Hi,
I'm not expert with linux but I've put a few boxes together.
I think the problem may be the 2 slaves on IDE Channel 2. I think each IDE channel needs to have one master.
Good luck.
Adrian Kiddle
----- Original Message ----- From: "Anthony Anson" tony.anson@zetnet.co.uk To: Main@lists.alug.org.uk Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2005 10:01 PM Subject: [ALUG] Sorry about the swearing...
Before you pass on to the next item, the Linux issue appears shortly...
I've just put a box together (AMD 900, nine hundred and mumble mumble MB
RAM).
IDE Channel 1: HD0 (master) and CD/DVD-RW (slave), cable detect IDE Channel 2: HD1 and Zip100 - both slave - not cable-detect.
On 10/13/05, Adrian Kiddle adrian@quinto.freeserve.co.uk wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: "Anthony Anson" tony.anson@zetnet.co.uk To: Main@lists.alug.org.uk Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2005 10:01 PM Subject: [ALUG] Sorry about the swearing...
Before you pass on to the next item, the Linux issue appears shortly...
I've just put a box together (AMD 900, nine hundred and mumble mumble MB
RAM).
IDE Channel 1: HD0 (master) and CD/DVD-RW (slave), cable detect IDE Channel 2: HD1 and Zip100 - both slave - not cable-detect.
I think the problem may be the 2 slaves on IDE Channel 2. I think each IDE channel needs to have one master.
Well spotted. My old Zip100 drive was very reluctant to work with any other device on an IDE channel, and, when I upgraded to a CDRW drive, I was happy to get rid of the Zip drive in exchange for a couple of bottles of beer.
Anthony> Do you really need the Zip100 drive? DVDRW is very affordable now and you get 4GB to a standard disk (which equals 40 Zip100 disks!).
Tim.
IDE Channel 1: HD0 (master) and CD/DVD-RW (slave), cable detect IDE Channel 2: HD1 and Zip100 - both slave - not cable-detect.
I think the problem may be the 2 slaves on IDE Channel 2. I think each IDE channel needs to have one master.
Well spotted. My old Zip100 drive was very reluctant to work with any other device on an IDE channel, and, when I upgraded to a CDRW drive, I was happy to get rid of the Zip drive in exchange for a couple of bottles of beer.
Anthony> Do you really need the Zip100 drive? DVDRW is very affordable now and you get 4GB to a standard disk (which equals 40 Zip100 disks!).
The upside of Zip drives are their nice disk speed, which cdrw does not give you - however, flash memory is also a potential replacement...
JT
The message 434E1AB8.10402@stealthnet.net from James Taylor james.taylor@stealthnet.net contains these words:
The upside of Zip drives are their nice disk speed, which cdrw does not give you - however, flash memory is also a potential replacement...
AKA memory stick? Now have a small one of they.
The message 54874100510130124q4ff131a3s75cb9495dcce32ab@mail.gmail.com from Tim Green timothy.j.green@gmail.com contains these words:
Well spotted. My old Zip100 drive was very reluctant to work with any other device on an IDE channel, and, when I upgraded to a CDRW drive, I was happy to get rid of the Zip drive in exchange for a couple of bottles of beer.
Hum - it was working OK in the previous incarnation of that box (PIII-450)
Anthony> Do you really need the Zip100 drive? DVDRW is very affordable now and you get 4GB to a standard disk (which equals 40 Zip100 disks!).
I have DVD-RW in the box, but I use the zip a lot for editing text and jpegs, though I transfer stuff now with a memory stick. I suppose it's not *ESSENTIAL*, but it's handy. I suppose (since HD0 and HD1 are both in caddies, I could use HD1 as a FO big zip drive...
I do have a SCSI zip I could try instead, though.
The message 002301c5cf88$e9755590$b9364d51@bartonsbyi3pwy from "Adrian Kiddle" adrian@quinto.freeserve.co.uk contains these words:
I'm not expert with linux but I've put a few boxes together.
I think the problem may be the 2 slaves on IDE Channel 2. I think each IDE channel needs to have one master.
Well, I made the HD (HD1) master first time round, and the Zip wouldn't work properly - it would *SEEM* to be fine, but I think it must have been doing everything in RAM, 'cos it would view/edit so many files (mainly jpegs), then the system would chunter away to itself, transferring chat betwen zip and the HDs. This took upwards of five minutes, and then everything would burst into life again.
