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Home / WebSurfer Areas / WebSurfer Technical Stuff Cut me some slack? Help!

Cut me some slack? (modified 0 times) narfinpoo I read almost all the posts on here and I'm still confused on a few things. I know I need a 2.5->3.5 connector to connect a laptop harddrive to my desktop to prep it, but I have 3 WS's, so am I going to need to buy one of those connectors to go from the ISA IDE Controller card that I add to the laptop harddrive for every WS? I guess what I'm trying to say is do I have to buy 3 of those connectors for 3 WS's? I see lots of different posts about some people using a regular desktop harddrive and others using a laptop harddrive but nothing about different types of cables and different types of power supply connectors. What are the advantages/disadvantes of using a laptopHD instead of a desktopHD and vice versa. Right now I have envisioned in my head I'm going to go from... ISAControllerCard -> Common IDEATA33 Cable -> 2.5to3.5 adaptor -> laptop ide cable? -> laptopHardDrive I have a bunch of power cables laying around I bought from radio shack, I'm hoping that when I splice the wires coming from the powersupply(you just match color for color, solder then use some heatsync right?) to the motherboard that it will fit into the laptop harddrive and there is no special laptop power cable. Also, when do you flash the bios? I probably look like the biggest moron on the board since it looks like everyone did what needed to be done without a flinch of hesitation, but better safe that sorry right? Thanks in advance. -Narf 06-05-2000 04:59:40

RE:Cut me some slack? (modified 0 times) ckbone Look.....you only need one 2 1/2-3 1/2 converter if you are going to use a laptop drive. The controller uses a std IDE cable...which would go from the controller to the laptop drive, with the attached converter. Dalco.com. has those converters for about$4. People use laptop drives in the Surfer because they fit better...they usually cost more, however. 06-05-2000 08:37:22

RE:Cut me some slack? (modified 0 times) gr8_brit OK a simpler explantion (like your post): for a laptop (2.5" drive) ISAControllerCard -> Common IDEATA33 Cable -> 3.5 to 2.5 adaptor -> laptopHardDrive For a regular (3.5" drive) ISAControllerCard -> Common IDEATA33 Cable -> 3.5" HardDrive The advantages? Laptop drive: smaller doesn't screw use of additional cards (if you use the mod kit 1) less chance of shorting drive to the rest of the unit Regular drives: Cheaper bigger (capacity) Personally I'd go for the laptop drive. As for the number of adapters... YES you will need one per WS The 2.5" adaptors usually have a female (socket) 5.25" drive power connector. Buy a "Y" splitter from Radio Shack and remove one connector to suit then solder the wires to the PSU end of the power cable, Colour to colour - yellow/Yellow, Red/Red, Black/black. If your tidy enough, you won't need heatshrink. The Bios only needs to be flashed to get the PCI bus to work properly. If your IDE card is an ISA one, you can use the stock WS bios. If you want PCI then use newbios.bin and for PCI and on-board IDE you need newbiosm.bin. Cheers, gr8_brit 06-05-2000 10:14:42

RE:Cut me some slack? (modified 0 times) ckbone You could also buy a cheap Quantum Bigfoot drive off EBay.....They fit just fine.... See previous posts on the subject. My 8 gig drive cost me $80 brand new. I'm surprised more people don't use them. 06-05-2000 14:42:19

RE:Cut me some slack? (modified 0 times) dcarlin The Dalco ones don't work so hot with the web surfer. They block the second DIMM slot since they stick out so far off the end of the drive. That's the only thing they obstruct. Just something to keep in mind. 06-05-2000 15:06:08

RE:Cut me some slack? (modified 0 times) narfinpoo I'm back =/ I loaded up everything needed on my WS from my desktop using the 2.5-3.5 adaptor, then put my CUSAISAIDE Controller card in and it recognized it and booted it just fine after resetting the bios to default and turning off the primary ide controller. So then I'm at the c:\ prompt and smiling from eartoear with a false sense of security sense everything went without a hitch.. my only beef was that it seemed everytime the hdd gets accessed there is inteference to the video, "flickering"... I fugured that was common and just went on. Then the real problems started... I went into win98 the directory that I had copied over from the 98se cd, and ran 'setup', scandisk did its thing, no errors, then it said... Copying files needed for windows setup... unable to load vga.drv unable to load msmouse.drv then it just hung. so after crying a little bit I rebooted and tried again, this time I got Copying files needed for windows setup... unable to load gdi.exe froze again... I tried about 8 more times and it kept alternating between those two messages.. so I plugged it back up to my desktop as the only hdd connected and it booted up fine... ran setup and it went through without a hitch... so why would it not work on the ws but work fine on the desktop? ram maybe? I copied a nesemu over to the drive and a smb rom, hooked it back up to the ws, it booted up into dos perfect, I ran the emu and played smb for awhile. Then I got steamed and hooked it back up to the desktop, fdisked/formatted the drive, copied over the win95osr2 install dir and plugged it back up to the ws. Does the same this as win98se did, gets to the copying files part and hangs with either vga.drv or msmouse.drv error... hooked it back up the the desktop and 95osr2 install ran perfect. WHY?! Please help. Also, this 2.5->3.5 adaptor isn't mine, I borrowed it from a friend, so where could I get more of them for a good price, and what type of RAM works best in these, I'm looking for a 32mb. Thanks again. Hopefully my stupid posts will at least keep someone else from looking like a moron, I can't be the only one having these probs. Oh yeah I tried the halfinstallondesktop/otherhalfonws method after reading some more posts and I get a "msgsvr32" error when the install continues. Why me? =( 06-07-2000 06:09:09

