d8b Data Cable

[juanbanzai]

Hi John. A CF card would be a great thing to have, but those guys are something we DON'T have in the shop. I also didn't find a card read in this d8b... unless I'm just not finding it. To be honest, I really haven't familiarized myself with this board yet. I was hoping to just connect it and have it go. Once that didn't happen, I entered full troubleshooting mode and haven't stopped.

One thing I think I can do is write the image directly to the HD using an IDE to USB adapter I have. I can connect the adapter to the drive as it sits inside the power supply and hope for the best as I use AOMEI on an older laptop to write the image.

I finally got the floppy method to work, but since it's been 25 years since I worked with DOS, I can't remember what to do if DOS doesn't see a C drive. The DOS boot disk I created works just fine, but when I try to run FDISK to format the HD, it can't find it.

Wow! I had less problems trying to install Windows 95 back in the day.

Aaron

[juanbanzai]

Hello again, John. I just remembered why I think my DOS boot disk isn't finding the HD; I'm using DOS 6.0 and it doesn't support larger drives. The new one I installed in the d8b power supply is partitioned for 30g.

I was about to check into installing the image based on the link you posted, but it appears that it's going to install an image for OS 5.1. Since the original HD failed in the d8b, I don't have access to any authorization codes, nor can I find any in the manuals and other paperwork I pulled from our files. It appears that OS 3 with the service pack was the last OS put on this unit.

Aaron

[Phil.c]

I assume the original failed d8b HD isn't spinning so you can't read from it?

I have had a few fail but still readable.

[Jondav1120]

Hi Aaron,

One thing I think I can do is write the image directly to the HD using an IDE to USB adapter I have. I can connect the adapter to the drive as it sits inside the power supply and hope for the best as I use AOMEI on an older laptop to write the image.

Sorry, should have explained my thought process better...that was my intention, write the CF image to the new hard drive and see if it boots.

I was about to check into installing the image based on the link you posted, but it appears that it's going to install an image for OS 5.1. Since the original HD failed in the d8b, I don't have access to any authorization codes, nor can I find any in the manuals and other paperwork I pulled from our files. It appears that OS 3 with the service pack was the last OS put on this unit.

I believe that the images that arjepson uploaded are already authorised (cracked) for 5.1 and all the plugins, so if it boots you should be good to go. If it's not authorised then the crack is easy to install.

Regards

John

[juanbanzai]

Hi Phil.

Yes... the original drive isn't readable at all. In fact, I found 4 other drives that came from either the power supply of the d8b or the HDR24/96 recorder. All 20g Western Digital Protégé drives, all toast. I tried mounting them in another PC in addition to the IDE to USB adapter I have and nothing happened. Oh... I should change that... one spun up then started making a "click and bang" noise. Safe to assume the drive head is in a really bad way.

Aaron

[juanbanzai]

Hi John.

I don't consider myself computer-illiterate, but this OS install thing is killing me. I downloaded the image for OS5 and successfully installed it onto the drive in the d8b. However, when I boot up the unit, I get an "operating system not found" error. I looked at the directory structure of everything AOMEI Backupper wrote to the drive and there's a file called "mackied8b.exe" or something like that. Is that the file to physically install the OS or is what I'm seeing the entire OS itself? I had DOS 6.22 installed on the drive, but it got overwritten by AOMEI when I loaded the img.

Sorry, but NOW I'm confused.

Aaron

[doktor1360]

Hi John.

I don't consider myself computer-illiterate, but this OS install thing is killing me. I downloaded the image for OS5 and successfully installed it onto the drive in the d8b. However, when I boot up the unit, I get an "operating system not found" error. I looked at the directory structure of everything AOMEI Backupper wrote to the drive and there's a file called "mackied8b.exe" or something like that. Is that the file to physically install the OS or is what I'm seeing the entire OS itself? I had DOS 6.22 installed on the drive, but it got overwritten by AOMEI when I loaded the img.

Sorry, but NOW I'm confused.

Aaron

Hey Aaron...

Check to ensure the 'boot flag' is set for the disk, otherwise the firmware will never complete the hand-off...

[Jondav1120]

Hi Aaron,

I'm not sure what has happened there, but the contents of the D8B hard drive should look like the screenshot below...

Contents of D8B Hard disk.png (Array KiB) Viewed 1464 times

If it doesn't then Aeomi Backupper has messed up or your download was corrupted or ... could be many things!!

The images in arjepson's post in the database are based on an older version of Aeomi Backupper, so I've summarised the process below.

1. Open Aeomi Backupper with the destination disk connected and select the "Restore" tab.
2. Click "Select Image File"

Aeomi Backupper 1.png (Array KiB) Viewed 1464 times

3. Locate and select the downloaded file.

Aeomi Backupper 2.png (Array KiB) Viewed 1464 times

4. Select "Restore the entire disk" and click the disk to highlight it.

Aeomi Backupper 3.png (Array KiB) Viewed 1464 times

5. Find your attached destination disk and click on it to highlight it.

Aeomi Backupper 4.png (Array KiB) Viewed 1464 times

The Forum will not allow more than five image attachments so the last one will follow...

Regards

John

[Jondav1120]

Continuing the previous reply...

Once you have the destination disk highlighted click "Next". Check that all is correct and click "Start Restore"

Aeomi Backupper 5.png (Array KiB) Viewed 1464 times

You will probably notice that I've used a disk that is too large for the D8B (80GB), it was one that I had lying around so it got used to refresh my memory of the process and take some screenshots...

Once complete your hard disk should look like the first screenshot in the previous post.


The mackied8b.exe file is the OS itself, but without the rest of the files will indeed fail to boot at all.

On a slightly different note, I have found that Aoemi's free partition manager available from here can resize the 4GB default size of the image to fill the space on the disk. It's also worked for resizing the original hard drive image to fit on my 8GB CF cards.

Regards

John

[juanbanzai]

Thanks for the screen shots, John. I've used the AOMEI image file program before, so even though this was a newer version, I was able to get it to open the d8b image and install it on the new drive. I used an AOMEI partition program to take my 40g drive down to 20g, and then reinstalled the image. What I have on the drive is exactly what you have pictured. However, I'm still getting the "No operating system found" error.

I'm afraid I completely forgot about "boot flags" and how to make sure they're set correctly. I remember being able to edit them using FDSK, which means I'll have to use the MSDOS boot disk I compiled, but where on the new drive would I find the flag?

I'm going to do some research until I hear back. Maybe I can stumble on it... or at least the procedure will come back to me as I look around.

Thanks so much for hanging with me on this.

Aaron