help with ms dos computer

[jmcka13]

hi
i have an ms dos computer from 1996 or 1997 and its running some rare software on it. but recently the program whitch automaticly starts when the comp is started just gets to a screen that says SERVICE recommended and then the keyboard will stop working.
any suggestions

also i tried the hard drive in a win 95 computer and it worked fine so why not in the original.

 

[Harvey]

Win 95 runs on top of MS-DOS and will boot to a DOS prompt. Did the Win 95 machine actually boot to DOS, or did you just connect it as a slave? If it boots to DOS, it suggests that your motherboard has failed.

Did you try clearing/resetting the CMOS?

Did you try booting to a bootable floppy?

 

[Bubbaleone]

Have you tried running scandisk at boot to repair any file system errors?

 

[jmcka13]

i booted of the actual ms dos hard drive
also how do i run scandisk

 

[jmcka13]

here is a video of it i jut uploaded to you tube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T5eXtasFnE&feature=youtu.be

 

[Billb2]

If the only "trouble shooting" you can do is to post error messages on forums, you should be taking it in and having a tech fix it.

 

[jmcka13]

i have been do lots of things to try and fix this computer
such as replacing psu cleaning and changing fans
and am yet to do the scandisk program that somone metion before

also if i were to take an ms dos computer from 1996 into a computer shop with some german wheel alingment program that was desinged in 1993 installed on it they would not no what to do

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Have you tried booting it with only the keyboard and monitor connected? Maybe that's the intended behavior when the attached equipment fails.

 

[Bubbaleone]

i have been do lots of things to try and fix this computer
such as replacing psu cleaning and changing fans
and am yet to do the scandisk program that somone metion before

also if i were to take an ms dos computer from 1996 into a computer shop with some german wheel alingment program that was desinged in 1993 installed on it they would not no what to do

In answer to your question: Microsoft DOS scandisk command


.

 

[SonicIce]

there seems to be an issue with that rare software. "Machine is in demo mode". do you have the original diskette's or whatever it came on so you could reinstall the software?

 

[lakedude]

Stab in the dark here.

I looks to me like the computer part of the system is fine. It boots up and does all the normal computer stuff. The problem seems to be with whatever hardware that system talks to or the communication to said equipment.

Kinda like if my flatbed scanner gets unplugged and then I try to scan something. It will say "no scanner found" or some such.

 

[lakedude]

Ohhh, I just noticed that during the boot process the BIOS is crabbing about a dead battery. You most likely lost all your settings due to a dead battery.

Replace the watch battery looking thing on you motherboard and figure out what your BIOS settings need to be.

BIOS is all easy and automatic these days but back in the DOS days you had to know what you were doing. There might be some port settings like word length, stop bits, parity etc. I really have no idea but it is likely some setting got messed up when the bios battery went dead.

 

[jmcka13]

i dont think its the battery on the motherboard as it has been missing since like 2008 and
the only reason it has those demo warnings come up at 1st is because i had the really important board that lets the computer communicate with some measuring tools unpluged when i made this video. now that i pluged it all back in it just goes directly to service recommended then the keyboard dies

 

[jmcka13]

also i will have to check those bios menus out.

 

[Matt1970]

Scandisk back in the DOS days only checks for bad sectors. Excuse me if I give a bad command here but it has been over 15 years since I did this. Right when your computer says starting MSDOS, tap the F5 key and that should get you to a command prompt. Once at the command prompt you can stop that program from running by editing the autoexec.bat and/or the config.sys files and add REM before the command lines that start that program. Make sure there is a space after REM. I am assuming there is also Windows installed on that machine? If so, run Windows by typing WIN at the commdn prompt and see if that program will run from within Windows.

