PC Advice - Putting it Together

[JaXanim]

Thanks to spirantho's generosity, I now have the makings of a PC. I need this to process my WaveGuide stuff. Hopefully, my teething troubles will be very brief.

I've hooked everything up as I think it goes, but the BIOS screen indicates something like:

'Primary slave Hard Drive - fail.'

The system has a Hard Drive on channel 1 and a CDRom on Channel 2. I've not looked at the device jumpers cos they should be OK with this same setup.

I suspect I've fitted the IDE cables wrong but it's not obvious which is Pin 1 in the sockets. Same goes for the floppy drive, which doesn't activate atm.

It won't boot from a bootable floppy, so I think this is connected wrong as well. Should I just fit the IDE ribbons in the other way around?

Cheers,

JaX

[JaXanim]

OK, I've now got the floppy and HD ribbons connected properly and the floppy light stays on. I've disconnected the CDRom for now.

When the BIOS screen comes up and tells me about the primary slave HD failure, pressing F1 on the k/b brings up the configuration info.

This shows I have the HD attached to IDE Primary as Master. There are no other IDE devices listed. The Floppy device is also there, together with the PCI and ISA cards.

It then says 'verifying DMI Pool Data---

Disk I/O error

Replace the disk and press any key.'

What's all this about?

I swapped the HD for an old Amiga one but the same thing happened. If I insert a bootable floppy and reboot, nothing happens.

Going back to the end of the BIOS info...
If I press Del instead of F1, I get a CMOS Setup screen. This has a list of menus, but the k/b doesn't operate with this screen. I can't get anywhere with the CMOS screen.

Cheers,

JaX

[JaXanim]

@amiga_noob

I just tested the CMOS battery to make sure it wasn't flat. It is OK, tho' I guess I've lost anything that was in the CMOS memory (?).

Anyway, if I could alter any of the BIOS settings I think I'd get somewhere. The problem seems to be with the keyboard and this mobo. The k/b is definitely OK, I was using it with another PC.

This 'new' mobo has a Pentium II/400MHz and appears to have two k/b sockets. Well they look identical, but one seems to work as described earlier. The other socket doesn't do anything with this k/b. Could it be that the old Packaged Hell k/b is no good with this mobo? The PC I was using it with is a very old 386/Win3.1

I have another PC k/b on my Amiga. Would that be worth a try?

Cheers,

JaX

[JaXanim]

@amiga_noob

Ah, k/b and mouse sockets, OK.

The Packard Bell system used a three button mouse with a joystick type connector. I have this in COM1 (I think) and it works OK.

I swapped the P-B k/b for an old but sturdy IBM one and that works fine. I can now get around the CMOS menus OK, so it all started looking good. In fact I've now got my sound and video cards installed and it's booting into Win98 without a hitch.

The only problem I see is the lack of free space on the HD. It's a 6-7Gb drive and seems full of dross stuff installed by the Packaged Hell vendor. I'd like to wipe most of it but it's not clear what is what.

How does one delete applications that aren't needed? Is there a proper Uninstall program? Do I need to download something to do it properly?

Cheers,

JaX

[JaXanim]

Yes, I deleted lots of irrelevant documents written by the previous owner. I also deleted some other stuff with the Progam Deletion system. This gave me enough space to install a slim version of Lotus SmartSuite (the system used for my important WaveGuide stuff).

By the time I'd imported the main document, I was getting messages that memory was getting very short again. Taking a closer look indicated the HD is only 750Mb not the 7Gb I had assumed! Doh! What's the use of a Packaged Hell running Windows98 with all its whistles and bells, plus Internet stuff on a 750Mb drive!....? OK as long as you don't intend creating anything I guess.

I'm now gonna attempt to fit a slave HD and use that for my Lotus stuff. The boot drive (Maxtor) is apparently jumpered (J20) as Master/Single ON, Slave OFF. This is stated on a sticky label. It doesn't have the jumper MA/SL/CS system I'm more familiar with. Do you think attaching a Slave jumpered HD to this system be OK, without rejumpering the Maxstor?

Cheers,

JaX

[JaXanim]

@Holley

Yes, it's full alright. The Maxtor model number identifies it as 850Mb and I have around 10Mb to spare. Not much use, eh!

I fitted another HD (Ex Amiga) jumpered as slave on the Channel 1 IDE cable. Because of physical restrictions, I have to attach this slave to the first connector from the IDE interface. Will this work with PCs? The reason I ask is 'cos I couldn't see the drive in the device listing in 'My Computer' after apparently setting it up using the CMOS IDE Hard Disks menu.

I then made it a slave to the CDRom on Channel 2 and put it on the furthermost connector. Same result.

How do I get the system to 'see' the new drive so I can FAT32 format it?

I'll tell you one thing for sure. Windows is a real PITA!

Cheers,

JaX

[JaXanim]

@Holley

Many thanks for your advice. I guess I'll get the hang of this thing before long, but what a kerfuffle!

I'll let it rest for now, it's well past midnite and I'm just sick of hearing those bloody beeps!

More later no doubt!

Cheers,

JaX

[JaXanim]

Finally getting somewhere!

I managed to set up a slave drive to run Lotus SmartSuite and leave the old C: just for the Win98 system and misc stuff I've yet to explore.

