From dsanders@u.washington.edu Fri Sep 17 14:11:53 1999 Received: from jason05.u.washington.edu (root@jason05.u.washington.edu [140.142.78.6]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.09/8.9.3+UW99.08) with ESMTP id OAA66442 for ; Fri, 17 Sep 1999 14:11:51 -0700 Received: from dante30.u.washington.edu (dsanders@dante30.u.washington.edu [140.142.15.212]) by jason05.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.09/8.9.3+UW99.08) with ESMTP id OAA17316 for ; Fri, 17 Sep 1999 14:11:50 -0700 Received: from localhost (dsanders@localhost) by dante30.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.09/8.9.3+UW99.08) with ESMTP id OAA75152 for ; Fri, 17 Sep 1999 14:11:49 -0700 Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1999 14:11:49 -0700 (PDT) From: "D. Sanderson" To: UW Linux Group Subject: Update, Re: Stupid hardware questions In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Many thanks to all for your responses, it's all bringing me a few steps closer to a nice new machine. While most of the problems are still standing, I made a little progress that might shed some light on a couple of things (though maybe not). I was able to suppress the floppy error by disabling "boot up floppy seek" in the BIOS. The manual has a misprint so I don't know exactly what this does; intuitively I've just disabled the check to see if the floppy is working, so this doesn't help me any. The floppy drive still doesn't work, still doesn't light up or anything. I am able to access the CD-ROM drive using DOS and MSCDEX with a Samsung driver I had sitting on my hard drive. Windows can't see a thing. The CD-ROM access light is always on, never goes out, but if I device=driver.sys in config.sys and boot up Command Prompt Only, MSCDEX sets it up just fine. (I was able to copy a needed CAB file for Windows' detecting my new hardware this way; that pesky crashing check for a "Standard PCI video controller" is now gone.) I'll keep messing with it. Please let me know if you have any other ideas. Many thanks! On Fri, 17 Sep 1999, D. Sanderson wrote: > > I feel like I've built enough machines to know what could be wrong, but > I'm stuck. As always, I'm comfortable embarrassing myself in front of > linux@u, so here goes. Three questions follow. > > > Celeron 400, 128MB SDRAM, AGP video card (generic S3), hard drive, 40x > CD-ROM, internal Zip, 3-1/2" floppy. The floppy drive came from a > slightly old machine and was working fine there, but doesn't work here. > The light never comes on, the BIOS always gives a "Floppy Error". > > I checked the obvious things: it's the A drive, after the twist on the > cable, connector's red stripe on pin 1. I've changed the orientation of > the connector twice, the orientation of the connector to the motherboard > twice, and even both orientations of the power connector (though one way > is clearly better just by looking at it). (I'm also used to the floppy > light being *on* without going out when the connector is misoriented, is > that right?) > > The BIOS is set up to acknowledge a 1.44MB 3-1/2" drive as A:, with > "swapping" disabled. > > And of course, it's not a matter of the drive being the first in the boot > order with no system disk. I get the error with a boot disk, and I get > the error with the boot order set to "C, A, SCSI". > > The floppy drive worked with the machine I stole it from, so I don't > *think* it's defective, unless I broke it while installing it. I do have > another floppy drive back-ordered, in case it's specific to the drive. > > Any thoughts? > > > I think I might be able to proceed once the floppy drive is working, but > Windows also isn't accessing the CD-ROM drive. *That* access light is > always on, which bothers me, and I tried flipping the connector, but then > the machine doesn't boot. :) It powers up and is detected by the BIOS, > but the light stays on and Win95 doesn't know there's a CD-ROM drive. > > Any thoughts? > > > And finally, does anyone know if Win95 SR2 knows about AGP video cards? > It keeps trying to install a PCI video driver, and cancelling (because it > can't see the floppy or the CD-ROM drive to look for drivers) crashes the > machine. > > Can I use a PCI video card with an AGP motherboard? (I'd actually prefer > to stick with my ATI All-In-Wonder Pro until I can afford an AGP ATI > All-In-Wonder 128, but I do have a really cheap AGP video card in the mean > time. :) > > > Many thanks for any help you can provide! Sorry if this wasn't enough of > a challenge for ya'. :) > > _____________________________________________________________________ > Dan Sanderson dsanders@u.washington.edu > University of Washington http://students.washington.edu/dsanders > > _____________________________________________________________________ Dan Sanderson dsanders@u.washington.edu University of Washington http://students.washington.edu/dsanders .