Installing an LS-120 on an NEC Versa 6030H

Several coworkers share a laptop with special software to flash control panels for manufacturing equipment. A couple of months ago the A: drive died. A new drive was ordered, and believe it or not, a LS-120 arrived. The drive bay reads the CD just fine. However, it is now not recognizing the the LS drive. It will list it as an A: drive, but the system locks when trying to access the drive. The LS can with a BIOS upgrade, but I can't boot from floppy to get it to work. Nor have the drivers been installed since it won't read the floppies they came on. I put all of this info on a CD, switched the CDRom to Master and booted. It still booted into Win. Am I missing something? ANy help would be great. Thanks...
rjohnson

1. RE: Installing an LS-120 on an NEC Versa 6030H
DJ Net2Infinity Aug-08-02 02:00 PM
In response to message 0

What burning program are you using, and did you use floppy emulation and make it bootable.

2. RE: Installing an LS-120 on an NEC Versa 6030H
lbyard Aug-08-02 03:59 PM
In response to message 0

>Am I missing something?
The CD that came with the MiniDock?
Larry

3. RE: Installing an LS-120 on an NEC Versa 6030H
Twinhead Aug-08-02 06:32 PM
In response to message 0

01: Have you made a bootable CD with this data?
02: Are there any drivers on that CD-Rom disk to actually read the datasession of the booted CD-ROM?
03: Is the CMOS changed to allow the Laptop to boot from CD-ROM instead of Hard drive or floppy?

01 Obviously, otherwise booting from a CD-ROM is not possible
02 A bootable CD is splitted into 2 sessions! 1: The boot loader who becomes a substitute drive A, where the real A turns onto B.
2: The data session with all of the data recorded by you and cannot be accessed without special drivers.
03 Setting it to "master"? Is that your way of telling that it is the first device the BIOS is attempting to boot from, or is it like the IDE positioning?
Victor.
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4. RE: Installing an LS-120 on an NEC Versa 6030H
belzer88 Aug-09-02 05:09 PM
In response to message 3

I am going to try to answer all of the questions involved. Yes, I did nurn the disk as a bootable CD. I have yet to try to burn this again, but I might find time early next week. The CD ROM I am using is the one that is swappable with the floppy drive in the front bay of the laptop. Vic, as to ?#2, I can't answer that question offhand. I will try to get the answer. And finally, on the back of the CD ROM is a swith that allows Master/Slave. I believe this acts more like a BIOS change rather than IDE positioning. However, I will reconfirm the current BIOS settings and re-burn the CD and see what happens.
Thanks alot for all of you taking time to consider my problem. It is much appreciated.
rjj

5. RE: Installing an LS-120 on an NEC Versa 6030H
Twinhead Aug-10-02 05:20 AM
In response to message 4

LAST EDITED ON Aug-10-02 AT 05:28 AM (EDT)

NO!!
That Master / Slave switch is like a Master / Slave jumper on a Desktop drive.
It does not change anything in CMOS, but in Rank of drives.
Your harddrive is allways a Master.
Setting the CD-Rom drive as a Master would lock your system during POST when they are connected to the same cable.
Leave that one to SLAVE if lockup occours.
You are running something like Windows?
That meight be the problem.
Most commonly, if you want to burn a bootable CD-ROM it asks for a bootable floppy disk. (Do NOT use an already existing bootable image on your harddrive since it meight NOT contain the drivers for CD-ROM!).
Can that floppy disk access a CD-ROM drive in a Desktop PC when you start from it? (MUST be, otherwise NOT OK)
Also the bootable floppy disk should recognise FAT-32 drive partitions! Otherwise you cannot store anything from the CD on your laptop's harddrive.
There should be some drivers on it like mscdex.exe and ***cd.sys
This should also be activated in Autoexec.bat and config.sys
If no success at all, mail to victorl1@home.nl
I will sent you an image of a generic bootable floppy disk with access to ~90% of the existing CD-ROM drives.
The accompanying program will put it on a floppy disk, so you can use that disk instead.
If it is a special system disk with 80 Kb free space on it, sent me the autoexec.bat and config.sys of that disk.
I will modefy them and accompany the drivers for it.
Copy them back tot hat disk and you can use that to make a bootable CD with acces to the datasession. (Where the BIOS upgrade and LS-120 drivers should be stored)
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