I'm about out of ideas without being there to poke at it.
First, with only a working disk on the system, try booting using a Knoppix disk and see whether you can read the new hard drive. If you cannot, this is a bad suggestion. (However, I have been able to boot every Intel 386 and compatibles system with Knoppix for at least three years, so this procedure has worked for me.)
Okay, I found where one can download Knoppix from. Any idea on how big it is, as I am currently working with very limited space, and I'm not sure how much hard drive space it will want to use even if I can tell it to save the file directly from the web to CD?
Second, after changing to the troublesome disk (and making sure every jumper is the same, etc), try booting using the same Knoppix disk and see whether you can read the troublesome hard drive.
If you can can read the troublesome disk, then you can copy the info. If not, you have a hardware problem and you will have to spend a fortune to get the data, and you may not get it ...
If you cannot boot off of a CD directly, try the `Smart Boot Manager' (SBM). Put that program on a floppy
This is a recent Dell machine.
However, I did order the "floppy drive kit" because I need to be able to access floppies. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get it to work, either.
and use it first, then try the CD. My copy of sbm is quite old; I don't think it has been updated. The program works great with old Pentium 100s that I have used for testing (i.e. 100 MHz Pentiums; I do not know whether it works with 486s).
--Ronn! :)
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