I'm working on restoring an OmniBook 800CT. I intend for this to be my DOS/Windows 3.1/Windows 95 gaming machine.
One of the first things I need to do is replace the hard drive (which is failing), with something solid state. The two options I'm aware of is either a CF card with an CF to IDE adapter, or an actual IDE SSD.
My first choice is the CF card due to reasons I'll leave out to shorten this post.
I'm having trouble getting this laptop to boot with a CF card.
With no partitions present on the card, the computer boots to a Windows 95 dos boot floppy with no problem.
After creating a partition (I've tried 1.9GB, 4GB, and 32GB), the computer will not boot. It will not boot from the floppy. The computer begins reading from the floppy drive to boot DOS, and then just sits there crashed. It will also not boot from the CF even if I've formatted it and put DOS on it (by using another PC).
So far I've been trying to use a 32GB CF, because I read a forum post where someone had installed a 32GB IDE SSD successfully in this model of laptop, and figured if it could recognize and boot that, then the size should be compatible.
I also have a 2GB CF from an old Cisco router. Results are slightly different with this card. As long as I install DOS 6.22 it works and boots fine. As soon as I upgrade the dos to "win95 dos", it can no longer boot. Either by doing a "SYS A: C:" with a 95 boot diskette, or by windows doing it by itself during the Windows 95 install process. I'm using version B which is what the laptop originally came with.
I've tried a standard Windows 95 boot disk, and the OmniBook 800CT recovery boot disk, with same results.
I've tried several other CF cards, including a SanDisk Extreme 32GB (UDMA7), a regular SanDisk 32gb, and two SanDisk 8GB cards, and a Transcend "133x" 32GB card.
I had a dual-slot adapter, but found out the laptop will not support the secondary drive, so just for compatibility I even swapped it out with a single-slot only CF-IDE adapter.
It may also be helpful to mention that with the original hard drive booted up to windows 95, the laptop recognizes the CF card perfectly, and reads and writes from it installed in a CF to PCMCIA adapter. No, I can't get it to boot from the PCMCIA slot. That might be an alternative, as I hear the PCMCIA slot might actually be faster than the IDE interface, if it could be made to boot from it. I'd prefer to leave the slot free though.
I'm out of ideas! Maybe it's a simple mistake, or maybe there's some CF card incompatibility issue I just don't know about. Has anybody put a CF card in an OmniBook 800CT?
Thanks,
-Stu
One of the first things I need to do is replace the hard drive (which is failing), with something solid state. The two options I'm aware of is either a CF card with an CF to IDE adapter, or an actual IDE SSD.
My first choice is the CF card due to reasons I'll leave out to shorten this post.
I'm having trouble getting this laptop to boot with a CF card.
With no partitions present on the card, the computer boots to a Windows 95 dos boot floppy with no problem.
After creating a partition (I've tried 1.9GB, 4GB, and 32GB), the computer will not boot. It will not boot from the floppy. The computer begins reading from the floppy drive to boot DOS, and then just sits there crashed. It will also not boot from the CF even if I've formatted it and put DOS on it (by using another PC).
So far I've been trying to use a 32GB CF, because I read a forum post where someone had installed a 32GB IDE SSD successfully in this model of laptop, and figured if it could recognize and boot that, then the size should be compatible.
I also have a 2GB CF from an old Cisco router. Results are slightly different with this card. As long as I install DOS 6.22 it works and boots fine. As soon as I upgrade the dos to "win95 dos", it can no longer boot. Either by doing a "SYS A: C:" with a 95 boot diskette, or by windows doing it by itself during the Windows 95 install process. I'm using version B which is what the laptop originally came with.
I've tried a standard Windows 95 boot disk, and the OmniBook 800CT recovery boot disk, with same results.
I've tried several other CF cards, including a SanDisk Extreme 32GB (UDMA7), a regular SanDisk 32gb, and two SanDisk 8GB cards, and a Transcend "133x" 32GB card.
I had a dual-slot adapter, but found out the laptop will not support the secondary drive, so just for compatibility I even swapped it out with a single-slot only CF-IDE adapter.
It may also be helpful to mention that with the original hard drive booted up to windows 95, the laptop recognizes the CF card perfectly, and reads and writes from it installed in a CF to PCMCIA adapter. No, I can't get it to boot from the PCMCIA slot. That might be an alternative, as I hear the PCMCIA slot might actually be faster than the IDE interface, if it could be made to boot from it. I'd prefer to leave the slot free though.
I'm out of ideas! Maybe it's a simple mistake, or maybe there's some CF card incompatibility issue I just don't know about. Has anybody put a CF card in an OmniBook 800CT?
Thanks,
-Stu