Dear Friends,

One of my hobbies/ministries is to fix older systems and donate them to kids or older students who may not be able to afford a computer otherwise. The one I'm working on now is a Packard Bell (aaarghhh!) PII 233, model 96-23 with the 760 motherboard. I found the manual (Thanks to Ray's Packard Bell site) and reflashed the bios as well.

It was giving me a "system board resource conflict" error, but I found that conflict at Serial port 2. I now can boot to A:, (during which I get the half page report that there is no FAT detected on the hard drive OR it has third party boot software OR possibly a virus present) and although the Ramdrive files show as loaded to C, the setup (BIOS) reports no drives installed, (no CD, and even after swapping HD's, no hard drive, either) even with a new cable, and manually configured extended CHS. If I attempt to run fdisk, I get "no fixed disks present".

I strongly suspect that the motherboard had failed (isn't the drive detection through the north bridge?)but would ask your opinions before I give up and part this one out.

Thanks for your replies, and God bless!

Wayne Wright

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