Older motherboard, newer HD

[LuRSH]

Hi Folks,

I'm dealing with a workstation with Win98, two HD from Western Digital, CD-Rom (Toshiba), floppy and an old motherboard SP97_V from ASUS. This system was working without major problems but the cdrom died (poor thing).

So I got another cdrom (48x) and connected to the system. When the system did not recognized the cdrom I went to BIOS configuration and (OOPS!) reloaded the default parameters.

Now the Master HD is not recognized by the BIOS. It seams that being a newer hd (4Gig) it's too big for that old BIOS (401A0-0103V). The slave hd (2Gig) is recognized in AUTO (in both primary and secondary IDE). I tried USER parameters (which I got installing the disk in another workstation) with LBA, Normal and Large still nothing happened. (by the way I removed the cdrom)

The problem is not the disk. As I said I tried it in another workstation and it booted without problem.

Looks like there was some "twiks" in the BIOS to make it recognize the master hd and (I know my fault) its gone.

Please, help!


Best regards,


Luciano R. Humberto

 

[ramani]

HI
YOur question is not very clear to me.
1. Have you configured the CD (there is a jumper to set that) as slave.
2. Have you connected the CD drive and the 2 GB harddik in one cable under scondary IDE. The $GB HD to be connected as master IDE.

Some harddisk jumpers are so set, that they work as single drive intallation. In that case, you can change it to Master HD status.

3. Have you tried 2GB as master and 4GB as slave unit.. for testing.

NOTE.... SP97_V OF ASUS IS WITH BUILT IN VIDEO AND THAT MOTHER BOARD BY DEFAULT SUPPORT UPTO 2 GB HD ONLY. YOU CAN INSTALL THE BIOS CORRECTION USING EZ DRIVE UTILITY, YOU CAN FIND IN THE HARDDISK MANUFACTURERS SITE. THAT WILL FIX THE BIOS PROBLEM.

Some of these ideas should get you thru. ramani :-9
(Subramanian.G),FoxAcc, ramani_g@yahoo.com

 

[jaeddy]

As ramani said, it sounds like the 4GB drive was using a translation program such as EZ Drive. This usually requires you to manually set a certain drive configuration for your IDE controller to recognize the drive. The WD site should be able to give you the correct settings (you may deed to d/l the pdf of the drive installation instructions to get it).

 

[LuRSH]

Hi folks!

Thanks for your help but this time another guru (David Moore) had the answer.

The problem is not the Asus motherboard (that supports the 4GB HD) but the Western Digital HD itself. This trick creature has to have its jumps removed if its being used as single drive. When I removed the dead CDROM I Installed the new one using the secondary IDE. Naturally I didn't remove the master jumper from the HD (how would I thought of that?). And naturally(?!?) again when I tested the same HD in another system I just used one of the extra connectors in the primary IDE and removed the jumper from the local HD.

So the trick creature worked fine in the new system (with the jumper AND a SLAVE!) and didn't work in it's own old system (with the jumper but WITHOUT a SLAVE!). So something had to be wrong with the motherboard right? WRONG!

Anyway after taking out the jumper (I'm going to have nightmares with jumpers!) the system is working fine with the 4GB HD as master.

Thanks once more!

Best regards,


Luciano R. Humberto