Topic: New computer assembly with old hard drives (Read 15776 times)

E_Look · « **on:** April 07, 2004, 02:23:13 pm »

Knowledgeable Ladies and Gentlemen of Taldrenland,

I am building a computer for my kid, but I want to use the old hard drives from his old system. There are two, an old WD 15 Gb HD, and a newer Maxtor 40 Gb HD.

I'm not sure if I'm going to use both or just the 40 Gb one.

Is there anything I should know about using an old one instead of new one or should I just bite the bullet and get a new one (as I do understand how to do that!)?

Khalee · « **Reply #1 on:** April 07, 2004, 02:26:07 pm »

If it still works properly and is compatable with the system then no, should not be aby problems, Im useing a old one on my new computer I got last year and it's working just fine.

E_Look · « **Reply #2 on:** April 07, 2004, 04:56:37 pm »

Thanks, but are there any installation issues with WinXP and an old hard drive with stuff on it I don't want to erase?

Sethan · « **Reply #3 on:** April 07, 2004, 05:02:10 pm »

Quote:

Thanks, but are there any installation issues with WinXP and an old hard drive with stuff on it I don't want to erase?

Depends on how you install XP.

I'd be inclined to copy anything you want to keep to the other drive (and then disconnect it), before installing XP - but I'm a little paranoid with stuff like that. Better safe than sorry.

Barabbas · « **Reply #6 on:** April 08, 2004, 04:03:51 pm »

The 15Gb and 40Gb drives aren't all that old, and if you've had no problems with them, just plug 'em into the new system and start the install from the XP CD.

Check the label on each drive and make sure you have them set properly. You new system probably has two HDD controllers, a primary and a secondary. Each controller can support a master and a slave drive. Your 40 should be the master, since it's probably faster and so you'd want that to be the WinXP system drive. Make that one a Master. The 15Gb drive could then be a Slave on the primary channel, or a Master on the secondary. Then your CD drive would either be Master or Slave on the Secondary, depending on what you choose for the 15Gb drive.

Does any of that make sense?

E_Look · « **Reply #7 on:** April 08, 2004, 08:25:17 pm »

Everyone, thanks for your answers so far.

Javora, the two drives actually are still in a system running Win 98. Can I just plug them in then, or do I still have to copy their data and then zero out before installing?

And Barabbas, that makes total sense... and I was considering the reverse, putting the OS and some executables on the 15 Gb and saving the 40 for stuffing data and image files, but I totally forgot that the newer one, the 40, must be faster!

Sethan · « **Reply #8 on:** April 08, 2004, 08:39:29 pm »

I second what Javora and Barabbas said.

A default install of XP can easily wipe the drive you are installing it on, if you are not familiar with such installs and / or careful - that is why I suggested copying all the data to the other drive first.

Barabbas is correct about making the 40GB the master - but I would put the 15GB on the secondary IDE channel (with the CD drive as the slave). If the two hard drives are on the same IDE channel and the data transfer rate of the two hard drives is different, the machine will transfer data at the slower rate of the two - even from the faster drive.

SL-Punisher · « **Reply #10 on:** April 09, 2004, 10:16:16 am »

Yea most CDROMS are still UDMA 33...definatly slower than almost any harddrive thats a couple years old to present.

Sten · « **Reply #11 on:** April 09, 2004, 12:03:35 pm »

Something else to consider how much performance do you want to get from this computer?

Assuming all you have is 2 EIDE controillers. No SCSI, or extra controller cards installed.

Assume the CDROM moves data at 300 KBs to 1.3 MBs more or less.

Check out the speed of your hardrives.

You may find you have UDMA-33 drives or 66 or possibly higher.

So why is this important if you set a Hardrive on the same controller port as the CDROM then the hardrive will transfer information at the same rate as the CDROM.

The golden rule whatever is the slowest device determines the bandwidth of data being moved.

So if your CDROM is moving data at 300-1300 KBs and your old UDMA-33 is moving at 33 MBs your old hardrive is going to pay and you are going to notice a major performance hit.

Likewise putting two hardrives on the same EIDE controller nothing says you can't mix and match them just remember the slower of the two drives is going to determine the overall bandwidth transfer rate of your HDDs.

E_Look · « **Reply #12 on:** April 09, 2004, 02:23:24 pm »

Yes, but it seems to me that many people just wire up the CDROM drives as slaves to their HDs. Then again, for many systems, how many IDE ports do you have on the motherboard? This is why, when I added an extra CDROM drive, another HD, I had to set up the two CDROMs as slaves to the primary and secondary HDs.

Are you saying maybe I should have set one HD as primary master, other as primary slave, and the CDROMs on the secondary line? Would this improve data throughput rates?

