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

[amiga_noob]

Hi

The IDE cable has a one red cable fit this onto the hard drive towards to power connecter to the harddrive.

The red cable indecates pin 1.

On the motherboard connector the socket has a notch in the middle on one of the sides like below:

|--------------|
|------   -----|
1

Put the red end when pin one is.

same with the floppy cable.
connect the floppy to the end of the cable after the twist.

then setup the hard drive in the BIOS.

Hope this helps.

P.s A goog indication if the floppy is connected wrong. The floppy light will stay lit.

[Orjan]

The IDE connectors usually have a notch in them, so they would be impossible to mount the wrong way around...
However, if the notches are missing, the red wire ( pin one ) on the cable should be closest to the power connector.

The floppy could be trickier.. I have encountered a bunch, and none of them seemed to have the same standard...
Some wants to be connected to the first connector on the cable, some on the second... And pin one seems to vary depending on manufacturer as well, but just try all the possible combinations... You wont damage anything, so long as the computer is powered off while you disconnect/reconnect cables.

[Holley]

After checking cables:

Primary slave Hard Drive - fail

In the first section of an older type bios you usually have four rows for setting IDE devices, if you have one device for each cable they should be set as the master using the jumpers on the back of the drive (jumper settings should be clearle marked, even on PB gear ;-)).  As they are both masters, looking in the bios the first and third entried should be set ('auto' is fine), and the 2nd and fourth (the slaves) should be disabled - if a slave is set and doesn't really exist you'll get the message you stated there ;-)

[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

[amiga_noob]

Hi

The CMOS is a chip which keeps the settings for the BIOS.

Pressing f1 when requested will take you stright to the relevent section section in the BIOS.

Try different combinations with the floppy and cable (i.e. change the cable round e.t.c).

If there is nothing on the hard drive then you will need to get the floppy working or try changing the BOOTUP settings in the BIOS to boot from CD, then try booting with a bootable CD.

Good luck
The settings in the BIOS for the HDD, are they the right settings for that drive?
If not they will need to be changed. If the motherboard is a new board then there will be a setting in the BIOS to auto detect the settings.

You'll need to navigate around the BIOS via K/b, so if the k/b aint working properly then you'll need to try another one.

[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

[amiga_noob]

Hi

The 2 ps/2 (k/b) sockets: one for the keybord and the other is for the mouse.

What type of connector is on the k/b?
Are you using a 5pin din to ps/2 k/b converter?

I have no idea about the amiga k/b, cuz im new to amigas.
But it could be worth a try.

Yes you've lost the settings in the bios.

[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

[Holley]

Yes, Packard Bells have hideous HD installs from the factory.  Go to 'Control Panel' (under settings on the start menu), and 'Add/Remove Programs' - you can remove programs using an automated system from there, provide you havn't accidentally deleted the script that usually sits in with the program itself.  Most Windoes programs put files in system folders, and make changes to the Registry (a database of everything in windows), so if you remove a folder you're only getting part of the space used back.

Also remember to empty the recycle bin (right-click on it) as that counts as used space when checking disks.  You should be able to free some space by getting rid of programs, but the only way to make Windows 'lean & mean' (comparatively) is to format the harddisk and re-install carefully - Win95 with sound, video and Internet can be cut back to about 50Mb.  Don't try that without being sure what you're doing though, as getting Windows to run well is an art form (getting it to run shabbily is easy, lol).

[amiga_noob]

Hi

Glad you got your computer up and running. You just need to do a bit of tweaking here and there.

Like Holley said you can uninstall most of the programs you don't need.

Or if it's a genuin PB system, there should be a program on there that uninstalls the software you dont need.

If it's a packard bell computer you may be able to reinstall windows and drivers without the aditional s/w.

Providied you have the master disks, or your hard drive has a hidden partition with the image still intact and a PB boot disk.

What PB system is it?

[Holley]

It's old enough to not have space for one of those horrible hidden setups, and for the system restore to come on 2 CDs and install loads of rubbish as standard ;-)

Because it's no longer an all-PB system using a system restore wouldn't be a good idea - they don't take into account that you may have changed hardware, not usually a problem but it may try to force chipset drivers for the motherboard (or it might just crash out, lol).  Also the old PB system restores that work from CD usually undo any custom partitions, which is one of the perks of blanking the harddisk in the first place (cue: aaargh!).

[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

[Holley]

If it's 750Mb I'm not surprised it's full!  It possible this was a smaller than standard drive with a hidden partition, or that only the first part of the drive has been partitioned.  To find out try and get your hands on a copy of 'Partition Magic' - it's kinda like HDPrep ;-)

'Master/Single' means the same as 'master' so thats fine BTW

[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