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SSD for a Fusion 640t

Madmaxx57

Plastic
Joined
Jul 15, 2020
I"m trying to change to a ssd in my Qt250 Fusion. I have a formatted a 2Gb ssd. I formatted it in fat16. I cant get the bios to see it. I have changed the bios to auto detect and still nothing. I tried to put in user parameters but the cylinders stop at 1024. I'm thinking of partitioning the ssd to the 1024mb and see what happens. After I get the bios to read it..then I will be onto the cloning procedure. The current drive is a 2.1gb hdd. Machine is working fine and bios sees this drive properly.. I did a search but didnt get any specifics on the bios ?Any ideas? Any help is appreciated. Thanks!
 
I got it off ebay. SiliconDrive is the name. It has the IDE adapter attached to it. I just tried to partition the drive smaller 528mb as that size drive is in the bios..no luck. I'm unable to set the drive to C. I currently have it set to B. But I would think the bios would see it regardless?I'm thinking about what it was telling me, it says non system disc...I will try to boot from floppy now and see? thanks for the reply!
 
IT stuff and SSDs with machine tools

With very high probability your problem is related to drive file formats,
especifically drive type descriptors in the boot sector loader.

Back in the day removable drives had specific codes and max sizes and boot descriptors.
Std windows tools cannot see or change them, some very few specialist windowz sw can.

Freeware linux based utilities will fix this in 5 minutes.

You download the linux utility onto a usb memory stick, then boot from the usb, and with a simple text/graphical interface you assign the file format on the ssd to something friendly, and make the ssb boot loader say bootable with a suitable partition system and bootloader.

Offhand I don´t remember the name of the linux utility I last used.
With complex cf/solid state drives on hp mini desktops.

Just change the drive type descriptor, then make the partition bootable and active, voila.

Very long story how and why and what drive systems / boot sector loaders / etc.
Mostly-all custom systems will boot from anything as long as the bios thinks it sees it and the MBR master boot record is in sync with the filetype-descriptor on the hard drive hw.

If you need real-time help, I can do that, via zoom etc.
Pm to agree.
I would expect normal rates for work, but with zero down and no-cure no-pay.

It would probably take 2-3 hours to solve, if it is the typical complex maze that these things were when I did this daily.

I´m happy to guide for free.
 
SSD howto

Copy the original hdd to an image file.
Binary image.

If the original is non-windows, use another pc to copy the drive contents into an image file.

Then make a bootable ssd with suitable mrb, and bootable/active partition.
Then copy the image file to the ssd.

The machine will then boot from the ssd, while thinking it uses the original hdd.
The ssd must be the first/primary hard drive, or only hard drive.
 
Copy the original hdd to an image file.
Binary image.

If the original is non-windows, use another pc to copy the drive contents into an image file.

Then make a bootable ssd with suitable mrb, and bootable/active partition.
Then copy the image file to the ssd.

The machine will then boot from the ssd, while thinking it uses the original hdd.
The ssd must be the first/primary hard drive, or only hard drive.

we will give this a try. Is there a go-to copying/cloning software that works best? In a perfect work we would have a few backup drives ready to go and a copy or image on our shop pc, that we could download to a given hard drive. Plug it in and make chips!. many thanks for the responses!
 
This is where I am with this.
I bought an identical hdd as my original hdd. Formatted it with fat16. We copied the original hdd as an image file. Then copied it to the identical drive. The bios will not see the new drive(no slave/master jumpers). we can see the files on another pc but it will not boot or see it on mazak. Then We took a 4gb ssd and formatted it the same size as our old drive again fat 16. copied the image to it. Bios sees it but not correct size. It starts to boot then give memory errors saying himem.sys and emm386 driver arent there? They are there. Sometimes it will boot to a window screen but says we have a registry error. screen says to restore from backup. but we cant get move the cursor to click that box to do it. At that time there arent any keyboard or control key functions working? Am i missing something obvious here. any thanks for the replies!
 
Easy way to clone a disk is the linux utility dd. You can boot into a 'live' install disk for linux and run without installing.
Short form : dd if=source of=target
Hit up google for more dd options You may have to su ... to be superuser to make it work. :-)
dd makes an exact copy, and should cleanly boot afterwards. YMMV Good luck.
 
This is where I am with this.
I bought an identical hdd as my original hdd. Formatted it with fat16. We copied the original hdd as an image file. Then copied it to the identical drive. The bios will not see the new drive(no slave/master jumpers). we can see the files on another pc but it will not boot or see it on mazak. Then We took a 4gb ssd and formatted it the same size as our old drive again fat 16. copied the image to it. Bios sees it but not correct size. It starts to boot then give memory errors saying himem.sys and emm386 driver arent there? They are there. Sometimes it will boot to a window screen but says we have a registry error. screen says to restore from backup. but we cant get move the cursor to click that box to do it. At that time there arent any keyboard or control key functions working? Am i missing something obvious here. any thanks for the replies!

I tried and gave up, same issue cloning the 640 w95 drive. In the end my system had a motherboard error so we had to do the Mitsu W2000 upgrade which gave us the SSD & W2000 OS. ($9k)
I've heard of successful clone drives but never been able to do it, always the same issues you specified. I tried a bunch- Linux image, acronis, the clones would boot on test W95 machines but not on the Mazak, better protection then I could crack. If you figure it out I'd love to know since they beat me.
 
Mazak SSD

What kind of SSD do you use?
I have successfully used a 8GB Compact flash with IDE adapter. (Windows 95)

can you if posable send me name and links to compact flash and ide adapter you used as i have tryed six types and cant get the bios to see any drive
 
Anyone have successfully done this lately? I have a good original spinning hard drive I'd like to replace with an SSD. I tried Acronis when I try to boot, I get "non system disk"
 
It probably/likely/possibly has to do with the MBR = master boot record file, which is likely different to what the bios/opsystem expect it to be.
SSD drives may have a different descriptor to a std hdd, and thus you need to fool the bios into thinking the ssd is a std hdd drive.

Iirc I used a knoppix linux system from a usb drive, that boots into a graphical easy to use windows lookalike system without installing anything.
One of the linux utilities allowed viewing and editing the mbr filesystem descriptor.
google knoppix, and install it onto a usb pen drive.

If you have a working hdd it should be relatively easy to make a working filesystem on an ssd.
It´s perhaps useful to make the same size partition only on the ssd as the original hdd.
Generally, it was possible to tell the bios that you have a smaller hdd than is actually the case.

This has worked for me perhaps a dozen times across maybe 10 different weird and wonderful hw/sw platforms, past 25+ years.

Latest evolution was swapping a 10 year old 500 gb ssd to a 2 gb ssd via acronis.
Worked fine, but for some weird and wonderful reason all bluetooth support vanished from win7 pro 64bit.
 








 
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