755CD Error 0174

[Bondi]

Heyo, thinkpadders
My 755CD used to boot from different hdds before. Now that i've stored it out after a year, it booted fine with it's original 810 mb hdd. But when I connected a different one, a 3.1 gig drive it refused to boot from it with an error 0174, which is a configuration related error. Strangely the laptop booted with that drive before, I'm 100% sure as it has the original installation on it. CMOS battery is still keeping the charge, so BIOS settings are the same. I refused to boot from any hdd in the range of 700mb - 2 gig. Looks like it likes only it's original factory configuration.
Any ideas what this could be? And how to cure?

[panips]

Sounds like your 3.1g hdd is dead?
Try another hdd or IDE/CF solution, 755CD supports (at least) 4G disk.

[Bondi]

Sounds like your 3.1g hdd is dead?
Try another hdd or IDE/CF solution, 755CD supports (at least) 4G disk.

I actually did try other drives, with the same result. They cannot be all dead...

[panips]

What's the bios version? I have no problem with 91G1873 08-07-96. Update it to 1.43 or 1.44, and if it still shows 0174, likely it could be other hardware issue.

[Bondi]

Need to check the BIOS version. But updating it is a problem as it requires a working battery, which I don't have.
And it still unclear why it worked before. Don't really get what could happen there. What kind of hardware issue could make some drives not work? I used the same caddy for different drives btw.

[panips]

there were patched exe files which can ignore/bypass the batter/power check. hxxps://archive[dot]org/details/755bios
No idea, honestly. I've got a pile of dead ThinkPads for no apparent reason. A few were simple fixes, bad caps or MOSFETs. Some I managed to revive by re-working the southbridge or RAM. But for the majority I'm still completely clueless.

[Bondi]

Thank you for the link, panips. I'll try to update the BIOS

[Bondi]

A short follow up on this. It worked eventually. It was not the BIOS but the caddy/ribbon cable incompatibility. Here is all the info which is also relevant for 755/360 series
https://comp.sys.ibm.ps2.hardware.narki ... rger-drive
In short, old hdd caddies require either setting a jumper on the hdd/ide-cf adapter (to set it as master) or cutting a trace. Or a new version of a caddy/ribbon cable that works as is.

[panips]

A short follow up on this. It worked eventually. It was not the BIOS but the caddy/ribbon cable incompatibility. Here is all the info which is also relevant for 755/360 series
https://comp.sys.ibm.ps2.hardware.narki ... rger-drive
In short, old hdd caddies require either setting a jumper on the hdd/ide-cf adapter (to set it as master) or cutting a trace. Or a new version of a caddy/ribbon cable that works as is.

good to know it works!
I got the same issue on my 760cd and 701cs and tries different fix with no luck. Same hdd assembly works on a good laptop with exactly the same type and configuration but refuses to boot up from the non-working one. I also browsed some old threads of the same topic, they suggested that a working battery might be useful to "reactivate" the laptop. I guess I'll give it another try.