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #14 on:** April 10, 2004, 06:10:00 am »

What I've done is put the DVD and DVD burner on the secondary IDE, the 80G and 40G on the primary, and installed a controller card for the 20 and two 10's (I can't get rid of anything)..of course I put in a 550 W pwr supply and some extra fans, but everything has been working well. I seem to recall a while back that it was not good to mix and match HD with CD/DVD drives..so I've kept that strategy.

Mike

E_Look · « **Reply #15 on:** April 10, 2004, 12:27:47 pm »

550 W!! (And all that extra hardware!) Wow, Capt. Mike, did you put in some extra case fans or something?

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #16 on:** April 10, 2004, 04:13:54 pm »

Of course I did...read everything... have 2 extra fans and it's in the coolest room of the house

Mike

SL-Punisher · « **Reply #17 on:** April 12, 2004, 02:39:29 am »

You also should consider purchasing a addin PCI ATA-100/133 board if you have a hard drive that supports it and the IDE controllers on your motherboard are a bit old (ATA 33/66)

Here check this out:

http://www.pcclub.com/product_list.cfm?cat=Controller%20Cards&subcat1=Ultra%20ATA&subcat2=ATA%20133

E_Look · « **Reply #18 on:** April 16, 2004, 02:36:21 am »

Well, I began the assembly of the computer tonight, and it's "half" done: all I've gotten to so far is to install the CPU, its heatsink, the RAM, the video card, and power supply. Respectively, they are:

AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton (and the retail package heatsink it came with)
2 sticks of Kingston DDR-2700 RAM (CL = 2.5)
Connect3D Radeon 9500 (alas, not the one with the "L" shaped chip pattern, i.e., the one that can be flashed up to a 9700) and
Thermaltake 420 W PSU (as far as I can see, not SATA ready, but I don't care, as I"m reusing old HDs), all hooked up to a
DFI NFII Ultra-AL (nForce 2 400 chipset) board (yeah, yeah, I know, my RAM is not dual channel, but I think this is a small matter)

Everything is wrapped up in a lime green (hey, it's for a kid!) Raidmax steel case with one of those kid-approved see-thru side panels... oh yeah, I will also stick in a third case fan that has green glowy LEDs, which is why kids approve of having a plastic case side in the first place.

I just hope I didn't screw up the little square of thermal contact goop on the underside of the heat sink; the heatsink of the northbridge chip, which is very close to the CPU socket, was kind of huge and impeded my installation of the CPU heatsink. (But I think I did it right, though.) You have to get the three plastic lugs on the side of the socket base closest to that northbridge chip close to the three openings in the plain side of the heatsink clip (as it won't go in by themselves) and then use your finger to push the metal clip at each cutout/lug point to get the lugs through, and then swivel down the heatsink as far as possible without forcing, then with gentle but firm pressure press the green tab on the remaining clip so that the three cutouts on that side secure themselves on the lugs of the other side of the socket base. This is the part of PC assembly I heat (fear) the most. It was easier with my Socket 754 MSI board and its Athlon 64; that went in fairly easily.

Now how am I going to stea... uh, remove the HDs and CDROM and zip drives out of his current system without him noticing?? Still, I think this beats spending another $100-200 for another HD, CDROM, and zip.

I hope I haven't bored all of you. Thanks for all your input! I will do as you all suggest, transferring the data to one of those drives, "zeroing" out that first one, and then installing XP fresh on a cleaned drive... and will do my best to keep the HDs and other drives on separate lines.

But I think I recall I used to have a problem with hooking up a zip drive either as master OR slave with a CDROM drive. I think I HAD to make it slave to a HD. And, bummer... this mobo only comes with ONLY ONE IDE ribbon cable (not even round, at that!). Ah, well, I think I can reuse the old IDE cables, too!

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #19 on:** April 16, 2004, 05:45:54 am »

To remove his hardware w/out him knowing it...take hime to the woods with a burlap bag and a bat, tell him to go out calling "here snipe, here snipe" and while he's occupied...go home and grab it

Mike

E_Look · « **Reply #21 on:** April 16, 2004, 04:37:25 pm »

Or easier, I could get him over to a friend's house, where there is X-Box or GameCube or some other such puerile systems. He will then forget about his PC. (I tried ST:Shattered Universe at my bro-in-law's- it is as some said, a fighter game... somewhat reminiscent of a Wing Commander fighter going after some Kilrathi capital ship... give my any of the SFCs and a compatible PC any day!)

Of course, I could do as you suggested, except maybe tell him to bag a Wampus who will give you his $$$ to release him so he can come back to buy a plot with crystite, hopefully to out earn the mechtrons or whatever they were called.

