This system/board pre-dates most of the PB documentation that's available online (eg. http://uktsupport.co.uk/pb/pbidx.htm ), there's minimal info on the PB400 motherboard, but other than that it has a single IDE port that can be configured to primary or secondary.

Not a lot to go on, but a couple of things I'd check in this situation:
- is the CD-ROM drive known good? Does it work correctly in other systems? (eg, that SS7 build)
- I'm assuming you're running with the HDD primary and CD-ROM secondary on the single IDE interface. Is that assumption correct?
- if so, what happens if you remove the HDD and boot DOS on a floppy? Does the CD show same behaviour or does it keep working?
- you say "an OS" - which OS(s) exactly? Is there disk caching software installed?

It wouldn't surprise me if a controller/BIOS this old doesn't support ATAPI and/or secondary drives propoerly. In that case you need a second controller, i.e. one on a sound card - which would probably have been how PB originally did it (probably involving an Aztech sound card)

which model cdroms are you trying ?

Yes! The CDROM drives have tested good in both the SS7 and P3 builds. I am running it in as a slave on the same IDE interface with the HDD as master. I haven’t attempted to use the drive without the HDD, as I’m trying to get files copied over. I’ve tried both Windows 3.11 and Windows 95, both of which install if I let the computer ‘take a break’ e.g. go straight to installing then letting the computer be off for a bit. The disks I’m using are HP CD-Rs, written from my Windows 11 PC via external USB DVD-ROM drive through CDBurnerXP at 4x speeds.

I should also note that I have an ISA I/O card from a non-functional 486 build lying around, should I give that a shot? I’m not familiar with how to load drivers in DOS, however.

SufferWell1396 wrote on 2025-02-01, 20:09:

Yes! The CDROM drives have tested good in both the SS7 and P3 builds.

OK, so we don't need to worry about the drives themselves. Was that with the same CD-Rs you are referring to below?

I am running it in as a slave on the same IDE interface with the HDD as master. I haven’t attempted to use the drive without the HDD, as I’m trying to get files copied over. I’ve tried both Windows 3.11 and Windows 95, both of which install if I let the computer ‘take a break’ e.g. go straight to installing then letting the computer be off for a bit. The disks I’m using are HP CD-Rs, written from my Windows 11 PC via external USB DVD-ROM drive through CDBurnerXP at 4x speeds.

Hmm, that means three uncertainties:
- the CDs
- the software/drivers being installed
- the controller

It would be good to reduce that list. If you are installing Win3.11 it means you already have a working DOS 6.22 install. I'd suggest doing some tests with that to narrow it down.

SufferWell1396 wrote on 2025-02-01, 20:11:

I should also note that I have an ISA I/O card from a non-functional 486 build lying around, should I give that a shot? I’m not familiar with how to load drivers in DOS, however.

If it's IDE you can use exactly the same ones you're using now. So:

a) in CONFIG.SYS you need a driver (such as OAKCDROM.SYS or VIDE-CDD.SYS) which you load with a line like this:

DEVICE=C:\DOS\OAKCDROM.SYS /D:BANANA01

b) in AUTOEXEC.BAT you need an executable you load like this:

C:\DOS\MSCDEX.EXE /D:BANANA01 /L:F

The 'BANANA01' is completely arbitrary, the only requirement is that you use the same identifier in CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT. /L:F assigns the drive letter F. This will work assuming you don't already have a hard drive using that letter in DOS and the LASTDRIVE variable in CONFIG.SYS is set to F or higher.

Using the I/O card would be a good option if you have good documentation for it, as you can't disable serial and parallel ports on the motherboard, so you need to be able to do that on the card. Do you have a pic or a positive identification of it?

That was my thought, and also why I was so confused! It was. They were read fine by Windows 98 on both machines.

The CD's are read! Using the dir command on R, which is my optical drive letter, lists the content on the disks. I can cd into folders, and when I had Windows 3.11 installed it could also see the files, although it failed to copy them.

I have it configured using OAKCDROM.SYS. I don't have any documentation for the IO card in question, but that's a great point! Wouldn't want IRQ conflicts with the multiple ports. This is the card that I have handy, if that's of any help.

