Fish
05-17-2003, 5:32 PM
Ok, this is directly related to my JUST FIXED post in the motherboard section. I had some serious boot up problems that I had finally come (read that post to learn about it).
Here's an interesting problem that doesn't seem to be too well documented on the web:
After fixing my boot up problem, I couldn't get it to recognize my IBM Deskstart drive. I played around with the jumpers till my fingertips bled (almost literally) and tried a zillion different settings. Auto-discovery in the BIOS would only see it on certain jumper combos, not others. Clipping it to 32 Mgs would get it recognized by the BIOS and 2k, but 2k thought it was unformatted. Boy what I goose chase I went through. I even tore up the office looking for the Disk Manager floppy that came with the drive.
Word to the Wise: IF you buy a new drive, KEEP THE FLOPPY. It will either save your butt or have you pulling out your hair if you ever need it again. The company that makes DiskManager (which shipped OEM with the IBM drive) sells their software online if you ever have to replace it in a flash. http://www.ontrack.com .
You know what the stupid problem was ? Sheesh, I'm so relieved that I finally figured it out but geez I'm so frustrated: NONE.
The problem was NONE. The whole time I was trying to get all the settings correct, and figure out why the DDO software didn't pickup the drive, it was because I always had AUTO or USER_CONDFIGURED in the BIOS.
I set the drive setup to NONE for this drive, the DDO picked it up, Windows happily booted, and voila - there were the last 4 years worth of files staring at me in Explorer ......... now to get that backup software working ;)
I hope this helps someone. I find that often there are lots of disjointed threads that can be put together into a scenario, but hopefully having the full story from front to end will help.
now for those backups !
Here's an interesting problem that doesn't seem to be too well documented on the web:
After fixing my boot up problem, I couldn't get it to recognize my IBM Deskstart drive. I played around with the jumpers till my fingertips bled (almost literally) and tried a zillion different settings. Auto-discovery in the BIOS would only see it on certain jumper combos, not others. Clipping it to 32 Mgs would get it recognized by the BIOS and 2k, but 2k thought it was unformatted. Boy what I goose chase I went through. I even tore up the office looking for the Disk Manager floppy that came with the drive.
Word to the Wise: IF you buy a new drive, KEEP THE FLOPPY. It will either save your butt or have you pulling out your hair if you ever need it again. The company that makes DiskManager (which shipped OEM with the IBM drive) sells their software online if you ever have to replace it in a flash. http://www.ontrack.com .
You know what the stupid problem was ? Sheesh, I'm so relieved that I finally figured it out but geez I'm so frustrated: NONE.
The problem was NONE. The whole time I was trying to get all the settings correct, and figure out why the DDO software didn't pickup the drive, it was because I always had AUTO or USER_CONDFIGURED in the BIOS.
I set the drive setup to NONE for this drive, the DDO picked it up, Windows happily booted, and voila - there were the last 4 years worth of files staring at me in Explorer ......... now to get that backup software working ;)
I hope this helps someone. I find that often there are lots of disjointed threads that can be put together into a scenario, but hopefully having the full story from front to end will help.
now for those backups !