Changing HD1 from master to slave fixed that problem...
On Thursday 13 October 2005 10:15, Anthony Anson wrote:
The message 002301c5cf88$e9755590$b9364d51@bartonsbyi3pwy
from "Adrian Kiddle" adrian@quinto.freeserve.co.uk contains these words:
I'm not expert with linux but I've put a few boxes together.
I think the problem may be the 2 slaves on IDE Channel 2. I think each IDE channel needs to have one master.
Well, I made the HD (HD1) master first time round, and the Zip wouldn't work properly - it would *SEEM* to be fine, but I think it must have been doing everything in RAM, 'cos it would view/edit so many files (mainly jpegs), then the system would chunter away to itself, transferring chat betwen zip and the HDs. This took upwards of five minutes, and then everything would burst into life again.
Changing HD1 from master to slave fixed that problem...
Can you set all the IDE devices to "cable select"? I don't normally do this myself in normal running, but it would let the devices sort out amongst themselves how they'd like to operate - a useful debugging step I think.
Matt
The message 200510131030.08097.matt@mpcontracting.co.uk from Matt Parker matt@mpcontracting.co.uk contains these words:
Can you set all the IDE devices to "cable select"? I don't normally do this myself in normal running, but it would let the devices sort out amongst themselves how they'd like to operate - a useful debugging step I think.
Do you mean make-up another cable, or just use ordinary IDE unmodified cables and set the devices to cable-select?
If it rearranges things to its satisfaction, it might reallocate C: and not want to boot...
On Thursday 13 October 2005 10:49, Anthony Anson wrote:
The message 200510131030.08097.matt@mpcontracting.co.uk
from Matt Parker matt@mpcontracting.co.uk contains these words:
Can you set all the IDE devices to "cable select"? I don't normally do this myself in normal running, but it would let the devices sort out amongst themselves how they'd like to operate - a useful debugging step I think.
Do you mean make-up another cable, or just use ordinary IDE unmodified cables and set the devices to cable-select?
If it rearranges things to its satisfaction, it might reallocate C: and not want to boot...
On the jumpers on the drives you should see M/S/CS (master/slave/cable select). This will mean that the devices negotiate their IDE master/slave status between themselves automatically. You'll need to set all the channels to "auto" in the BIOS as well.
If you make sure the bootable HD is on IDE channel 1 (physically, on the motherboard) then that should automatically be picked as the boot device.
No new cables required.
Matt
Matt Parker wrote:
On the jumpers on the drives you should see M/S/CS (master/slave/cable select). This will mean that the devices negotiate their IDE master/slave status between themselves automatically. You'll need to set all the channels to "auto" in the BIOS as well.
Note that for CS to work: - All drives must support it, and have it selected - The motherboard must support it - The IDE cable must support it
At the first sign of trouble (and I usually don't even wait for that ) I always scrap CS and specify M/S as desired.
Also note that some drives differentiate between "master - only drive" and "master - slave present", so check those jumpers.
Symptoms of getting it wrong are not usually as simple as "it doesn't work". Sometimes it'll half-boot, sometimes the drives types (eg manufacturer details) will be shown as garbage in the BIOS screens, sometimes it'll work - and all those symptoms can apply to the same PC with the same hardware.
On the jumpers on the drives you should see M/S/CS (master/slave/cable select). This will mean that the devices negotiate their IDE master/slave status between themselves automatically. You'll need to set all the channels to "auto" in the BIOS as well.
Note that for CS to work:
- All drives must support it, and have it selected
- The motherboard must support it
- The IDE cable must support it
At the first sign of trouble (and I usually don't even wait for that ) I always scrap CS and specify M/S as desired.
Also note that some drives differentiate between "master - only drive" and "master - slave present", so check those jumpers.
Symptoms of getting it wrong are not usually as simple as "it doesn't work". Sometimes it'll half-boot, sometimes the drives types (eg manufacturer details) will be shown as garbage in the BIOS screens, sometimes it'll work - and all those symptoms can apply to the same PC with the same hardware.
This is very much a hardware dependant problem - you'll find examples where you have a controller and hard drive set where one can be set to master and the other set to cable select, and never have any problems with it - however that may be a rarer coiincidence then anything else.
