I need help accessing the setup on my notebook

[longboardguy]

I have a older notebook computer, a Morse m316, that when it is booting up gives me a message that says "non-system disk or disk error". I created this problem by changing the hard drive in the setup when the computer was booting up correctly. Now I do not get a prompt to hit del to enter the set up. There is not a diskette in the A drive and Hitting F1, F2,or DEL does not get me to the setup. The harddrive is a Conner CP2044PK and I have Win 3.1 installed.
I had opened up the computer case to find out which hard drive is in it and when I was poking around I could not find a motherboard battery, which I beleive is dead. Does this computer have one?
Any help is appreciated. You may email me at gwfisher@mediaone.net

 

[thib4]

have you tried to put a boot floppy disc in and then try to boot

 

[longboardguy]

A boot disk would be a good idea, unfortunatly I do not have one for this compter. The A drive light does go on and off during the boot process. I do have a set of utility disks for the system but I receive the "non system disk error" message with those also. I have tried leaving the the system on for several days to drain the batterries and then power up with the AC supply to see if would go into setup. That has not worked either.

 

[thib4]

if it is not a boot disc it will read non system disc error

what operating system are you using

 

[longboardguy]

Win 3.1 is on the computer which was working OK without any problems until I changed the hard drive in the set up. I know it is an old system, but it was used for basic word processing.

 

[thib4]

it will need a dos boot disc

that was to see if you could see the harddrive after bootup

you said you took the computer apart

i would start checking cables inside the computer expecially the harddrive cable make sure all cables are tight and on correctly

 

[longboardguy]

I could not locate a disk labled dos boot, but I do have dos 6.2 on disks so I reinstalled dos 6.2 hoping I could create a boot disk in the process. This did not cure the problem of being able to access the set up. I have been able to get an A prompt after escaping from dos setup. I can change that to a C prompt and read my C drive contents.
I ran scandisk and no problems were found.
I am clueless what my next step might be.