Also, could any of this point to a weak PSU? It being a Packard Bell and that PSU being the factory unit, leads me to believe that it may be a tad weak. To test this theory I unplugged the 5.25 inch FDD in order to give the PSU a bit more breathing room, but this unfortunately netted the same results as before - can see the files, can't copy them. Eventually the CD drive gives out all the same.

That is a DFI MIO-500. jumpers here: https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/s/dfi-mio-500

Thanks for the help! With that link, I was able to set the jumpers accordingly, disabling the onboard serial and parallel ports. That said, I moved the Packard Bell's onboard IDE to secondary (using this link http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/pb/mb/400.htm) and set the DFI MIO-500's onboard floppy to disabled, and set the IDE as enabled on Hard drive port address 1F0-1F7h. The drive is currently visible to the BIOS as I don't receive an error upon boot, and when booting from an MS-DOS 6.22 floppy it does recognize that the drive is present, but FDISK cannot set the partition as active, only listing that it does indeed see a physical drive and nothing more. Also, the CD-ROM drive is no longer detected. Is it an incorrect setting? I'm not sure what would cause this kind of behavior.

SufferWell1396 wrote on 2025-02-02, 04:31:

Thanks for the help! With that link, I was able to set the jumpers accordingly, disabling the onboard serial and parallel ports. That said, I moved the Packard Bell's onboard IDE to secondary (using this link http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/pb/mb/400.htm) and set the DFI MIO-500's onboard floppy to disabled, and set the IDE as enabled on Hard drive port address 1F0-1F7h. The drive is currently visible to the BIOS as I don't receive an error upon boot, and when booting from an MS-DOS 6.22 floppy it does recognize that the drive is present, but FDISK cannot set the partition as active, only listing that it does indeed see a physical drive and nothing more. Also, the CD-ROM drive is no longer detected. Is it an incorrect setting? I'm not sure what would cause this kind of behavior.

Double-check: have you changed the jumper on the CD-Rom from slave to Master?

Apart from that, on the motherboard J24 should select "IDE1" vs "IDE2", but it's not clear exactly what it's setting (Base I/O only? IRQ only? both?). The card also only has a setting for base I/O, not IRQ. I'm slightly concerned that they might have swapped base I/O, but both are still trying to use IRQ14.

Maybe swap it the other way round again, set the motherboard to primary and the MIO-500 to 170h-177h. Still no guarantee that they will play nice then, but it's worth a try and will work if one is brain-dead (IRQ hardwired) and the other isn't.

Do you happen to have any ISA sound cards with IDE connectors? They are invariably designed to run as secondary controller and should play nice next to the onboard IDE.

dionb wrote on 2025-02-02, 12:11:

Apart from that, on the motherboard J24 should select "IDE1" vs "IDE2", but it's not clear exactly what it's setting (Base I/O only? IRQ only? both?). The card also only has a setting for base I/O, not IRQ. I'm slightly concerned that they might have swapped base I/O, but both are still trying to use IRQ14.

Maybe JP17 on the ISA card sets it's HD controller IRQ ?
from manual "When using a separate hard disk controller card, pins 2-3 of jumper JP17 should be capped."

Just tested a few things! I do still have the CD-ROM on the same channel as the HDD, in a master/slave config. I will be testing it out on the built in IDE channel tonight on its own. That said, setting the motherboard to primary and changing the settings on the MIO resulted in a fixed disk error, regardless of base I/O or secondary setting. In placing the motherboards IDE channel to secondary and setting the base I/O to default on the MIO card, it does boot, but again exhibits the same signs as before - it can see the drive but that’s about it. As for the secondary channel being active, that jumper setting, it didn’t seem to make a difference - it booted up and recognized the hard drive existing regardless. What info can this give us?

I have an update! I've managed to get the card working and install Windows 3.11. I tried setting the motherboards onboard IDE channel as the master and removed the card, replacing the IDE cable. Same thing as before, couldn't install Windows. Cleaned the ISA contacts on the MIO and reinstalled it, using the jumper setting that allows a secondary IDE channel and set to the hard drive port address 1F0-1F7h. The HDD and CD-ROM were properly recognized and the installation of Windows 3.11 was successful! A few things of note:

The CD-ROM slowdown is still happening, the end of the installation was a crawl.
To attempt to mitigate this, I put the CD-ROM as a master and plugged it into the motherboards IDE header - this resulted in a Fixed Disk error on startup, even with the jumper set on the MIO to allow secondary IDE channels. Selecting the different port address just cause the computer to hang. So apparently, the onboard IDE channel is dead if I use the MIO.

