of cables to the far right. There's no need to detach these cables since there is plenty of space to swing the panel aside.
By removing the screws on either side of the drives and the rear cables the component can be removed.
I'm replacing the 4x CD-ROM drive with a new Compaq 48x CD-ROM Drive CRD-8484B.
I'm replacing the ZipDrive with a new TEAC FD-55GFR 5.25" 5-1/4 FLOPPY DISK DRIVE (1.2mb). This drive connects to the same ribbon cable that the 1.44mb floppy drive (A:) by using the larger FDD connector. It will be recognized as drive (B:).
After installing all the drives, the computer was booted. The hard drive and floppy drives were detected.
Looking at the BIOS settings though, I found that Foppy B: is disabled under Floppy Options. This was corrected by choosing the proper setting.
At this time, only Floppy A: and B: are in operation. The hard drive needs to be formatted and the CD-ROM will need a driver.
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