xman12
asked on
adding a cd-rom
I am trying to add a cdrom to a gateway 486 with a 212 mg western digital hard drive.I get into the bios to add the second ide drive but it dosen't show any type of cd-rom. The mother board only has one ide controller on it and the bios shows two ide controlls.the first being tghe 212hard drive the second is the slave i am trying to add.i have the hard drive set as master and the cdrom set as slave. when i boot up the machine stops at a code of 120 and just blinks. if i take the cdrom off it boots up all the way.How do i get this cdrom to work?
Since I enjoy this type of problem..may I suggest hooking the two devices in every conceivable combination/ jumper setting....as I dont know how this could hurt any thing....my 2 cdroms are hooked up exactly wrong from the manual and work best that way....have you loked at the GW2K site for a bios update that may give you increased functionality?....do we know that the cd rom is a known good unit? Is the power supply big enough to power the extra device? How about the cable...I notice that during the course of hooking them up correctly they go bad sometimes....have you tried the cable select setting on the drives? ( just an idea )...I hope some of these ideas help
DaveMon
DaveMon
sorry, I am a double-posting idiot please dont let that discourage you from tring my suggestions...heeheh
ASKER
Yes i have tried to hook up every concievable setup and configuration.Yes it is a good cdrom and yes i even tried a new cable!
will the PC boot with the pwer supply cbl attached and the data cable not?....I am trying to isolate the power supply....is this 95 or 3.1 were working with? what does code 120 meann exactly? is that the bios screeen # that you see?
DaveMon
DaveMon
ASKER
yes it will boot up power wise without the cable hooked up yes i tried to cable selectLOL Nope didn't work!and it is windows 95 but it never goes past the bios screen of bootup process. It gives numbers on the screen as it boots up. It stops and just blinks at 120 screen what ever that is I suspect it is the hard drive setup number
When you say that the bios shows two controllers do you mean that you are able to configure two ide devices? An ide controller can control two devices from a single cable (they often have a second connector part way down.)
If your machine is failing to boot that usually means it has failed to find a bootable device.
You may find that due to the length of the cable that the connection to the hard is coming loose. you can check this by setting by placing a bootablle floppy in your floppy drive and seeing if you still get the error (make sure that you have the floppy disk as a bootable device in the bios settings.)
Your error could be caused by having the ide cable connecting your cd-rom upside down or improperly inserted. Make sure that the red line is connected to pin 1 and no pins are bent. Some devices have locating lugs some don't.
Judging from your machines described setup i am guessing that you are running dos or linux?
If this is the case you may also need to install a device driver before you wiil be able to acces data from your cdrom.
If your machine is failing to boot that usually means it has failed to find a bootable device.
You may find that due to the length of the cable that the connection to the hard is coming loose. you can check this by setting by placing a bootablle floppy in your floppy drive and seeing if you still get the error (make sure that you have the floppy disk as a bootable device in the bios settings.)
Your error could be caused by having the ide cable connecting your cd-rom upside down or improperly inserted. Make sure that the red line is connected to pin 1 and no pins are bent. Some devices have locating lugs some don't.
Judging from your machines described setup i am guessing that you are running dos or linux?
If this is the case you may also need to install a device driver before you wiil be able to acces data from your cdrom.
Questioner is running W95....like posted above
I thought I had posted this earlier,....but I didnt ...do we know if there is a bios update or updated bus-mastering drivers for your machine? I confess I am really ignorant to the details of bus-mastering but if ever I saw something that look like it was related to that, this is it. I attempted to put my cdrom burner in a fairly new Compaq ( 233 P1) and It would lock the machine at the desktop every time despite all combos of jumpers and cables...I was told to update my bus-master drivers. Unfortunately I did not try that, but I wonder if this is similar.....Hey other Experts..!! shed some light on this bus-mastering stuff..are they loaded at boot up or they only in the OS and come into play after all files are loaded?
DaveMon
I thought I had posted this earlier,....but I didnt ...do we know if there is a bios update or updated bus-mastering drivers for your machine? I confess I am really ignorant to the details of bus-mastering but if ever I saw something that look like it was related to that, this is it. I attempted to put my cdrom burner in a fairly new Compaq ( 233 P1) and It would lock the machine at the desktop every time despite all combos of jumpers and cables...I was told to update my bus-master drivers. Unfortunately I did not try that, but I wonder if this is similar.....Hey other Experts..!! shed some light on this bus-mastering stuff..are they loaded at boot up or they only in the OS and come into play after all files are loaded?
DaveMon
ASKER
yes it will boot up power wise without the cable hooked up yes i tried to cable selectLOL Nope didn't work!and it is windows 95 but it never goes past the bios screen of bootup process. It gives numbers on the screen as it boots up. It stops and just blinks at 120 screen what ever that is I suspect it is the hard drive setup number
ASKER
i just tried some more stuff. This has a ide controller that lets you use two ide devices.I used a controller cable with two device connections on it. I tried every conceiveable connection i could think of.This is what happened. When i have the cdrom on a cable and boot up it locks up. BUT if i unplugg the power cable and leave the controller cable on it will boot up to windows.The minute i try to boot up with the power connected it stops atthe controller check setup.I think those numbers are the setup checkup numbers as they change with each device check and continue if found good.
ASKER
i found a ide controller card on the internet to add a ide controller,Would using that solve my problem? Or do you think i am wasting my money?I also think that the problem is in the settings for the second hard drive listing in the bios! What paramteres do i set it at for the second drive? It does show cdrom so is there a particular one to use for cdrom? Like 985cyl,16hds.35sec?
ASKER
i found a ide controller card on the internet to add a ide controller,Would using that solve my problem? Or do you think i am wasting my money?I also think that the problem is in the settings for the second hard drive listing in the bios! What paramteres do i set it at for the second drive? It does show cdrom so is there a particular one to use for cdrom? Like 985cyl,16hds.35sec?
I guess your saying you dont have the chouice of "auto", because normally that would be the choice....when cdroms are shown in bios, they never have any info listed for heads sectors etc......just "0" "0" "0" and maybe LBA listed for the mode......have you tried something like that? I had a card IDE controller on my 486 but it knoecked my modem out because it needed IRQs and DMA's....( it quit acting like a normal IDE device and more like a regular plug in card device. I cant say yea or nay on that decision
DavemOn
DavemOn
ASKER
i tried to use 0,0,0 and it wont let you set the lba mode on it. They didn't work either.
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I would have given an A just for the effort LOL But I took the easy way out. I bought a new controller card and it works fine. I had to disable the bios serial floppy and hard disk controller first though. Then it worked great!
DaveMon