Garbage on bios can also be caused by other problems, especially power supply problems, where the system asks the drive what it is, and there is a surge or a drop in power, the return value can get munged - I've had that happen before when drawing a ermm little too much at once...
JT
The message 434E5540.2050508@stealthnet.net from James Taylor james.taylor@stealthnet.net contains these words:
Garbage on bios can also be caused by other problems, especially power supply problems, where the system asks the drive what it is, and there is a surge or a drop in power, the return value can get munged - I've had that happen before when drawing a ermm little too much at once...
I run through a UPS, so there shouldn't be a problem on that side, and the PSU is rated at 130 watts, which I'm informed, should be enough.
On Thu, Oct 13, 2005 at 03:00:18PM +0100, Anthony Anson wrote:
The message 434E5540.2050508@stealthnet.net from James Taylor james.taylor@stealthnet.net contains these words:
Garbage on bios can also be caused by other problems, especially power supply problems, where the system asks the drive what it is, and there is a surge or a drop in power, the return value can get munged - I've had that happen before when drawing a ermm little too much at once...
I run through a UPS, so there shouldn't be a problem on that side, and the PSU is rated at 130 watts, which I'm informed, should be enough.
130W for 4 hard drives, a CD/DVD-RW, a Zip 100 and an AMD 900 (wasn't that back when they ran pretty hot?) doesn't seem an awful lot. Is this a typo?
J.
The message 20051013142107.GN26521@earth.li from Jonathan McDowell noodles@earth.li contains these words:
130W for 4 hard drives, a CD/DVD-RW, a Zip 100 and an AMD 900 (wasn't that back when they ran pretty hot?) doesn't seem an awful lot. Is this a typo?
No, not a typo. I thought it was rather small myself, but it used to run:
2 × IDE HDs 2 × SCSI II HDs 2 × UW SCSI HDs Zip100 3œ" floppy 5Œ" floppy CD ROM ISA (hardware) modem Notwork card Soundcard video card
And it was put together by an experienced PC molisher with a good reputation.
I have several PSUs - two of them suspect - I think a rogue zip drive might have zapped them - and 130 watts is the beefiest.
If you want to see puny PSUs, open a Tiny...
On Thu, Oct 13, 2005 at 04:02:24PM +0100, Anthony Anson wrote:
The message 20051013142107.GN26521@earth.li from Jonathan McDowell noodles@earth.li contains these words: 2 × IDE HDs 2 × SCSI II HDs 2 × UW SCSI HDs 3½" floppy 5¼" floppy
Is ZIMACS the mail program you beta test btw? Can I suggest you file a bug about the fact it doesn't seem to insert a Content-Type header, so the above 1/2, 1/4 and x all failed to display in my mail client (as I'm in UTF-8 and you appear to be in latin1)?
J.
On Thursday 13 October 2005 17:16, Jonathan McDowell wrote:
On Thu, Oct 13, 2005 at 04:02:24PM +0100, Anthony Anson wrote:
The message 20051013142107.GN26521@earth.li from Jonathan McDowell noodles@earth.li contains these words: 2 × IDE HDs 2 × SCSI II HDs 2 × UW SCSI HDs 3½" floppy 5¼" floppy
Is ZIMACS the mail program you beta test btw? Can I suggest you file a bug about the fact it doesn't seem to insert a Content-Type header, so the above 1/2, 1/4 and x all failed to display in my mail client (as I'm in UTF-8 and you appear to be in latin1)?
J.
I see the same problem here (KMail 1.8). I see the characters OK above, but got square boxes on the original e-mail.
Matt
Anthony Anson wrote:
No, not a typo. I thought it was rather small myself, but it used to run: [..snip..]
A good 130W PSU is worth much more than the cheapo 350W PSUs found in a typical budget PC (eg the type where the case with PSU cost less than £10). So 130W is probably OK if everything has been properly calculated. But it's one of the first (and easiest) things to rule out when problems occur. I've seen functional but unreliable PCs become rock-solid when replacing a cheap 500W PSU with a good 350W model. (Much the same effect you get when replacing an expensive proprietary OS with a free OSS alternative, come to think of it).