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #22 on:** April 16, 2004, 06:11:32 pm »

My Atari 800 still runs w/it's happy drive...when the kids come over we still play a game or two of M.U.L.E. And I still abuse Alternate Reality, the city and the dungeon. That is a great RPG. It's just too bad it got lost in the shuffle.

Hope everything works out..

MIke

E_Look · « **Reply #23 on:** April 16, 2004, 11:21:03 pm »

"My Atari 800 still runs... "

I'm jealous.

SL-Punisher · « **Reply #24 on:** April 19, 2004, 04:40:53 am »

I hear they're steam powered

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #25 on:** April 19, 2004, 05:33:54 am »

No, but you have to keep the hamster on his wheel @ 3600 RPM so you don't lose your game

Mike

E_Look · « **Reply #26 on:** April 19, 2004, 01:17:35 pm »

Seriously, I wish they'd release a Windows version of Star Raiders.

My favorite part was docking with and backing away from the starbase. In those days, that was a visual treat!

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #27 on:** April 19, 2004, 04:19:04 pm »

I do remember that game. It is amazing what some programmers could do with only 64K of memory available. Nowadays, you need 512M just to get things to operate in a timely manner.

Mike

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #28 on:** April 21, 2004, 10:06:53 pm »

So how has the snipe hunt worked out??

Did your son get any?

Mike

E_Look · « **Reply #29 on:** April 21, 2004, 10:52:27 pm »

Nah, I think in a day or two, when he's konked from "too much schoolwork" (yeah, right... why in my day, we had to... ), I'll download the zeroing out software from the sites Javora posted and sneak into his comp, load the stuff, and wipe the 40 Mb drive clean. Then, I'll disconnect it along with the CDROM and install them in the new system. This ought to last him the next ten birthdays, at which time he ought to go build his own rig... if he saves his pennies.

You know, I don't think my kids would even know what an Atari 800(0?) is. I'll bet they'd jeer at the graphics, and let that color their view of the gameplay. Some games today, whatever format they be in, are mainly graphics... all flash and candy, while the gameplay is a bit thin.

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #31 on:** April 22, 2004, 05:25:04 am »

There are some emulator sites for the Atari out there, but I haven't been to any in a while. I think they also have places to get the old games...suppose I should do a Google and see...if anyone get's there first, post it.

Mike

E_Look · « **Reply #32 on:** April 22, 2004, 11:09:33 am »

Some years ago, I tried an Atari emulator for Win 95 or 98, but the Star Raiders game for it wouldn't run properly.

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #33 on:** April 22, 2004, 05:06:44 pm »

Try http://www.atari-explorer.com/emulation-8bitQS.html They have the ROMs too..I've heard that V4.0 is out, and have seen people saying they run it under XP..could be fun, will try it this weekend as the wife will be away at a conference.

Let me know if you have any luck.

Mike

E_Look · « **Reply #34 on:** April 25, 2004, 10:56:30 pm »

Thank you all for all your most helpful input. The system got built and works fine, except one of the fans that came with the case is kaput. Oh, well, I'll replace it with one of those glowy LED fans.

One little warning in case anyone is interested- if you build a Win XPsystem with a zip drive in it, leave it unconnected to the mobo until AFTER Windows XP is installed. Otherwise, it will wreak minor havoc by assigning your (main) hard drive some other letter besides C: (in my case, I got E:) and any subsequent programs that look for drive C: as the hard drive will not find it and lots of software may not work or even get installed (properly).

I had to disconnect the zip drive and reinstall XP (that's really not too bad, as far as problems go, but it's still annoying) to set things right.

And- Microsoft's website is of little help in this matter. They acknowledge the problem, but no solution.

E_Look · « **Reply #35 on:** April 26, 2004, 11:46:54 pm »

Whoops...

... one other annoying thing:

The 250 Mb ATAPI Zip drive won't work- I mean, it gets power, accepts and ejects disks, but it seems that whenever it tries to access the zip disk, the system sort of hangs... until I pop the disk out. I just refuses to read the disks!

I have already tried to disable it control via the BIOS, checking connections and jumpers; the only thing I haven't done yet is searching to see if there are any new drivers for it at Iomega's site.

Oy, wotta pain.

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #36 on:** April 27, 2004, 05:27:00 am »

There probably are newer drivers...however, I installed a new controller card and put the zip on the secondary line (I've got more crap stuffed in this thing...won't throw a working hard drive away)..the zip works fine..

I hope everthing works out.

Mike

E_Look · « **Reply #37 on:** April 28, 2004, 11:19:29 pm »

I'm e-mailing Iomega support. They tell me something, I try it and tell them (truly) that it didn't work, they tell me something else, and round and round it goes. Zip drives do tend to be problematic at times, but oh, the capacity and rewritability!

