DT310 IDE Problems
Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 8:48 pm
Hello, I bought a DT Research DT310 with Windows XP Embedded off of shopgoodwill recently. It has been working fine for several days and I have been able to boot it up, mess around with XPE and adjust buttons, wireless, etc... Apparently it was used by some medical clinic. Anyway, without me making any modifications or anything, the other day it just decided to freeze when it tried to boot from hard disk. It just hangs at the "booting from a hard disk" message indefinitely. So, I tried messing around with BIOS settings (that didn't work), or using active@killdisk to scan the drives (didn't detect them), or booting into a live cd (looped indefinitely) and opening up the device and checking connections (that also didn't work). And, to further frustrate me, after all this I reset to default bios settings and now it doesn't even detect the drive let alone try to boot from it. For even more frustration, now whenever I try to boot from USB I get: "checking for external IDE controller". So I can't use a usb rescue, or a cd resue or boot from a floppy, so I'm stuck. Obviously there is something wrong with the IDE controller for the Apacer PATA drive, any assistance?
EDIT: Ok, after some experimenting I've been able to get some information about the computer:
Model Number: DT310LX
CPU: AMD Geode LX800
RAM: Generic Xilinix 512mb (6 modules)
HDD: Apacer 1gb IDE SSD model no. AP-FM1024AL0C5G-NJ
ROM: Removable Phoenix Technology ROM Chip
BIOS: Version 1.0.1
The Apacer SSD is set to dual boot with Grub with one partition being Linux for updates and one being Windows XP Embedded with all the drivers, etc... The computer did boot up fine but then after a while started to not detect a boot device, or any external floppies, cd's or flash drives. So, I poked around inside and eventually reasoned that maybe the button cell battery that provided power to hold the BIOS info in memory was out (since I couldn't save changes to the BIOS without them going away next boot up). So, I replaced that and apparently, since I took it out for around 2 seconds now the entire BIOS is wiped, so I just get nothing when it boots up. So, my question is, does anybody know of a way to actually get a replacement BIOS and reflash it? If I could get it working I would gladly provide all of my drivers for the DT310 for anyone in need.
EDIT 2: For some strange reason, it decided to start working this morning, but now I am still having the same problem as before. I was able to get some more information from the BIOS:
Model: Dt Research DT310LX
SSD: Apacer 1gb IDE SSD model no. AP-FM1024AL0C5G-NJ
RAM: Xilinix 512mb (6 modules)
BIOS: Version 1.03.11 built on 02/23/2009
Again, I'm still getting the "cannot find boot device" message when it boots up. I've tried everything, but the computer just does not seem to detect the SSD. However, If I yank the SSD out and plug it back in just as the computer tries to detect it, then it tries to boot from it but fails. Would this be a problem with the on the ssd itself, a problem with the connector, or something else?
EDIT: Ok, after some experimenting I've been able to get some information about the computer:
Model Number: DT310LX
CPU: AMD Geode LX800
RAM: Generic Xilinix 512mb (6 modules)
HDD: Apacer 1gb IDE SSD model no. AP-FM1024AL0C5G-NJ
ROM: Removable Phoenix Technology ROM Chip
BIOS: Version 1.0.1
The Apacer SSD is set to dual boot with Grub with one partition being Linux for updates and one being Windows XP Embedded with all the drivers, etc... The computer did boot up fine but then after a while started to not detect a boot device, or any external floppies, cd's or flash drives. So, I poked around inside and eventually reasoned that maybe the button cell battery that provided power to hold the BIOS info in memory was out (since I couldn't save changes to the BIOS without them going away next boot up). So, I replaced that and apparently, since I took it out for around 2 seconds now the entire BIOS is wiped, so I just get nothing when it boots up. So, my question is, does anybody know of a way to actually get a replacement BIOS and reflash it? If I could get it working I would gladly provide all of my drivers for the DT310 for anyone in need.
EDIT 2: For some strange reason, it decided to start working this morning, but now I am still having the same problem as before. I was able to get some more information from the BIOS:
Model: Dt Research DT310LX
SSD: Apacer 1gb IDE SSD model no. AP-FM1024AL0C5G-NJ
RAM: Xilinix 512mb (6 modules)
BIOS: Version 1.03.11 built on 02/23/2009
Again, I'm still getting the "cannot find boot device" message when it boots up. I've tried everything, but the computer just does not seem to detect the SSD. However, If I yank the SSD out and plug it back in just as the computer tries to detect it, then it tries to boot from it but fails. Would this be a problem with the on the ssd itself, a problem with the connector, or something else?