The only problem was, out of three spare HDs (a 17Gb, a 4.3Gb and a tidgy 256Mb, only the latter would show up under the BIOS-CMOS/Detect IDE Devices gizmo. The bigger drives definitely had some bad sectors and the PC wouldn't have any of 'em.

So, SmartSuite is fully installed on the 250Mb drive, half filling it. However, that should leave enough for WaveGuide atm.

The frustrating thing now is the use of drive C: for temporary stuff. I'm still getting low space warnings when editing my stuff on the other drive.

Is there a way to use the other drive for the temporary stuff?

Oh, and the graphics card will only let me have 16 colours. I guess it's a pretty basic model, but I'd have expected a little bit more, colour-wise. (?)

Cheers,

JaX

[JaXanim]

@graffias79

It's a 3D Labs Inc. AGP card dated 1999. It has the number PCB125B1 if that means anything to you. I set the CMOS/Init Video setting to AGP, but whether it's set to AGP or 'PCI Slot' makes no difference to the screen resolution or the number of colours.

This leads me to another query about Windows. Why are the menu frames larger than the screen? I have to scroll everything around to see what's going on. There doesn't seem to be anything related to increasing the screen resolution. The default setting of 680x420 pixels (or something like that) can't be changed.

Do I need a better video card?

Cheers,

JaX

[JaXanim]

All hail Spirantho!

Provider of my PeeCee makings.
Behold, P2-400/RAM-alot/Sound'n'Vision'n'Mobo to boot.
Win98 plugged and played! Epson printer prints!

All hail Spirantho!
Saviour of the WaveGuide texts!

JaXimus WavGydimus Maximus

[JaXanim]

@Holley

It's....almost fully working.

I'm still bemused by the video. I've got the 3D Labs/Permedia II card in the AGP slot, but I get only 16 colour VGA output. I can't get the system to see the card.

I've downloaded the drivers as recommended by Spirantho and tried to get the system to accept them, but it insists in saying the best VGA driver is in use for the 'Standard VGA adapter'.

Is there a VGA switcher-offer somewhere? I've set the Init Video to VGA in the BIOS/CMOS interface (was ISA-slot), but I can't get any better output.

The system which searches for new hardware doesn't detect the card at all. It sees the sound card and the new mouse and the alternative keyboard, but not the 3D Labs card. Could it be faulty?

Cheers,

JaX

PS: Oh, and atm all this stuff is hanging inside and outside the old Packaged Hell desktop case. The new ATX power box is too big to fit where it should and the second HD is dangling on the end of the cable insulated from the rest with a copy of the TurboPrint manual. Other than that, it's not so far off.

[JaXanim]

@Holley

After a fifteen minute scout around, the Add Hardware Wizard doesn't actually see the 3D Labs/Permedia card, that's what I don't understand.

The only way to get any signal to the monitor is via the graphics card, yet the system says it's running a 'Standard VGA Adapter'.

There appears to be a 3D Labs/Permedia driver on the Win98 CDRom, but it says this isn't specifically written for VGA the adapter I'm using and advises against using it. In fact it doesn't appear to want to use anything but the Standard VGA adapter driver.

I assume running the standard VGA driver will simply pass a 16-colour video signal through the card? That's what seems to be happening and there appears to be no clear way of changing it. Running the driver update system simply gives me the one I have already.

Any ideas?

JaX

[JaXanim]

Yes, I think I'm missing something on this.

I managed to install the 3D Labs/Permedia 2 drivers as suggested earlier. However, when I try to use the 256 colour option in the Control Panel settings, I get a message saying my video adapter will not run with the Permedia driver and goes to the 16-colour screen.

The video card doesn't appear to be seen under any circumstances, so I'm wondering if there's a physical switch which needs altering? Where would I look for this?

The BIOS/CMOS setting AGP/PCI Slot doesn't affect the outcome.

Cheers,

JaX

[JaXanim]

@Holley

No, there is no on-board video connector.

After installing the Permedia2 drivers, the control panel display interface allowed a maximum of 256 colours only. So the options became 256 or 16 or 2. When I set it at 256, the reboot gave the message that my display adapter wouldn't run with this setting and reverted to 16 colours.

The drivers I installed came from http://members.driverguide.com and contains the 3D Labs reference Permedia2 3D Accelerator driver. Written for Win95 but said to work well with Win98. It's the same driver I was recommended earlier. Perhaps this needs another look at?

The Hardware Wizard found no 'added' video adapters. All I get are references to the 'standard video adapter'.  I guess this wouln't be influenced by the monitor setting?

The control panel monitor interface doesn't have the exact Packaged Hell monitor I actually use, so I've messed around and got nowhere better with this bit.

I'll not look at a reinstall of the OS until/unless I really have to. Maybe I should look for an alternative Permedia2 driver?

Cheers,

JaX

[JaXanim]

@Holley

I finally seem to be homing in on the problem. I managed to add the Permedia card manually, tho' it did say afterwards that this card is a P'n'P gizmo. Whatever, it's now asking for a specific driver, which isn't on the Windows 98 CD nor in the drivers.zip I downloaded.

The required driver is:

pmedia32.dll

I can't find it on the Drivers website. Could you see if you have it? That would seem to be the answer to my problem (I hope!).

Cheers,

JaX