hey all,

i'm trying to diagnose a hardware problem.

i boot and see the splash screen, "hewlett packard" and then it says "Operating System not found".

i had pulled the battery before to use it for another box and replaced it. whatevers wrong it doesn't seem to recognize the atapi cdrom (or the hd). i have tried multiple times with a couple of bootable cds--gentoo install cd, knoppix. no go.

when i entered bios settings before, it gave me a list of null entries for primary/secondary master/slave drives. it couldn't detect them.

i know the cdrom works, i just used it to install something on another pc. theres a hard disk connected too, secondary master i think. the cables are ide, the properly oriented ones with the "tooth" in the middle so they are inserted correctly.

i know this isn't a linux problem exactly, but can anyone help? should i get a boot floppy and see if that can detect anything?

thanks

You could try a boot floppy. The other thing to check is to make sure that the jumper settings on the hard drive and CD-rom are correct for the way they are plugged into the cable. I believe most newer (i.e. circa 1998) will perform properly as long as the jumper is set to "cable select". Otherwise, you might have the drive jumpered as master and plugged into slave cable.

Besides that, I'd be worried that removing the battery somehow fried the IDE channel...

thnks for replying pljvaldez,

ok, disconnected hd.

put cdrom jumper on CS.

tried same cable plugged into IDE0, & IDE1 on mobo, both had same error.

tried new ide cable, no change.

is my mobo fried, or do i need a new bios?

(ide junk is not detected, but other stuff eg. ram detection, setup menu seem okay)

when i press a key, "Operating System not found" goes to the screen every time, and i still hear the floppy drive whir to check for a disk.

is there a good hardware / bios diagnostic or bios flashing boot disk available? i don't know anything about this..maybe i'll see if my bios can boot from usb?