| Author |
Topic |
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shaktiman
Senior Member
United Kingdom
1226 Posts |
 Posted - 29 Aug 2003 : 09:17:07
I tried to put my old pc back together, It powered up but wouldn't access the floppy drive. It did spin a disk in the cd drive. Why did I put it back together, I was toying with the idea because I have alot of bits ie:- 4 cd rom drives
4 hard drives
floppy drive
pci USB card
& all the other bits which make a pc, so would be cool as a machine to run some old dos games, GemPC, Gemulator(which would need Win 95) Any ideas why it wouldn't access the floppy? power light came on. shaktiman Quadra 840av, prettymuchmaxedout8xcd drive
os 8.1
128 meg ram, 500 meg hard drive
3 monitors 15" & 14" & 14" |
q950
Junior Member
USA
135 Posts |
Posted - 29 Aug 2003 : 10:01:42
I'll bet that you put the floppy cable on backwards somewhere. I remember that if you do that, the light on the floppy will stay solid. Speaking of HD's you should see my PC, and old Micron Millenia from 1997 that I uber-upgraded with 5 SCSI HD's, a tape, and 3 CD's. We're talking 100 gigs of pure fast SCSI storage over five disks. Whats great is I still use it and it talks well with my Macs.Logan Quadra 950, Workgroup Server 9150, Performa 6400, Powerbook 2300c, 4x Quadra 700's, iBook |
cory5412
68KMLA Comrade-in-Arms
USA
4679 Posts |
Posted - 29 Aug 2003 : 10:24:01
IDE only supports two drives per bus, most mobos have two busses and most pci/isa cards have one or two...four hdds and four cdrom's would mean the mobo, and three cards just for IDE controllers! EEP! I was going to put several smaller IDE hdds in my server, but I don't know where any of them are. Official 68k videographer
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shaktiman
Senior Member
United Kingdom
1226 Posts |
Posted - 29 Aug 2003 : 12:12:38
I tried the floppy cable all the different ways I could. The drives are scsi old standard 50 pin. Having said that there is another cable connector which is shorter than the scsi & I am guessing this is ide. I don't have any ide drives just scsi. What is an isa slot? would it hold the cpu card? & what else could go in an isa slot? & is an ise slot having space for four slots ie: cardpins cardpins cardpins cardpins
slot slot slot slot shaktiman Quadra 840av, prettymuchmaxedout8xcd drive
os 8.1
128 meg ram, 500 meg hard drive
3 monitors 15" & 14" & 14" |
maclover5
LC Doctor/Hot Rodder
Australia
5830 Posts |
Posted - 29 Aug 2003 : 14:03:24
1. The processor goes into its own slot. I believe that your description of this machine that you have posted before sounds like a Pentium 1. Those fit into a Socket 7 socket on the motherboard.2. Yeah, i think that that shorter cable is the IDE cable, too. Sure you haven't got any spare SCSI cables? 3. ISA slots can be used for lots of things. Video cards, IO cards, ethernet cards, sound cards, SCSI cards, lots of things. "**** em" - Jobs in regards to customers
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Gothikon
Full Member
Australia
537 Posts |
Posted - 29 Aug 2003 : 16:27:17
I still reckon you have the floppy drive cable the wrong way around. Another option is that it has been disabled in the BIOS. When you turn your computer on it will tell you what button to hold down to get in to the BIOS, you can then turn it back on.ISA slots are a little like nubus slots. The biq square socket which probably has the chip in it is probably a socket 7 and is like a macs processor slot, although almost identical CPU mounting methods are used in the Beige and blue and white G3. ISA slots are black, PCI slots are the same as the white (might not be white if you have a cool mobo in your new PC) in your new PC. ISA slots are black and a bit larger all around, VESA slots are black with a brown bit on the end, like 2 connectors edge to edge. As Cory said each IDE channel will only support 2 drives. IDE cables are 40 wire or 80 wire but use 40 pin connectors (other 40 wires are for shielding) so they are like SSCSI cables but thinner. I wouldn't put 2 HDs on the same channel as IDE is pretty crap compared to SCSI so probably put one HD and one CD on each channel for best performance. Anyway sounds like you need a cheap SCSI card for your machine, go for PCI if you can it's much faster than ISA. --------
LC 2, LC 3, Q605, Perf 638, Colour Classic (160 603e) 6100, 7200, PTP 225 (Quad 604), PM 9600, G4 Cube |
cory5412
68KMLA Comrade-in-Arms
USA
4679 Posts |
Posted - 29 Aug 2003 : 18:32:35
yeah, why would you need 4 HDDs anyway?are you making a ServBox? that would be perfect actually... get NT4 server you could share CDs and your HDDs and have files for each persona nd such  get a few more old PCs and run NT4 workstation as well Official 68k videographer
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The Lightning Stalker
Full Member
USA
747 Posts |
Posted - 29 Aug 2003 : 19:49:40
About the floppy drive, like Gothikon said, it could be something in the BIOS setup. Also, it could be that you just have a bad floppy cable or drive itself, or sometimes even the controller on the motherboard goes bad.
