OK, I did that, and it was no different from before.

I did mess around a bit more within the CMOS, and now
have gotten to a point where it loads really slow now
for some reason, then shows the Hard Drive as a D:
drive for some reason, and finally says that there's a
"HDD Controller Failure" and tells me to press F1.  I
do that, then it tells me

DRIVE NOT READY ERROR
INSERT BOOT DISKETTE IN A:
Press any key when ready.

I have a 5 1\4" floppy on this machine as well as a 3
1\2" floppy.  I've tried changing the CMOS but it
makes no difference.  How can I get this computer to
recognize that I want the B: as the 5 1/4" floppy and
the A: as a 3 1/2?  Obviously the A: was the 5 before
and it still is, no matter what's set in the CMOS, and
I can't make a boot disk with a 5 1/4" disk because of
my lack of 5 1/4" drive on this PC.

I'll keep trying to do what I can.  Thanks everyone
for your help! :)


Rob

--- Larry Fisk <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Rob;
> you need a "bootdisk"
> you can download one from www.bootdisk.com
> or make one from a win95 computer.
> Your 486 should automatically boot from the floppy
> when it finds no operating system on the hard drive.
> If not, you can change the boot order in bios to
> boot from the floppy.
> Dos and Microsoft Windows are copyrighted software
> so you will have a to buy a copy to install on your
> machine.
> I have seen  Dos 6.1 for as low as $20.
> If you want to do it on the cheap you can install
> Linux operating system
>  for free, but the learning curve to run Linux is
> fairly steep:-).
>
>      |
>   --|---------------------------
>      | ><>  Larry  Fisk   <><
>      |      Fisk Computers
>      |      Fruitvale, Idaho
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Rob Zirk" <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Monday, June 25, 2001 7:54 PM
> Subject: [PCBUILD] Format problem
>
>
> >What my question is, is there a download that I can
> > put on a 5 1/4 floppy disk which boots up the
> computer
> > and installs DOS, even with nothing on the system?
> > And is there something that would let my 5 1/4"
> drive
> > automatically recognize this "boot disk" and
> > automatically have it install DOS?
>
>                          PCBUILD's List Owners:
>                       Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]>
>                        Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]>


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail
http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/

                  Visit our website regularly for FAQs,
               articles, how-to's, tech tips and much more
                          http://freepctech.com