Old Packard Bell Legend Synera. Won't boot from CD Rom or hard drive. Won't save bios settings if turned off

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Zachary Stinnett

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Jan 4, 2015
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So I have a very old 1996 Packard bell legend synera that refuses to boot from hard drives and dvd drives. It posts perfectly and I can access the bios. It detects the CD and hard drives fine. But I get a Disk I/0 error when trying to boot to the hard drive. It also refuses to boot from the CD drive and acts like it does not exist after detected it. I also noticed that the bios settings don't save after powering off. I have experimented and also found out that if I soft restart after saving with the cmos battery removed. It will not save the bios settings. It will save the settings with the battery installed if I soft reboot. But if I turn the power off than back on the settings are reset. I have played with all the jumpers using this guide and it makes no difference My mobo is a PB640: http://j12345.users1.50megs.com/menu/pb640/Pb640lay.asp.htm#jumpersI have tried several different Hard drives with the same problem. I only have one working dvd drive but I have tested it with another [strike][/strike]computer and it works fine. The original ACER one did come with the system, but does not read disk correctly. Here is a video demonstrating the problem: Yes its a adorable kitten X)[video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zTvWatxHek"][/video]
 
Solution
scuzzycard


You probably need a CR2032 lithium.
You can create the boot disk from this site: http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm
Windows 95 B-version, or 98 would be OK - although you should really stick with 95 if it has less than 32MB RAM installed.
You don't need to install the CD-ROM drivers, they...
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basroil

basroil

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Oct 19, 2013
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You need to replace the computer... A Raspberry Pi 3 is about 100x more powerful, and can be bought for ~35 bucks, and even the $5 Raspberry Zero is much faster!

If you really want to fix it, you'll need to replace the coin battery on the motherboard
 
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Zachary Stinnett

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Jan 4, 2015
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So I have replaced the cmos battery with several batteries non seam to work. Also to get this straight. it will not boot into any cd roms without drivers from dos and windows 95 which I need to install via floppy?
 
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basroil

basroil

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Oct 19, 2013
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1) why are you bothering anyway?
2) You don't need a driver for CDs to install 98
3) Try a linux live disk, if that doesn't work then your computer is completely gone.
 
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Zachary Stinnett

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Jan 4, 2015
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Because they are hard to come by. Think about in 20 years how old and vintage this computer could be. I also love old hardware

 
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Zachary Stinnett

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Jan 4, 2015
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I would never actually use this computer for everyday use. Its just cool to own something old and somewhat rare. Specifically the model and motherboard I own. People throw computers like this away who don't care and eventually they will disappear completely. I will update after trying to boot from a windows 98 floppy:)
 
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scuzzycard

scuzzycard

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Feb 26, 2016
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You probably need a CR2032 lithium.
You can create the boot disk from this site: http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm
Windows 95 B-version, or 98 would be OK - although you should really stick with 95 if it has less than 32MB RAM installed.
You don't need to install the CD-ROM drivers, they will automatically load when config.sys and autoexec.bat are processed when you boot from the disk. This is because a computer that old cannot boot from a CD-ROM drive.
 
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Solution
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Zachary Stinnett

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Jan 4, 2015
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4,510
Thanks. I did not even think of that. That would explain why it does not even attempt to use the cd drive while posting or finding a boot device:). Thanks I will post if I succeed:)

The specs of this computer is
32mb of ram.
2gb hdd LOL
a Intel Pentium socket 7
 
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Zachary Stinnett

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Jan 4, 2015
12
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4,510


I wrote windows 95 images to an old floppy drive and attempted to booted. And success!!! it reads and boots up into the installer with the floppy. The problem is that the 1 floppy I have has bad sectors and cannot be fully read from so I get read errors. I ordered a brand new pack of floppies. Everything booting wise is working correctly but the bios wont save my settings. I found a broken trace under the board and have repaired that but nothing changes. I Posted a video showing the issue in much more detail: [video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IhYWLSqNic"][/video]

 
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