I'm not sure where to go from here or what else there is to check. I've tried multiple IDE cables, now different IDE controllers, and multiple drives. I'm at a loss. Is there anything you can recommend?

Maybe I'm reading you incorrectly but it still sounds like you are working with HDD and CD-Rom as master+slave on the same IDE channel in all cases. The whole idea of the separate controller was to be able to use both as master, each on a separate IDE channel, to rule out issues with slave drives. Have you managed to get this working yet? (or at least: booting and behaving the same as with slave drive) Just moving HDD and CD-Rom to a different controller together doesn't help diagnose much with regards to the CD-Rom.

Also, you're talking about installing Windows 3.11, but that's not an OS as such, just a (rather elaborate) shell on top of DOS - so if you're installing Win3.11 you already have a working DOS install. I'm still curious what the behaviour is of the CD-Rom drive in DOS itself in anything other than the Win3.11 installation, to rule out Windows driver issues.

I still suspect there may be ATAPI support issues, either in the controller(s) or come to think of it in the very old HDD (which needs to play nice with the other device on the same cable), but it's hard to be sure until we can positively rule things out.

Oh, yes! I should have been more clear. I did set the CD-ROM drive to master on the motherboards built in IDE controller with the HDD on the MIO card, also as master. No matter what I tried, I would get a Fixed Disk error upon boot (which, in hindsight, is not a Disk Controller error). I tried setting the built in IDE as secondary, I set the jumper on the MIO card as secondary, but the fixed disk error persists.

That only leads me to believe that perhaps I should run the CD-ROM off the MIO card, with the hard drive attached to the built in IDE controller. Perhaps the BIOS is looking for the hard drive on the built in controller? I’ll have to give that a test tonight.

Oh absolutely, Win3.11 is just a shell, but I bring that up as a way of showing that I can copy files… for a little while. I’ve yet to do a successful file transfer from CD using either Windows or DOS - xcopy of a directory fails, and Windows will say it’s copying files, but those files just end up being 0 bytes.

oh this poor Packard Bell is cursed, I swear. I purchased an SD to IDE adapter! formatting in FAT16 for 1.98GB (it's a 2gb SD card) and it's read by the system! but that's it. read using dir lists all files, but setups cannot start, exe's cannot start nothing. I tried OnTrack, but I don't have a Linux install for easy file transfers. EZDrive wouldn't copy over to any of my drives, so I can't get it written to a floppy. The entire capacity of the drive is detected when connected to the MIO card, and it can read, but not run anything. I'm so confused, this thing is so cursed, but I don't want to give up. What could possibly be causing this? AOMEI Partition Manager is what I used to format the drive as FAT16. Formatting doesn't work as it says the device is not ready. Has anyone experienced this?

2GB? I think you're hitting storage size limits. Up to 1994, 528MB tended to be the limit. DOS can work with bigger partitions, so it reads the partition table which says you have a 1.98GB partition, but it can't read actual sectors over the 528MB limit, which is why stuff is failing to read and formatting doesn't work.

If I'm right here, replacing the 2GB SD with max 512MB card (although given 1000 vs 1024 rounding errors, 256MB would be a safer bet) would solve this.

I've got a very similar Packard Bell system and I need to run XT-IDE to use a modern storage device like the SD to IDE adapters.

And I think you might have been onto something when you were wondering about the PSU. The major fault I had in mine was leaking caps inside the PSU. I would suggest you open it up and give them an inspection. BUT, if you don't know anything about working on PSUs, you need to be very careful. They can be hazardous to your health, so you need to do some research first.

I've ordered some new 512meg SD cards and will report back!

That's what I'm thinking, and those things have a tendency to be dangerous. I have a known good working AT PSU on my K6 system, I think I'm going to harvest that for a few test runs tonight. These issues are just so damn sporadic and bizarre. I've only seen this level of strangeness coming from a PSU that is on its last legs.

And that was it, it was the PSU. Hooked up my known working one out of my K6 build and it flew right off. Was able to get Ezdrive installed, 2GB flash is working perfectly. I'm either going to rebuild the original PSU or source another AT supply. Regardless, wonky PSU's are always the answer for things that don't make sense. Thanks for all the help! Now to get Windows 95 installed!