I'm WinDumb and I admit it!

[JaXanim]

Doh...here we go again! I'm completely dumb on PeeCees, but I know someone here will get me through.

I have a tidgy 850Mb drive running Win98SE stuff, so I bought an 80Gb one. Of course, the other was full before I knew it! I'm trying to set it up to receive astropics from my telescope via a webcam, but it all seems a long way off atm!

Anyway, I'm trying to partition and format my spanking brand new 80Gb drive, but the Fdisk gizmo says it's only 12Gb. Doh...!

I'd like to create a boot partition of around 1Gb and another 79Gb partition containing all the apps, etc. i.e. do it a bit like Amigans do it.

Anyway, when I use the Win98 Fdisk command, it checks drive C: and reports that it's a large drive suitable for FAT32. So, I ask it to make a Primary DOS partition of 1 Gig or so and it does, but it says the disk is only 12624Mb.

So, I can create the first partition OK, but how do I get the other 79Gb to work?

Any advice most welcom.

Cheers,

JaX (WinDumb)

[JaXanim]

@odin

Gulp...swap my 80Gb....!

I suspected it's the senility of the mobo, but I really didn't intend things to move this far when I got it.

Regular readers my remember that Spirantho (All Hail!) donated it to me when my WaveGuide masterpiece was in jeopardy? Anyway, that's another story.

The mobo has a PentiumII, so it's quite long in the dental area, I fear. I'd hoped that the 80Gg would solve all my problems (which are pretty small in PeeCee terms).

Anyway, I assume I need to swap the BIOS chip gizmo or something like that?

Is that what I need?

Cheers,

JaX

[JaXanim]

@Holley

Mmm..the Win98 Boot Floppy says the drive is only around 12Gb, so that appears to be the limit as far as Win98SE/my mobo is concerned.

I can't get into dual booting systems, I'm too WinDumb to get a simple HD going!

Anyone suggest where to go?

Cheers,

JaX

[JaXanim]

@odin

I used the Packard Bell case to take the 'new' mobo/PII/RAM, etc provided by Spirantho (All Hail!).

The PB power pack had blown so I bought another 300watt one. Unfortunately, this was too tall to fit in the PB desktop case, so I cut a rectangular hole in the top to clear the new supply box. Well, it works just fine! The PB innards are in the garage, but they'll eventually get dumped no doubt.

I kept the old 850Mb drive and managed to reformat it and install Win98SE and got all my WaveGuide stuff back on track. Everything was going great until the HD choked on the extra stuff I added.

Once I'd got it going I decided to try a USB webcam for my telescope, bunged up the drive and here I am.

Cheers,

JaX

[JaXanim]

My mobo is an ABit BX6, anyone know if it'll accept an 80Gb drive?

I'll also try the downloadable partitioning stuff. (How do you get a partitioning program over 1.44Mb to run on a non-booting PeeCee? Sounds daft to me!)

I've just got this feeling I need to spnd yet more money...Doh...!

Cheers,

JaX

[JaXanim]

@speel...etc

No, it's a custom built special!

It was an old Packaged Hell with an AMD, but it broke (power surge we think). So I got this new (old) mobo from Spirantho (All Hail!) and got everything going with the PII that came with it. All was well, until I wanted more.

Yes, I wanted more and more, but the HD choked on it and I'm now wondering why the Hell I started all this!

Cheers,

JaX

[JaXanim]

@speel...etc

I've never flashed anything in my life, let alone my BIOS!

What the heck do I do?

I assume I download the fresh Flash to a floppy and run it from a DOS screen...?

Scarey stuff for an Amigan!

Cheers,

JaX

[JaXanim]

@Ilwrath

It's a Maxtor, so I'll check out their partitioning stuff before risking the flashy stuff.

Reflashing the BIOS sounds quite hairy to me, but as I said, I don't flash very often.....in fact never!

Cheers,

JaX

[JaXanim]

@Ilwrath

OK, I just downloaded MaxBlast 3 from the Maxtor site to my Amiga.

The .exe file is 1.85Mb.

How do I get this into the PeeCee when I only have the standard floppy drive working?

Doh...Doh...!

JaX

[JaXanim]

OK, I reflashed the BIOS as detailed on the ABit ancient mobos (BX6) website. This appears to have gone through without any trouble. I redid the CMOS settings as necessary and rebooted. I have the new 80Gb drive as the Channel1 slave atm.

Win98 came up OK but when I tried to format Drive D: it said it was only 1Gb!

So we've gone from 12Gb to 1Gb by this exercise. A sort of Flash down the pan eh?

Clearly (?) this isn't gonna get me there.

I'd like to try the Maxtor MaxBlast installer, but I need to get this old PeeCee online now, doh!

I have a PCI modem, but there's no driver for it. The system sees a PCI serial card but can't find a driver on the Win98 CD

Do I need to download it from somewhere?

Cheers,

JaX

[JaXanim]

@All

Panic over! My 80Gb drive is now installed and fully functional. Thanks to the links offered by Waccoon, I've managed to FAT32 format the full capacity (albeit in a 1Gb and a 79Gb partitions). Don't know why this was necessary, but I'm not complaining about that.

@Waccoon

Many thanks for those links. You saved me a lot of heartache and hassle! All the best for you!

@All

As and when I get my webcam coupled up to my telescope, I'll post some astropics to celebrate our success!

All Hail!

JaX