HELP!

[Bob Haller]

Hey I must of messed up. Trying to upgrade some a pentium 133 my pupeteer friend has. It ran but the HD, all 850 meg was noisey. So I transplanted a DP HD. Now the computer boots up says no HD, but I can feel it spinning up. T tried putting the original one back in, no go same message. Any idea what I should do?

I do stuff like this for academic interest, to learn something....

Since I had the drive laying on the shelf, and figured it could be useful for something.

Maybe the DP decided to hex me for my unkind comments about it:)

[gcutler]

Bob, look at the jumpers on the Drive and see how they are set (does it say master, cable select, slave or anything like that). It could be that the drive says "Cable Select" when it should be "Master" or something like that. Try and config it like the old drive was (hopefully old and DP drive have good jumper labels) those who have seen the DP drive may have a better guess as to the default config.

Also on the PC when it boots you may have to enter the CMOS and you may have to manually type in the configuation of the drive (cylinders, heads, etc) It may also have the option for Auto detect (or maybe not, hope it does). For the past few years, most of the time you add a drive and the CMOS will auto detect it without having to manually enter drive settings.

[Bob Haller]

Yeah I tried auto detect, no joy. Jumpers are set right. Original drive, another 2 gig drive, and the 8 gig DP drive all get the same error message:(

Thanks for trying.

[Bogy]

Bob, are you absolutely sure that the cables are good and tight at all connections? Also make sure the cable connection to the motherboard is actually on all the right pins. And just for the heck of it, make sure the HD is really connected to the cable you think it is. I'm only bringing these things up, because I've done them myself. When you're changing drives around its all too easy to have a cable come just a little loose without realizing it, or even in a crowded case mix up cables. Oh yeah, and make sure the HD is on the end connection. It's the simplistic stuff that can bite you. Good luck.

[gcutler]

And always remember that the Red colored side of the drive ribbon cable means Pin #1. If both ends are correct (or if both ends are incorrect), then they will match up. But if you have one connection correct and the other reversed then you will never get the drives working. newer drives make it hard to insert cables wrong but plenty from the days of P133s were not so friendly.

[James_F]

Can the motherboard see an 8 gig drive? You might be SOL on that old chipset.

[raj2001]

If the Dishplayer is anything like the UltimateTV, the drive may be locked. I don't know about Dishplayer but I know there is a procedure for unlocking an UltimateTV drive for use in a PC.

http://www.blindsquirrel.org/utv/

Check at the bottom of the page for "reusing the drive in a PC".

If after that procedure your PC only sees 8GB, you may be able to download a utility which fools the BIOS and allows you to access the full capacity of the drive. Of course if you're running Linux the 8GB limitation does not apply, as the Linux kernel overrides the BIOS detection ;)

Also, what sort of cable were you using? If you are using a cable select cable you need to set the jumpers to "cable select" or try a regular IDE cable (better).

[Bogy]

Bob, I am also afraid that on it's own the BIOS will not recognize the full capacity of the drive. However, I was first dealing with the fact that the HD is not recognized at all, regardless of size reported. My understanding is that when you put the original HD back in, it also was not detected, even though you could hear it spin. That is why I would first check the cable connections. After you get the Motherboard to recognize it is connected to a HD, then is the time to start worrying about how big a drive it sees. That will determine what step you take next. My guess is that since you are dealing with a P133, which was using an 850 meg HD, the BIOS will probably detect your drive as a 2.1 gig drive. This in itself would be a big improvement over the old drive, but still a waste of capacity.

First, solve the problem of why the drive is not being detected, then see just what it is detected.

[Bob Haller]

Everything LOOKS ok, I will take the problem to a more experienced friend. I am computer challenged. Yes it spins but doesnt even see the original HD.

Thanks for all the help I will let you know whats up.