The use of memtest86 (as suggested elsewhere) coupled with testing with a decent replacement PSU narrows down a surprising number of faults. In fact, faults which don't show themselves from one of these two, and persist past an OS reinstall, are often more trouble to fix than they're worth. IME anyway.
On Thu, 2005-10-13 at 18:09 +0100, Mark Rogers wrote:
A good 130W PSU is worth much more than the cheapo 350W PSUs found in a typical budget PC
I'll second that, I am not sure of the point in time when it became acceptable to completely lie about equipment specifications but as Mark says any cheap Power Supply (or the power supplies found in cheap cases) will not perform to anything like it's so called specification.
I'll add that as well as causing the confusing stability issues Mark mentions. The PSU is about the only component that can result in the destruction of all the other components.
A previous employer of mine used to furnish their 3D artists with (what were then) very respectable workstations. Twin Processors, Gig of Ram (back when 128 was respectable and 256 was a lot), SCSI Drives and an amazingly expensive (£2k) 3Dlabs Graphics card. We had a spate of PSU failures (before we decided to replace all of them). In some cases the whole machine was fried, in one case the only parts that I could find that survived were the CPU fans (even the keyboard was dead !) Now obviously it was pretty silly of someone to put a machine where the memory alone was worth £1000 at the mercy of a cheapo PSU. But I think the lesson remains even on cheaper machines.
A dud PSU with insufficient over-voltage or output transient protection can destroy your hard drives quicker than you can say "where's my data gone".....Backups or not, the loss of a drive is at the very least inconvenient.
Back og the big box - had to transfer ZIMACS across on the memory stick as the established installation disappeared up the SCSI, but since the OS is used to it, it didn't notice the cuckoo in the nest, and it works.
Thanks for all the fish^H^H^H^helpful suggestions, gang.
Jonathan McDowell wrote:
130W for 4 hard drives, a CD/DVD-RW, a Zip 100 and an AMD 900 (wasn't that back when they ran pretty hot?) doesn't seem an awful lot. Is this a typo?
I was about to say the same thing.
Many BIOS's will tell you the supply voltage; the 5V line is the most critical and must be over 5v (5.1 is typical); anything around 5.0 or below will cause problems. 12v is less critical in my experience but should obviously still be around 12v.
If in doubt a multimeter will tell you roughly what's going on. Also, try a decent power supply; it's always worth having one you can trust to test against.
But at 130W I'd expect problems, to be honest.
Update:
Isn't it fun when you get two faults in tandem?
Removed SCSI stuff and changed jumper of HD1 (on IDE2) to master.
Switched on.
BSOD
Left the tray out of caddy.
Box booted normally.
Replaced SCSI.
Wouldn't boot properly, though it did get there eventually. [5œ]
Tried shufflng SCSI HDs.
Either it hung during BIOS detecting things, (1 HD connected - either one) or it booted reluctantly (2 HDs fitted).
Removed SCSI again - booted normally.
Changed HD1 (IDE2) tray for an old Win98 one jumpered as master.
Booted.
Knoppix now boots and runs from CD without demur. It seems the fault was on the SCSI card, not the graphics, as suggested, and the HD on IDE2 was borked.
Not a supply spike or suchlike causing the problem, I'd think, as I run through a decent UPS.
Thanks for everyone's input, and all URLs noted: some (if not all) diagnostic [6] tools will be downloaded and stored on CD.
[5œ] but it took five and a half minutes about it. [6] I don't believe in Di, or Di doesn't believe?
On 13-Oct-05 Anthony Anson wrote:
Update: [...] Thanks for everyone's input, and all URLs noted: some (if not all) diagnostic [6] tools will be downloaded and stored on CD.
[5½] but it took five and a half minutes about it. [6] I don't believe in Di, or Di doesn't believe?
Does one gather you've got there? Otherwise I might have been going to say that I might be at the Reindeer tonight and might have brought a copy of "Linux on a Floppy" and if you might have been there I might have given it to you ...
Cheers, Ted.
PS It is on as usual at the Reindeer tonight, isn't it?
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 13-Oct-05 Time: 16:33:42 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
On Thu, Oct 13, 2005 at 04:33:48PM +0100, Ted Harding wrote:
PS It is on as usual at the Reindeer tonight, isn't it?
Yupyup. Oh, bum, no one sent a reminder, did they? I'll do so now.
J.
