Xybernaut MA-IV Windows Install

[DECtechGuy]

Hi All,

Got one of these fantastically geeky things recently (maybe some of you saw it) and it has two issues I'm working through.

Battery isn't working, big surprise. It's a Molicel ME202BB. I've got a replacement battery coming that seems to have the same pinout, voltage, and form factor, but a new variant: Molicel ME202EK. We'll see if it works, but I'm open to comments on these batteries.

What I really need some ideas and help on is the hard drive, which is dead. I've got a 32GB Transcend PSD330, 44-pin IDE SSD on the way, which seemed to be the best solution at the time. I realize there will be some formatting that needs to be done to get Win 98 installed, considering its file system size limitations and I also have read there still might be some run-of-the-mill 90s Pentium system caveats to discover once I get the drive plugged in, but we'll see.

I'm still stuck wondering how to get Win 98 on to the drive. I'm thinking I could try to get maybe FreeDOS or something to boot off of a CF card and then install Win 98 off of a partition if the drive can be read? Or maybe somehow use a VM to directly install Win 98 on to the Transcend drive?

 

[GiGaBiTe]

You may have problems getting your SSD to work. The first obstacle is if the BIOS on the machine supports such large hard drives. The second is if the BIOS supports LBA devices.

Since you don't have a floppy drive, you'll want to format the new drive using the Windows 98 startup disk and copy the bare minimum system files on another computer and transfer the drive back to this device. I wouldn't recommend FreeDOS, because it's not 100% MS-DOS compatible and may cause problems. I also wouldn't recommend any version of MS-DOS due to lacking FAT32 file system support. The Windows 98 startup disk is your best bet.

You can install Windows 98 by just copying the files to the hard drive. I usually format the C:\ drive and make the folder structure C:\Windows\Options\Win98 and then copy all of the files from the Win98 directory to said directory on the hard drive and run setup from the hard drive. This has the additional benefit of never requiring the CD again, Windows will automatically look for files it needs from the on disk install, and will prompt much less frequently for files it wants.

Whenever you run the Windows 98 installer, you'll need to make sure the directory it installs Windows in is Windows. Since the directory already exists, it will try to make a folder called Windows.000, just delete the last four characters. When it gives you a warning about overwriting files, just say yes.

 

[DECtechGuy]

Thanks for idea, I kept thinking I had to create a pocket universe to do this and couldn't come down from that.

We'll just have to see about the SSD. I was running into a lot of conceptual obstacles involving CF cards and adapters and their temperamental nature while researching how to replace the dead hard drive, not to mention the 44-pin IDE aspect of all this. This Transcend PSD330 came up and thought it'd hopefully have the best chance of working.

I've already tried to see if the Xybernaut would boot off of a CF card running FreeDOS, but based on your recommendation, I'll see if it'll like the real thing. Granted I was using a 512MB CF card, which I've also read may make certain BIOSes unhappy. Already have some 64MB industrial CF cards ordered based on my reading online. The Xybernaut BIOS would seemingly hang while booting or entering setup with the CF card in my PCMIA adapter. Great start!

 

[GiGaBiTe]

CF cards are purely IDE devices with a different connector, the CF adapters are entirely passive.

If you're having issues with the machine working with them, either the machine doesn't do LBA properly, or you're trying to use a card too large. A machine around that vintage is likely to have one of several hard drive size limitations, I would guess the ~8.4 GB limit.

The system hanging could mean that the CF card is too large and the BIOS doesn't have proper bounds checks on the drive geometry. There are more than a few BIOSes that will have stack smashing from the drive geometry numbers exceeding their range limits and overwriting things that they shouldn't, causing a crash or hang.

The largest card I'd recommend is 4 GB, possibly 8 GB.

 

[DECtechGuy]

Still waiting on the IDE SSD, which will hopefully work, but an industrial CF card with adapter will be next in line if it doesn't.

I have since gotten the replacement battery, which charged, but hasn't allowed the Xybernaut to power on. While the pinout and voltage of the ME202EK is the same as the ME202BB, perhaps the Xybernaut is expecting the SMBus to report the battery as being a ME202BB? Not sure if it needs some "wake up" or if it's a fake! May start looking into having the original rebuilt or check with my local BatteriesPlus.