On Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:54:00 -0700, grafxfriday
wrote:

Thanks Rebel and Gary. I appreciate your help.
First Info then a couple questions..

Info Part I History
I have a single CD that says RESTORE CD(BOOTABLE CD)eMACHINES eTOWER433i
1998-99

Error Messages:
200:BOOT FAILURE
204:REBOOT AND SELECT PROPER BOOT DEVICE OR INSERT BOOT
MEDIA IN SELECTED BOOT DEVICE.

Initially the first few times I chose "1. Restore WIN 98 will format HDD"
without step by step confirmation (this last time around I could see the
errors). I hope restarting several times then turning the computer off hasn't
caused more damage.

Info Part II New
Additionally, as I restarted the computer, the screen with basic info came
up. I
noticed 2 things;
1. Secondary Master ATAPI CDROM. Perhaps this is the reason the hard drive
is not
"C". I am tempted to change the BIOS settings to fix my drive error(it seems
obvious, primary=c) but I am not positive of the settings.

2. PCI Onboard USB Controller, IRQ10
PCI Onboard Multimedia Device IRQ10. (Some of the PCI Devices have no IRQ)
Perhaps
these two devices shouldn't use the same IRQ number.

I don't believe anything above adds much to what (little) we already know.

Questions /Summary
1. Auto-detection routine? How can I tell if my old computer has this?

In the BIOS, on the page where the drives are listed, there will be a field with
selections which will include "AUTO" for type/size/? unless it doesn't have it.
But from the above I am presuming a 433 MHz machine, which is waaay after
autodetect became the standard.

2. I will read up on how to find and configure CMOS. I do have dos commands
and 5 books from the library(mostly for WIN 95) but actual configurations are
hard to come by.

Enter the BIOS and step through the settable fields. Basic enough - you can
always back out without saving any changes, so go and explore. But there IS a
reason why your system isn't showing your HDD(s) - we need to find it. It may
be as Ben suggested - physical - or it may be somewhere in the BIOS settings.