IDE Controller card

[JRBeltman]

Hi all,
I have a DELL server and the cd or scsi 2 interface is broken, so I thought; lets put a ide controller card in and connect an ide cd-rom.

Now I have done so, but how to gain access to the cd rom?
There is no operating system, booting from cd (yes it seems to actually recognise it) gives me a memory overflow error of some kind or just sit there. Booting from a DOS floppy with MSCDEX + ATAPI.SYS can't find any cd-rom?

So HELP!

JR
As a wise man once said: To build the house you need the stone.
Back to the Basics!

 

[edfair]

Try downloading a 98SE boot disk from

http://www.bootdisk.com

and see if it doesn't get you access.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[JRBeltman]

:-(
Well I tried the bootdisk but no luck.
Now I also turned off all SCSI support just in case, but that did not help either.

What else can I do?

JR
As a wise man once said: To build the house you need the stone.
Back to the Basics!

 

[edfair]

Next is to get the correct drivers from the SCSI card manufacturer and put them on a boot floppy, replacing those that didn't work.

Sorry that I can't give any more info, the procedure is specific to your machine, which I'm not familiar with.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[JRBeltman]

Well it is an IDE controller card that runs the cdrom, so SCSI drivers are a second concern.

At the moment I simply have a floppy and cdrom connected.
Floppy tries to load ide cdrom drivers and tells me to go away cause there is no cdrom (must be my eyes, cause the computer is always right

Anyway I will play around a bit more, maybe call the manufacturer?


JR
As a wise man once said: To build the house you need the stone.
Back to the Basics!

 

[G0AOZ]

Can you get into the BIOS and alter the boot sequence? Default is usually, 1st=floppy, 2nd IDE HDD0, 3rd CD-ROM. If your PC originally had a SCSI HDD, then maybe IDE was disabled in the boot sequence. Also, try disabling the SCSI interface if it's damaged.


ROGER.

 

[JRBeltman]

Hiya,
disabled all SCSI devices already and enabled all IDE.
No effect.

Will try a different cd-rom and slot

JR
As a wise man once said: To build the house you need the stone.
Back to the Basics!

 

[edfair]

What DOS are you using? If 6, then should have access to step by step configuration. And the error message comes up with either config.sys when the ATAPI driver is loaded, or with MSCDEX. And for diagnosis it would be better to have the CD on the primary channel as master to resolve any cabling/cable select issues.

ATAPI driver may tell you that there is no CD. That is generally a CD problem or cabling. But if it finds a CD it should tell you the driver name it is using and where it physically resides.
The MSCDEX should use the same driver name, or it won't be able to find a driver so it won't assign it a drive letter and it will be unusable.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[JRBeltman]

Hi all,
well well... well.... what a disaster.......

So I connected a different cd-rom, a different cable, a different channel, master/slave, other pci slots etc etc.

Oh it actually tries to boot from cd and tells me it can't find ntldr (or whatever the windows name is). Same with Novell and Linux.

Bootdisk cant find cdrom when loading the atapi driver (tried many).

What the hell is wrong? Maybe I should try this on a desktop pc instead of a Dell server? see if the card is the problem or the server config?

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

JR
As a wise man once said: To build the house you need the stone.
Back to the Basics!

 

[edfair]

Do you have IDE drive identification as part of your BIOS?
Sounds more like the IDE is not working, so drive ident would be one way of checking.
Is there an onboard IDE contoller that could be intefering?
That question since you enabled IDE on the board but are using an expansion IDE card. At least that is what I read into two previous posts.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[satrow]

Do you have an onboard IDE interface to connect the CDROM to?

Does your Bios use the term 'boot from SCSI' to mean any add-in card, SCSI or IDE?....re-enable boot from SCSI (read add-in IDE card).

Andy.

 

[JRBeltman]

Hi all,
this sounds like an interesting idea indeed.
Re-enable the SCSI interface. Yes indeed it does have a boot from SCSI.

However the BIOS can see my CD-Rom and I can tell it to use it as a IDE boot device.

I am indeed confused with this BIOS. It has an option to enable on-board IDE, but there is none?!

I also just ripped a cd-rom from my laptop and will try that

JR
As a wise man once said: To build the house you need the stone.
Back to the Basics!