 

[jmcka13]

no there is no windows installed on the computer it just ms dos 6.22 with one single program on there.

also i have noticed when you press f8 as dos starts and it will ask you to confirm each command and i found some commands that might be the problem


rem begin beissbarth area y/n
rem y/n
rem please remove smartdrv! y/n
rem otherwise the wheel alignment program y/n
rem will display errors on the screen in the y/n
rem dosox of windows y/n
rem y/n

they come up near the end of the list of commands and thats the exact same way there written on the comp screen

also i went into the setup menu as i remember seing smartdrive capability on there but it was off allready
any ideas of how to fix

 

[Harvey]

SMARTDRV.SYS is a disk caching program that was part of DOS 4.01 through 6.22 and Windows 3.x. I would suspect you have a file, CONFIG.SYS in the root directory ( C: ) of your drive that includes a line:

DEVICE=C: \DOS\SMARTDRV.SYS.

To test whether this is the problem, you can temporarily disable CONFIG.SYS by renaming it with a different extension, for example, CONFIG.REF.

Don't delete the file because there are probably other commands the machine calls at startup. For example, here is the CONFIG.SYS file from one of my old DOS machines (with Win.311):

DEVICE=C: \WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C: \WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE ON
DEVICE=C: \DOS\ANSI.SYS
DEVICE=C: \DOS_UTIL\SYSTEM\CDROM.SYS /D :MSCD001
SHELL=WINDOWS\COMMAND.COM/E:384/P
BUFFERS=40
FILES=40
DOS=HIGH,UMB

Copy the renamed file to a new CONFIG.SYS, make sure it is in the root directory, and edit it to remove the line that looks like this:

DEVICE=C: \DOS\HIMEM.SYS (may include other paramters)

If you have questions, copy the file, and post it, here, and we can try to help you determine if there are other DOS config commands that may cause you problems.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

SMARTDRV.SYS is a disk caching program that was part of DOS 4.01 through 6.22 and Windows 3.x. I would suspect you have a file, CONFIG.SYS in the root directory (C of your drive that includes a line:

DEVICE=C:\DOS\SMARTDRV.SYS.

To test whether this is the problem, you can temporarily disable CONFIG.SYS by renaming it with a different extension, for example, CONFIG.REF.

Don't delete the file because there are probably other commands the machine calls at startup. For example, here is the CONFIG.SYS file from one of my old DOS machines (with Win.311):

DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE ON
DEVICE=C:\DOS\ANSI.SYS
DEVICE=C:\DOS_UTIL\SYSTEM\CDROM.SYS /D:MSCD001
SHELL=WINDOWS\COMMAND.COM/E:384/P
BUFFERS=40
FILES=40
DOS=HIGH,UMB

Copy the renamed file to a new CONFIG.SYS, make sure it is in the root directory, and edit it to remove the line that looks like this:

DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS (may include other paramters)

If you have questions, copy the file, and post it, here, and we can try to help you determine if there are other DOS config commands that may cause you problems.

fixed

 

[Harvey]

fixed

Thanks. I noticed that I forgot to defeat smilies when I got back to the thread and fixed it with spaces, but yours is better.

 

[Cr0nJ0b]

Well, I'm with most everyone here. I would start with:

1) Memtest. It will run DOS mode, but you will need some way to load it. Either floppy or HDD.

2) Scandisk the drive -- You might google for some DOS tools to low level scan an IDE HDD.

3) Likely it's not the PSU.

4) look over the Motherboard for blown capacitors.

5) Swap the slot that your card is sitting in.

6) source a replacement motherboard and processor of the same or similar year. I had a bunch of these that I just threw out....but I'm sure they still exist somewhere.

Possible issues are many, but I would guess the most likely are.

1) Memory failure
2) HDD failure
3) Cable/connector failure
4) motherboard ISA bus failure
5) ISA card failure
6) Tool interconnect failure -- I think you said that it connected to a special tool. Could that IO board in that have failed?

cheers

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Thanks. I noticed that I forgot to defeat smilies when I got back to the thread and fixed it with spaces, but yours is better.

There is an checkbox under the Advanced/Enhanced/Full Editor to "Disable smilies in text".