stubborn1776

Hello,
I really appreciate this forum. I've dug around the internet and this site, can't find an answer to my admittedly very obscure questions.

I have an old Gateway G333, PII that I gave away but has found its way back to me (just won't go away, apparently)

Sorry for the long story, but in case history is important somehow, thought it better be included here.

It came back because "givee" had foolishly tried to install Windows XP Home (retail) on it. Needless to say, it was sloooow. We moved its 10GB hard drive to an extra P4 tower without a hard drive I had sitting around.

I just took the 80GB Western Digital HD (slave) out of one of my P4's and replaced it with a 200GB and that's perfect.

I thought I'd take the 80GB WD and put it in that PII tower. I used "Move" to take all of the files on the HD to a temp. external on my network. It had maybe three small files left on it when I took it out of the tower. I didn't think to format it there because I thought I would go through a format just prior to the windows install.

I've read a little and realize I might either need to be limited to some kind of ceiling on the HD space the PII will recognize or perhaps, if it's available, flash the BIOS to get it to recognize the whole HD size.

I'm not going to be able to get even that far, because I can't seem to boot from the floppy or CD-ROM drive to get to the point of installing the never used Windows 98SE I have.

I have three different floppy boot disks I've tried. Two I'd made, one from Windows 98, and both I used in the past, albeit it's been about five years ago. Another was a "Universal Boot Disk" from Windows 95. I've also used that disk before.

Both the DVD-ROM and Floppy drives worked on this system when it was "gifted" to the user. They reported not using the floppy drive at all and thought the "CD" drive worked fine; they had installed a printer with the CD disc, etc., but weren't heavy users of it.

I have changed the boot order in BIOS several times and had both the Windows 98SE disk drive and boot disk in the floppy drive each time, or only one of each, with different configurations of the BIOS boot order.

BIOS says:

Under Main
Pentium II
333 MHz
64 MB
BIOS version 4A4LL0X0.15A.0023.P18
Language English
System Time (accurate)
System Date (accurate)
Floppy Options
Hard Disk Pre-Delay 6 seconds
Primary IDE Master [WDC WD800BB-OOCAA1-(PM0]
Primary IDE Slave [None]
Secondary IDE Master [TOSHIBA DVD-ROM SD-M1102-]
SECONDARY IDE Slave [None]

Advanced
Play & Play O/S: [No]
Reset Configuration Data: [No]
Memory Cache: [Enabled]
Cache ECC Support: [Disabled]

>Resource Configuration
>Peripheral Configuration
>Keyboard Configuration
>Video Configuration
>DMI Event Logging



Under Boot
Boot-time Diagnostic Screen: [Enabled]
On Modem Ring: [Stay Off]
On LAN: [Power On]
On PME: [Stay Off]
QuickBoot Mode: [Enabled]
Scan Flash User Area: [Disabled]

First Boot Device: [ATAPI CD-ROM Driv]
Second Boot Device: [Removable Devices]
Third Boot Device: [Hard Drive]
Fourth Boot Device [Network Boot]

>Hard Drive
>Removable Devices

(Note: I changed to Boot-time Diagnostic Screen to "Enabled" midway through my attempts to see if that would slow things down or give more information, but it didn't make a difference)


Under the "Main" Menu, details on the Hard Drive:

Type: [Auto]
CHS Format
Cylinders [16383]
Heads [16]
Sectors [63]
Maximum Capacity 8455 MB
LBA Format
Total Sectors: 156301488
Maximum Capacity: 65535 MB

Multi-Sector Transfers: [16 Sectors]
LBA Mode Control: [Enabled]
Transfer Mode: [FPIO 4 / DMA 2]
Ultra DMA: [Mode 2]

Under the "Main" Menu, details on Secondary IDE Master (Toshiba)
Type: [Auto]
Multi-Sector Transfers: [Disabled]
LBA Mode Control: [Disabled]
Transfer Mode: [FPIO 4 / DMA 2]
Ultra DMA: [Disabled]

Floppy Options
Diskette A: [1.44/1.25 MB 3 1/2"]
Diskette B: [Disabled]
Floppy Write Protect: [Disabled]

I realize I know just enough to be dangerous here. It looks to me from what my admittedly limited knowledge tells me that BIOS is recognizing all three drives, but the HD seems to be smaller than its 80GB capacity.

I don't understand all of the tweaks in BIOS to know if there is some obvious setting here preventing the simple step of getting this thing to boot from one of these drives or not.