RE:Cut me some slack? (modified 0 times) *StarFish* Have You removed your DOC (Disk on Chip) 06-07-2000 09:19:07

RE:Cut me some slack? (modified 0 times) narfinpoo Yes, tried with and without DOC in the socket. I also tried doing the full install on the desktop then putting it in the WS... it just went in a endless scanreg/reboot loop. 06-07-2000 13:04:58

RE:Cut me some slack? (modified 0 times) Wahoone ? Are you using 98lite slim? 1st time trying to install using 98lite I used Chubby had no problem. Performance was't that great because of all the bull Micro$oft likes to install. So I went to try and install using 98lite Slim. I then ran into some of the problems you have especially <Copying files needed for windows setup... unable to load gdi.exe> I don't know how many times I tried this but I kept this error mostly and another error, I forget what it was. I was about to give up and then just install DOS & Linux when I got to thinking! The drive was formatted FAT-32, 98Lite Slim uses some files from Win95. Made sure I formatted FAT-16 and had no problems installing. I have CrapUSA IDE controller card. Linksys LNE100TXFast Ethernet Adapter 8.4 gig Maxtor 48Meg of Ram (16+32 I bought for 30 bucks locally) Overclocked to 233 with 2 extra fans from Pentium processor (Doesn't overheat).Bios all I did was disable onboard IDE & USB (don't need and slows ya down) Flashed to NewBios.bin to help with PCI. Install connectors for Mic In, Line out & speaker out(Not the RCA type Plugs), still debating about doing onboard IDE (any advantage any besides more room and available isa slot) Last but no least no DOC. 06-07-2000 13:56:50

RE:Cut me some slack? (modified 0 times) Wahoone narfinpoo, P.S. I originally tried installing with an older harddrive with a few bad clusters I didn't know I had it was formatted FAT-32 & was trying 98Lite Slim and it wouldn't install. Formatted Fat-16 it installed Ok. But wouldn't let me convert it to Fat-32 afterwards because of bad clusters + Using 98Lite Slim 06-07-2000 14:13:58

RE:Cut me some slack? (modified 0 times) ckbone I'm not sure if you said anything about it, but......Win98 usually will not install with only 16mb of ram. You'll get a number of strange symptoms. 32mb works fine....but 64 mb is considered a bare minimum for the system. 06-08-2000 02:48:57

RE:Cut me some slack? (modified 0 times) narfinpoo OK now this is really making me mad... I tried all these configurations... Hooked the Hitachi 2.5mm 12gig to the desktop using the 2.5->3.5 connector, booted using a win98startupdisk and formatted the drive FAT32, sys'd it, copied over HIMEM.sys and added it to the config.sys, then copied over the win98 install directory from the cd, then rebooted it to make sure it would reboot and himem.sys loaded correctly. Came up right to the DOS prompt. Then I hooked it up to the WS using a CompUSA EIDE card exact same SKU and jumper config as the one on http://www.geocities.com/wehackem/ Got into the BIOS and clicked restore default, and disabled the primary IDE controller. Then rebooted back into the BIOS and detected the HD fine, rebooted a third time and it went right into the dos prompt perfect... went into the win98 install dir and typed setup, scandisk went perfect, then right after it said "Copying files needed for windows setup" it said "Unable to load gdi.exe" and died. Tried the above with no DOC in... same error. Tried the above config with a 64mb pc100 sdram dimm in the WS and it's detected in the bios... same error in gdi.exe. And with the DOC in, same error. So then I figured its not a DOC or insufficient RAM issue... I tried to format the drive FAT16 and copied everything over and repeated the entire process with the same ####ty result (repeated the in/out RAM/DOC). After doing all these steps 3 times I decided to hook it up to the desktop in desperation, ran setup, installed fine, started up fine. The only things I have left to try is that 98lite slim thing, flashing the bios using one of the new bios bins, and trying a 3.5 desktop harddrive. It's not my drive/install software because it does fine on the desktop. It has to have something to do with the websurfer's BIOS settings or maybe the EIDE controller card... if anyone else has any suggestions.. please tell. Guess the next step is making an ebay account =/ 06-08-2000 16:24:08

RE:Cut me some slack? (modified 0 times) luciddreams Aloha, your problem lies in using HIMEM.sys... for some reason the windows setup programs don't like it on the websurfer. Hope that helps. Mohalo, lucid dreams http://www.dreamlogic.org/IAReference 06-08-2000 17:40:12

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