The message XFMail.051013163348.Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk from (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk contains these words:
On 13-Oct-05 Anthony Anson wrote:
Update: [...] Thanks for everyone's input, and all URLs noted: some (if not all) diagnostic [6] tools will be downloaded and stored on CD.
[5œ] but it took five and a half minutes about it. [6] I don't believe in Di, or Di doesn't believe?
Does one gather you've got there?
Well, yes, I think so. And I've got a spare UW SCSI card, I think.
Otherwise I might have been going to say that I might be at the Reindeer tonight and might have brought a copy of "Linux on a Floppy" and if you might have been there I might have given it to you ...
I might have ben going, and I might have been most thankful, but I just might not have the wherewithal to make an evening of it.
Next month, maybe.
Thanks for the thought.
On 13-Oct-05 Anthony Anson wrote:
The message XFMail.051013163348.Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk from (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk contains these words:
On 13-Oct-05 Anthony Anson wrote:
Update: [...] Thanks for everyone's input, and all URLs noted: some (if not all) diagnostic [6] tools will be downloaded and stored on CD.
[5½] but it took five and a half minutes about it. [6] I don't believe in Di, or Di doesn't believe?
Does one gather you've got there?
Well, yes, I think so. And I've got a spare UW SCSI card, I think.
Otherwise I might have been going to say that I might be at the Reindeer tonight and might have brought a copy of "Linux on a Floppy" and if you might have been there I might have given it to you ...
I might have ben going, and I might have been most thankful, but I just might not have the wherewithal to make an evening of it.
Next month, maybe.
Thanks for the thought.
Maybe next month then! I'll probably abstain myself tonight -- it's a bittie dreich the nicht for a long journey!
Good luck with the hardware meanwhile!
Cheers, Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 13-Oct-05 Time: 18:19:46 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
The message 200510131112.39737.matt@mpcontracting.co.uk from Matt Parker matt@mpcontracting.co.uk contains these words:
On Thursday 13 October 2005 10:49, Anthony Anson wrote:
The message 200510131030.08097.matt@mpcontracting.co.uk
from Matt Parker matt@mpcontracting.co.uk contains these words:
Can you set all the IDE devices to "cable select"? I don't normally do this myself in normal running, but it would let the devices sort out amongst themselves how they'd like to operate - a useful debugging step I think.
Do you mean make-up another cable, or just use ordinary IDE unmodified cables and set the devices to cable-select?
If it rearranges things to its satisfaction, it might reallocate C: and not want to boot...
On the jumpers on the drives you should see M/S/CS (master/slave/cable select). This will mean that the devices negotiate their IDE master/slave status between themselves automatically. You'll need to set all the channels to "auto" in the BIOS as well.
If you make sure the bootable HD is on IDE channel 1 (physically, on the motherboard) then that should automatically be picked as the boot device.
No new cables required.
My reply to this bounced for some reason - let's see if this one does, too...
[FWIW, this is the content:]
The message 200510131112.39737.matt@mpcontracting.co.uk from Matt Parker matt@mpcontracting.co.uk contains these words:
On the jumpers on the drives you should see M/S/CS (master/slave/cable select). This will mean that the devices negotiate their IDE master/slave status between themselves automatically. You'll need to set all the channels to "auto" in the BIOS as well.
The two which are set to cable-select are so jumpered - I did so with my own fair tweezers. I also performed surgery on the IDE cable - see below.
If you make sure the bootable HD is on IDE channel 1 (physically, on the motherboard) then that should automatically be picked as the boot device.
Right.
No new cables required.
Er - the one on IDE1 forces master and slave - No28 is broken between the board and the two connectors, and No28 is then connected between the Master connector and No40 (ground)
However, I have just unearthed another unmolested IDE cable which might be long enough. (The box is a full tower.)
Oh, in my bitbox I found another which I acquired I know not where: the board-end connector is blue, the first device connector is grey and the end one is black. One of the middle pair of sockets on each is blanked-off, and there are (or there seem to be) double the number of wire elements in the cable. It says: LIAN YU RU AWM2678 VW-1 105°C 150V 30AWG E128076-C - if that's any help.
-
Adrian Kiddle -
Anthony Anson -
James Taylor -
Jonathan McDowell -
Mark Rogers -
Matt Parker -
Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk -
Tim Green -
Wayne Stallwood