I should note that a previously installed wired Ethernet card was removed when we pulled the 10GB HD and I did put it back in at the same time I installed the 80. I will say that my biggest weakness in doing any of this stuff is fear of bending the connectors on stuff. I once had a system not boot after upgrading memory because I hadn't pushed the cards in far enough. (I get a little scared ) For this LAn card, I pushed as hard as I could without going crazy and did hear a little "click". The instructions said "you'll know the card is seated properly when it lines up with flush with the back of the computer case". It did line up, but it was little shy of being able to screw it in and some of the gold was still showing on the edge of the connector area. I thought I had it but now I'm wondering, but wondering why BIOS would see drives if there was some overall connection bugaboo.

Just trying to list all possible variables.

When the computer boots, there's a screen I have a hard time reading because it comes and goes so quickly, but I see something about a DVD but then it moves to the BIOS screen which slows down enough for me to read.
It shows the hard drive with an (0)
Then lists the DVD, the light goes on the DVD drive, but I don't hear any spinning noises, then there's some message that appears immediately under the DVD drive listing, but that goes by too fast to read, then it gives one beep and goes to:

"Operating System not found"

It doesn't seem to even try the floppy, the light does not go on nor do I hear the sound I'm familiar with those always making on boot. I think it may be dead; after several times of using it, I can't put a disk in as there now seems to be an obstruction.

Now finally - yes Finally!

I realize it's possible that on this dinosaur that BOTH the DVD and floppy drives may be dead.

Before I do anymore fun stuff with this old beast, is there anything obvious besides these two drives being dead that I'm overlooking?
Would it make any difference if I swapped the 80 for 200 temporarily, reformatted, and then installed Windows 98, then put it back in the tower?
Or does the BIOS need to be flashed before any of it would work anyway?

Or...is it time to put this old beast out of its misery?

I was just going to use it for a while with an older TV tuner card until we do another computer shuffle (upgrade).

If its time to head Old Bessy for the barn, any good suggestions for what to do with it?

Thanks for anyone's help.

hitech

your 98 probably is not bootable. you will have to install a workable floppy. you will need a 80 wire cable that has a blue end to motherboard for your 80 gig. since you have made a 98 floppy, download the data lifeguard tools 11.0 for dos .exe that will make a bootable floppy. first, you will have to boot to your 98 floppy and at the prompt, type fdisk and delete the primary dos partition. then boot to the data lifeguard and it will setup your drive. then boot to your 98 with cdrom support, sounds like you know how to do the rest. get the data lifeguard from here
http://support.wdc.com/product/downl...id=505&lang=en
hitech

stubborn1776

Thanks for all of your great information, hitech,

I think I follow everything, but just a couple of clarifications:

By

You mean my floppy drive IS dead and that's why it's not bootable, right? Apparently, it's not bootable from the CD-ROM under the current configuration, either, correct?

With this:
Will this take care of the system recognizing the full size of the HD or is this just going to make it bootable?

Thanks again,
stubborn1776

kodi

Your boot order (above post) needs changing to Floppy first,cd second, Hard drive third.
Some 98 install disks were not Bootable i.e. will not auto start.
Modern hard drives require an 80 wire IDE cable (the wide flat one) older hard drives used a 40 wire cable
Have a read of this http://support.microsoft.com/kb/221829

hitech

I believe your floppy is dead because you said the disk will not go in all the way
The 80 wire cable will not change the fact that the bios does not recconize the correct size
the data lifeguard disk setup will bypass the bios reading of the drive, but it will not setup if there is already a partition on the drive. that is why you have to use fdisk to delete the partition on the drive. if the drive had a ntfs on it, you will have to delete the non-dos partition
http://oldfiles.org.uk/powerload/fdisk.htm
enter 4 to display your partition information, then escape to get back to the choices of deleting the partition.
hitech

linderman

bios & hard drives during the PII days were limited to ????? cant remember ..... 4gig partitions ...... the bios will give you all kinds of throuble with such a large drive

your best bet by FAR would be to use a PCI slot IDE controller card ....... you could boot into the controller card and use the bigger drives .............. some of these controller cards can be found for as little as $20.00

I can remember during that era ......... 9 gig drives were huge .......

blah789

I think one of the suggestions above is right when they said to switch to floppy.
When you select "removable drive" it usually refers to a ZIP drive, or superdisk drive.

How much of the 80GB drive was recognized? I'm not even sure all the 80GB could be recognized. The lines
suggest the maximum capacity is 64GB. Although for whatever reason your drive has around 8GB detected.
The old capacity limit in those days was 32GB. You had to flash the BIOS to get it to recognize drives over 32GB. If you couldn't do so, you would place a jumper in the back of the drive to force it act like a 32GB drive. The jumper was called CLJ (cylinder limitation jumper). On some drives (hitachi) it might be called 32GB cap. Look at the documentation for your drive. I see the page for the WD800BB is here
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=10
If you click specifications, then look on the bottom left, you should find a few manuals in pdf format. One of them is sure to have jumper settings.

linderman

an add on pci slot IDE controller would fix that ...... they have their own up to date bios