Hi List Members,

Hard Disk controller issue-UPDATE
On Gateway 2000   486 33dx 1990 machine with 212 mb and 2 gig caviar HD
with a boot 5 inch and second floppy 3 inch


Thanks to the 2 people who tried to help me with the HD controller issue.
One man gave me  the idea of an SIIG card, while another commented on the
battery.  I went for the battery first.  Bear in mind I  had by this time removed all floppy
and hard drives.  Pulled it out Saturday , and replaced it Sunday and started putting machine
back together.  The guy I bought the battery form tested the 4.5volt battery and it read at 2.7
Before I put the new battery in, I turned machine on and it saved the bios settings—
something I thought it was supposed to delete without the battery.  Put the battery in.
Put the 3-inch floppy in and then the 5-inch—I wanted to make the small one the boot.
So reversed them on the ribbon and put the small s floppy 1 on bios and large as floppy 2.
Then I restored my 212mb HD.  I got the controller error again.  Apparently it is not enough to follow
master slave settings but you also have to be aware if it is the only hd or if there is a slave.
On this one master alone you put the jumpers in under MA and if there will be a slave
you leave off all jumpers.  So that problem remedied. So I put the second HD in.
This is also a caviar but this was 2 gig..  Type its drive letter and I get invalid specification.
I even try it as a master on the second IDE.  I got the same result.  It could not be gotten to
in dos or win 3.11.  Upon boot up I also had EZ error.  So even though it is not required for the
212, I put it on that.  That error was now taken care of.  Though when I ran the EZ installer a second time, it still showed an error  about installing, and still did a full install.  I removed the 2 gig and put in 1 gig seagate that was recently given to me.  I still had the same problem , if I put it on as slave or master on the IDE 2.  Gateway book says it would accept up to 2 gig, so I do not understand hat is happening.
When I ran the EZ, it did show the second drive there—not under the seagate name, but under the name
of the company Seagate took Over which is  Connors Peripherals.  I was thinking that maybe I should try running the EZ installer on  both that 2 gig and 1 gig HD to see if the machine will recognize it even though
the EZ claims to only be for the Caviar while the Seagate guy said it is merely an overlay and I should try it.  The Seagate guy also directed me to legacy software when he could not find my model number in his
database ( due to its age).

So problem #1 is second HD not being recognized anymore

Problem #2 has to do with a cd-rom.  I had attempted installing a cd-rom with drivers that came off o drivers web page.  It seemed to work, however, if  the machine got hung up  in the boot process with it, it stopped booting, and I would have to reboot a couple of times to get through the process.  So when someone need a cd rom on a modern computer I gave it to them, and it works fine with their plug and play.  I
then was given a gateway cd-rom originally form a gateway p5-60 –1994 machine.  SO I had hoped a cd rom only 4 years older than my machine would be more compatible.  Doesn’t look that way
Drivers installed into dos and windows director and modified auto and config.  Upon boot up it would hang, but unlike the other one it at least let me finish booting to DOS, but I get the error about cd rom devices.  So just to see what would happen I put the win 98  boot disk   without the 98 cd and it tried to
download the drivers but errored on the first and then seemed to try to download just dos drivers.
This attempt did not succeed, so I tried with the Win 95-boot disk.  That asked me to I want nec driver, hitachi, toshiba, so I picked the Nec, it installed and I was able to do a director when I then subsequently put in the win 95 cd.  Since I saw it I said why not try installing it—I knew my machine did not have all the required specifications so it  terminated with a long explanation and error of –1.
When I rebooted I no longer was able to see the cd rom, and when I did a directory,
there were no cd rom drivers.

So problem 2—Installing the cd rom

Problem 3 – since win 3.11 does not delete DOS, can I install the dos an boot drive
and windows on second drive?

                         PCBUILD's List Owners:
                      Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]>
                       Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]>