The old PC my dad had, a NEC Ready 7020, isn't connecting to IDE hard drives.
The old PC my dad had, a NEC Ready 7020, isn't connecting to IDE hard drives.
I just observed a potential issue—perhaps the BIOS wasn't updated for the Y2K problem... Look at the date; ??25.
I’ll just add a bit extra info that could be tricky—different IDEs aren’t the same, and some older setups struggle with newer storage devices. I’m not particularly old-fashioned enough to dig into the specifics, but I’m sure it’s a concern. Still, I’ve got a bit of retro tech know-how. You can usually get a compact flash adapter for a small card (1–8GB) and connect it to the slave port on an IDE cable. It should work out of the box, which makes uploading files much easier. You can even use a USB CF adapter to treat the C drive as a flash drive, simplifying everything.
For example, after realizing my motherboard couldn’t boot from CD and recognize a hard drive at the same time, I set it up by creating a DOS boot diskette, copying all setup files onto the CF card, booting from that diskette, and running the setup directly from the CF card.
Note: I should mention this is CF-specific—CF cards are essentially IDE cards. While SD cards also use IDE, they need a translation layer, which adds complexity. My 120MHz Pentium has no Y2K fix, but my 100MHz one does because it has an expansion card that handles the issue at boot.
Could this lead to more significant problems with how the hard drive is recognized? Since the clock battery has failed, it’s unlikely to affect timing unless you’re specifically concerned about maintaining accurate time.
There was likely an issue after a short period. Previous bios allow you to set up your drive manually, and you can attempt that method again.
It's possible in certain cases. If the original hard drive is old enough, you might need to manually input the drive settings. In BIOS, under HDD settings like "IDE Adapter 0 Slave," choose [TYPE], then [USER]. You can then enter the drive parameters on the HDD label and test it.