Bet you can't fix it

[Jackiechan311]

I have the strangest problem. I am trying to salvage my mom's old 200MHZ P1 64MB RAM. I installed a new cd-rom drive and a new hdd, which is disgustingly small(80 MB). Neither are recognized, well the HDD is sort of. After a memory check and a scan for IDE devices, it freezes. It finds No Primary Master, No Primary Slave, It skips the Secondary slave all together, and recognizes the maxtor HDD. Then it promptly freezes for 30 seonds and flashes a screen filled with solid tiny triangles on and off. It has me stumped. I've stripped it down to the essentials, Video card, HDD, and ram, and it looks as all is lost.

 

[mainegeek]

Is the new hard drive the maxtor and is it the 80
meg?

 

[edfair]

New? 80MB? Set for master, no slave? Some older IDE had an additional jumper for no slave present. Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[ANFPS26]

Also, the bios may not support a drive that big. "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing....."

 

[CitrixEngineer]

Big? 80 Meg??

Ed is right - you need to check the jumpers on both drives, then go into the BIOS and run the auto-detect. I would think that your BIOS supports auto-detect, however, you may need to enter the heads/cylinders/sectors manually. These are usually printed on the hard disk casing. CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk

 

[ANFPS26]

Sorry, I read that as 80 GIG. "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing....."

 

[paparazi]

And I thought you were having a laugh nobrain!! Please let members know if there advice has helped any.

 

[Jackiechan311]

I have the drive right here. Someone handily wrote the heads sectors and cyls right on the drive. they also incluted jumper settings on the drive the jumper for only drive is [J19 short J20 short] i dont know how to change the jumpet settings. I thonk the drive may have the jumpers on the underside of the drive as the only connectors on the side are power, ide and a plug that looks like a audio connector. THere are 2 or 3 sets of pins underneath the drive that could be the jumpers.

 

[ANFPS26]

I did have a laugh-----at MYSELF!!!! "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing....."

 

[Dmasch]

Just go buy a cheap 500 mg harddrive off ebay and give that a shot. Why even bother with the 80mg drive?

 

[Jackiechan311]

I am only trying to test the system with what i have. I got it for free, and if it's dead i can accept it and salvage some of it, but i had hopes of turning it into an mp3 player. If i can get it to run dos, i can install a larger disk full of mp3's and windows 3.1. PS. I have tried the comp with a larger drive (3gig) which was origionally in the system.

 

[Jackiechan311]

The part that really confuses me is the page full of triangles that flashes after drive detection.

 

[SoulAssassin]

Can you swap video cards, ram, etc...??? My first thought is the motherboard. But if you have spare parts, try ram, vga card, etc to tell.

 

[edfair]

Time to try the drive manufacturer website. Some keep legacy drive info up.
And if you give the name and model, one of us might be able to tell you what the jumpers are. Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[Jackiechan311]

oh, ive got the jumper settings on my maxtor 7080 AT. i have the full specs. for a single drive the settings are J19 and J20 short. I'm about to try it.