What "TYPE" of harddrive is in my old 286

Solution 1:

There are two ways to solve this.

The "correct" way is to use the TYPE which directs your BIOS to a pointer on the ROM to an entry in the MBR that defines the correct numbers of cylinders/heads/sectors. The TYPE will be either 15 or any one of TYPEs over 33. Unless you can get your hands on a copy of the BIOS setup manual you will have to attempt by trial and error. The good news is your BIOS only accepts TYPEs 0-45. Some BIOS went up to 254.

The "easy" way is to find the freeware DOS utility Anydrive. I'd give you a link, but I'm at work right now and my corporate firewall blocks sites that distribute shareware/freeware. You'll set the TYPE to any anything with fewer cylinders/heads/sectors then boot to DOS prompt and run ANYDRIVE.EXE and follow the prompts. I've only ever discovered one HDD it didn't work on so your probability of success has to be 90%.