Ibm ps/2 55sx

I decided to restore my old IBM Personal System/2 (55SX).


It has an 80mb Hard Drive which is working, however I can't seem to work out how to boot from the C: Drive. It will boot from floppy ok and I can instal DOS onto the hard disk...and even Windows, but without a floppy it will always boot into Basic, which I presume is ROM based.

As you can see from the screen it boots to IBM Basic.

There are no errors according to the Reference Disk although I did have to replace the DALLAS chip, which works just fine - if anyone needs one they are here:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/200988015497

Any ideas?

Run "fdisk /mbr" to make sure there's a good master boot record on the hard drive.

Also, make sure that the active partition is set on drive C.

I forgot about fdisk /mbr - will try that tomorrow. Partition is active. thanks for the suggestions.

fdisk /mbr did't work sadly.

The odd thing is, there does not seem to be an option on the reference disk to change the boot order. You can change the boot order of the Floppies, but the hard disk controller is completely seperate.

Did you try "SYS C:"?

Thanks for the suggestion; The program runs and transfers the system, but on boot up still goes into IBM Basic.
Also tried format c: /s
and fdisk mbr
I also deleted the primary partition and re-created it, making it active, reloading DOS 6.22 afterwards. All went well, but still boots back into IBM basic

I cant help feel that it is something to do with the system Bios, but I cant work out how to change this, there is just not enough setting available from the reference disk.

Have something else to try, there is a secret menu on the reference disk (control + A) that says prepare fixed disk for operating system.
it say it will take 20 mins to 6 hours.
fingers crossed

You know, booting from a floppy is not so bad and you can configure the floppy to transfer full control and all functions to the HD so the system will function normally, without any floppy disk in the drive and as if it had actually booted from the HD originally.

It might come to that...but it is the challenge If this doesn't work I am out of ideas.... I hate knowing that something should work in a certain way but doesn't.
Years and years ago I used to have a compag LTE/286 laptop and always had to boot from the floppy with that for some reason too. Its interesting relearining what was forgotten though.

It's been years since I touched the 55sx I used to have but I seem to recall there was no magic to the installation of DOS, let alone AIX 1.3.
Run the formatter from the reference disk, install DOS and on reset it booted.

nope still booting to IBM Basic!

One positive from the low level format is the test program reports there are no bad sectors on the hard disk.

So weird. IF it's actually installing then your filesystem and disk are in order. I guess you can try fdisk /mbr or sys C: again for good measure but it should be ready to go once DOS is in.

By chance, what version of DOS are you installing and where did you find the disks? It's unlikely, but if it's something weird and OEM (not referring to PC-DOS or OS/2, which I would be amazed if neither worked out of the box) it might be setting the MBR up differently than the IBM/typical PC clone standard though I've never heard of that happening.

I bought Dos 6.22 and Windows for Workgroups from PC world years ago, still have the manuals and even the box for windows 3.11. I took copies of the originals and they have been used on a few PC's over the years. The DOS disks in particular.

Will try fdisk /mbr and sys c: again, but I have my doubts, i think there is something missing - some system setting that should be changed to make the C: drive the primary boot device. But I cant find it.

Tonewheeldude said:

I bought Dos 6.22 and Windows for Workgroups from PC world years ago, still have the manuals and even the box for windows 3.11. I took copies of the originals and they have been used on a few PC's over the years. The DOS disks in particular.

Will try fdisk /mbr and sys c: again, but I have my doubts, i think there is something missing - some system setting that should be changed to make the C: drive the primary boot device. But I cant find it.

Click to expand...

I picked up an old 55SX and having the same issues. I've tried both fdisk /mbr and sys c: with no luck. I'm trying to install OS/2 Warp 3, as an alternative is there any way to launch Warp 3 from a floppy?

Did you run the Reference Disk?

A PS/2 Model 55SX is not capable of running OS/2 Warp without significant upgrades. With enough RAM and disk space it could run OS/2 2.x but would be very slow.

vwestlife said:

Did you run the Reference Disk?

A PS/2 Model 55SX is not capable of running OS/2 Warp without significant upgrades. With enough RAM and disk space it could run OS/2 2.x but would be very slow.

Click to expand...

Yes I run the reference disk, actually I've done it multiple times. I've also tried with just MS-DOS 6.22 and still won't boot from the hard drive.

It sounds like it might be time to be suspicious of the hard drive. My PS2/55SX boots fine from the hard drive and I know of no other settings to look at. However, I have an IBM PS2/L40SX laptop that had this very problem. The original hard drive tested OK and I could get it to boot on another machine, but it would NOT boot in the PS2 laptop. I replaced the drive with another old laptop hard drive I had and it boots fine from that.

Yea, that's what I was suspecting. Thanks!

Did a google search on the same problem and this came up. Not looking to low level the ESDI in my recently acquired 55SX (bought to test ESDI hard drives for a customer - I recently got to test over 500 hard drives over 2 weeks, and still have more to test).

Anyways - OS is installed on the drive, tried the usual sys c: and fdisk /mbr, and ensured the primary partition is active, but still a no go. I'm going to try without the ESDI drive (have an ARCO 1075 IDE controller and a Maxtor 340MB drive).

And... that ended up being a no go. I can neither boot from the ESDI drive nor the IDE drive, although both drives are properly functioning. I have another PS/2 board I can play with, so I can try that as well.

**UPDATE**

I solved my own problem. Thanks to another thread that google gave me, http://www.calguns.net/calgunforum/archive/index.php/t-797022.html, I solved the problem.

You need to boot to DOS and run debug. Then run the following (first character is an o, not a zero).

o 70 13
o 71 00

Then type q to quit. Initially, the machine wouldn't do squat. Then I removed both my ARCO IDE card and the internal hard drive, and was able to run automatic configuration, then rebooted, then had to set the date/time. Turned off the machine, connected the ESDI drive, automatic config again. And viola, it booted from the hard drive! Now to try this with the ARCO card.