quote:
ISA slots are black
Not always. I've seen white ones, but the dead giveaway here is that they're longer than PCI slots and the pins are bigger. The thing about ISA slots is that you don't want to use them if you can get away with it. Say you only have an ISA network card, go ahead and use it. But if you have a PCI and an ISA to choose from, go with the PCI, because it's most likely 10/100 and it will be faster. If a PC has PCI slots, *never* use an ISA video card. If you don't have a PCI video card, buy one. They're real chep nowadays and way better than the ISA. Just don't put a Voodoo in there unless it's at least a Pentium II or you'll be wasting your money.The Lightning Stalker Performa 631CD, 7.5.5
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The Balance Of Judgement
Senior Member
Ivory Coast
1006 Posts |
Posted - 30 Aug 2003 : 02:31:57
One way to bottleneck and kill a system is by using ISA graphics.Sound cards and LAN cards are not as bad when used in ISA slots, most users won't notice the difference.
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Unknown_K
Full Member
USA
602 Posts |
Posted - 30 Aug 2003 : 07:29:19
An old PCI Riva 128 (Nvidia chipset before the TNT) 4mb video card is great for older dos games since it supports VESA up to and including 3.0 in hardware. I have one in my p200mmx machine.
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shaktiman
Senior Member
United Kingdom
1226 Posts |
Posted - 30 Aug 2003 : 13:17:23
What I have is;A base board(motherboard) this has the following slots; 3 long brown slots with the 4 spaces.
2 pci slots(Have a graphics card & a USB card)
another long brown slot again with 4 spaces. quote:
1. The processor goes into its own slot. I believe that your description of this machine that you have posted before sounds like a Pentium 1. Those fit into a Socket 7 socket on the motherboard.
a Pentium 1 I believe yes. quote:
2. Yeah, i think that that shorter cable is the IDE cable, too. Sure you haven't got any spare SCSI cables?
Confusion appears to have arisen, I am using scsi cabling. quote:
yeah, why would you need 4 HDDs anyway?are you making a ServBox? that would be perfect actually... get NT4 server you could share CDs and your HDDs and have files for each persona nd such get a few more old PCs and run NT4 workstation as well
To utilise my old drives & why not have one os for each drive? I could have buggered the floppy drive, cos I plugged it into the "suspected" ide slot! I know I couldn't believe the stupidity either. He Ho I will try it again, maybe the floppy drive wont stay mad at me for too long.     shaktiman Quadra 840av, prettymuchmaxedout8xcd drive
os 8.1
128 meg ram, 500 meg hard drive
3 monitors 15" & 14" & 14" |
cory5412
68KMLA Comrade-in-Arms
USA
4679 Posts |
Posted - 30 Aug 2003 : 19:44:37
the long brown slots are ISA slots, interesting little dealiesYou could do that, if you're comfortable with swapping IDE cables every time you want a different OS, or doing some very "interesting" bootloader setting up of. Official 68k videographer
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geekwurkz
Junior Member
USA
156 Posts |
Posted - 30 Aug 2003 : 20:00:53
If the one brown slot is a bit shorter than the other two, and the proc's ZIF socket is labled "Super 7" then you may have an AGP slot on the board. If so, grab yourself an ATI RAGE II+ w/ TV out... It's one of the best old video cards around. (The PCI version is generally overkill though)-------------------------
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cory5412
68KMLA Comrade-in-Arms
USA
4679 Posts |
Posted - 31 Aug 2003 : 19:07:02
I have an ATi Mach64 PCi that I really like... it's a pretty good video card, compatible with just about everything Official 68k videographer
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Gothikon
Full Member
Australia
537 Posts |
Posted - 01 Sep 2003 : 03:29:39
If most of the brown slots are on one side of the PCI slots and there is only one smaller brown slot on the other side of the PCI slots it is almost certainly AGP. This is good because you can use a decent video card. Cheap 3DFx cards are good, try and get a VooDoo3 newer ones cost more and all are overkill for this machine, older ones require a seperate video card dedicated for 2D.You can actually get emulators that emulate slow PCs on a new PC to play older games so unless you need the old PC you could probably just chuck it. Dual booting on a PC is a hassle, I certainly wouldn't bother with multiple versions of Windows, Win 95 and Dos will be plenty for older games. --------
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old pc
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