MGC-50 Dead hard Drive

[pdonlin]

I have a bit of a problem, I have a Polycom MGC-50 that was running MCU-7.5.0 and the hard drive has died, and it is needed this Friday.

I replaced the drive with a new one and have used a Win 98 bootdisk to fdisk and format the drive.

Following some instructions from a similar post on these forums I downloaded the software install from Polycom's website for the same version we were running (since that is what our dongle is setup for) and copied the contents of the disk1-8 folders onto floppies.

My problem is that when I insert Disk 1 and run install.exe all it does is create a directory structure on the C: drive and copy one file (version.id) to the MCU\CFG folder and then a message shows up saying it is done.

I am never prompted to insert disks 2, 3, 4, etc.

Am I doing something wrong? We lost our original install disks and our maintenance contract expired two years ago so its not as simple as calling Polycom and asking for the ghost image that some mentioned in the other thread.

Thanks,
Patrick

[rob1971]

Patrick, this might be a daft question, but did you install an OS on the drive after formatting it?

From memory (and it's a long time since I've used an MGC-50) they require an OS on the drive, not just a bare disk and the files from the floppies.

If you have a look at page 4-12 of the MGC Hardware Installation Manual V9 (http://polycom.com/common/documents/support/setup_maintenance/products/network/mgc_hardware_installation_manual_v90.pdf) it certainly implies that one of two OSes should be installed on the disk: XPEK or pSOS.

This thread might be some help: http://www.vtctalk.com/showthread.php?t=27171

I could be completely wrong, in which case just ignore my ramblings...

Rob

[rob1971]

This thread - http://www.vtctalk.com/showthread.php?t=54&page=3&pp=10&highlight=xpek - may also be some use...

[pdonlin]

I did not install an OS because the thread I was referencing did not mention it (although I thought it seemed strange that none would be needed).

The thread is: http://www.vtctalk.com/showthread.php?t=27250

Unfortunately the link on the thread for the restore disk is now dead but I think I may have found it elsewhere. I'm not sure if we were running PSOS or XPEK but I'll start with PSOS.

[pdonlin]

The file I downloaded must not be the same thing. When executing psos.exe the only message I get is "Program too big to fit in memory".

[rob1971]

If it's any help I get the impression that XPEK is the more modern option, however I couldn't locate any links to it.

Best of luck!

[pdonlin]

Well I got my installing from floppies problem resolved. The installer for v7.5 must have had issues because I downloaded v7.0 and it led me through installing from all 98 floppies. I would use the latest version but our maintenance expired 2 years ago so I'm assuming that I wont be able to update my dongle for the new version.

After going through the all day task of installing from the floppies I was prompted for my IP address which was written to a config file. When I restart the computer I still receive an error saying there is no system disk...

So I pop in my windows bootdisk and see what is on the C: drive:

MCMS.ABS
MCU <DIR>
PSOSBOOT.SYS

In the BIN directory under MCU there are several files and a couple executables, but whenever I try to run any of them (ie starter.exe) I get an error saying the program can not be run in dos mode.

Any ideas? I'm assuming I need to do something with the PSOSBOOT.SYS file but I don't know what.