Stormbringer · « **Reply #39 on:** April 29, 2004, 12:37:25 am »

I concur USB is the way to go. Many now do not need drivers on the host and are treated as a removable hard drive drive by whatever machine they are plugged into. The 1 GB ones are far too expensive though.

E_Look · « **Reply #40 on:** April 29, 2004, 11:01:46 am »

Well, gentlemen, that's what I had to resort to. The only problem is that on my other system, I seem to have a ground fault or something with the front side USB ports. The system sometimes shuts down, hangs, or reboots if I even touch the metal near the port with a USB connector. Otherwise, I think I'd forget about the Zips these days. I hear you all on this one.

E_Look · « **Reply #42 on:** April 30, 2004, 08:41:15 pm »

The problem is, El Klutzo here put the computer together. Hey, how come they don't file the edges down on all those sheetmetal pieces??!!

I'm going to check your link right now.

E_Look · « **Reply #43 on:** May 01, 2004, 03:08:15 am »

Okay, Javora,

I checked my (individual) front USB port pins and connectors and they were all correctly connected. You know what the problem I think turned out to be? Bad case design- the connectors by the actual front of case USB ports are so close to the metal housing for the ports that the little square openings on the connector that the pins go through might cause shorting, I guess especially if one of the pins is for power. I put a strip of electrical tape on the metal housing by the connector and so far, except for the very first time I tried it, seems to work. That time, it crashed the system, but upon rebooting, this seems to have gone away!

Did my first "case mod" ever- drilled a few holes on the side panel and added an extra fan. Boy, if you're not careful, drilling with the hole cutter mandrel on a loose piece of sheetmetal could either cause the drill to slip and cut your fingers off or cause the sheetmetal to go flying and cut your head off! I should have clamped it down, but I feared scratching the nice paint job, which I did anyway, so, safety first next time! (I actually then held it down on a piece of wood with my knee, which caused a couple of shallow dents that could be seen if viewed a certain angles, but not too bad.

<mutter... mutter... e-tape of all things... mutter>

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #44 on:** May 01, 2004, 06:41:22 am »

There are these things called quik grips, nice rubber jaws, easy on and off. I use them at work to clmp things to the bench. they come in multiple sizes, and well worth the investment.

Glad you got everything going. How's the kid like the new machine?

Mike

E_Look · « **Reply #46 on:** May 02, 2004, 11:53:32 pm »

Heck, I used to use heatshrink tubes all the time. But, and I'm positive you must have seen this before, the leads from the front side USB ports go into this black plastic connector and in there soldered or crimped to their various separate pins. The problem is, there is a tiny square hole in that plastic connector block right in front of the crimped part and some of the pin/lead combinations are just loose enough inside the block that they seem to wiggle a bit if the wire is jiggled a bit. I suspect some of these might "lean" a bit out that little square "window" close enough to the metal USB port housing that there might be some small arcing across to each other. There is NO way to get heatshrink over those areas, even if I pulled out the wire/pin combination, for if I then put the heatshrink over those portions, they might not fit back into the plastic connector block.

Ah, what's one piece of e-tape in a place I'm never going (hopefully) to look at again?!

And as to the case maker- it's Codegen and they don't even make this particular model anymore. I don't think they're the best cases at all; in fact the first thing I did to it was to swap out it's included power supply for a really good one (Antec Truepower 430 W supply), so I don't think highly of any of their stuff. But, I got it as a gift and that does beat having to pay another $25-100 USD for one (personally, I'd stick to the lower end of that price spectrum, later with the looks and pizazz and all that). Oh, that and that the finish is this cool metalflake medium gray (yeah, I've got unhip tastes), so I stayed with it.

E_Look · « **Reply #47 on:** May 05, 2004, 12:51:41 pm »

Capt. Mike-

He LOVES it! He loves the color of the case and lights, the fact that there ARE lights at all (two green LED fans, two red LEDs on the mobo [whatever for, I have no idea], and the two standard LEDs on the front panel, green for power and red for the HD activity.

And, it runs Age of Mythology, Age of Empires, and of course StarCraft. I haven't let him install StarLancer or any of the SFC on it yet... there's enough there to distract him from studying. Maybe this weekend.

It runs fairly cool... I gave him a better case than I've got, so air flow for him is essentially a non-issue. SFC1 will definitely be an issue though, but he likes SFC3 (horrors!) over the other three (though he likes OP, too), probably because it's TNG. He's of the generation that thinks the Captain of the Enterprise is a bald Frenchman.

Oh, of course, there's a cloud around every silver lining- I've got to hunt for the patches and upgrades to the Age of Microsoft games. I don't play 'em myself, so I'm not exactly up on what's out there for them. Age of Mythology and Age of Empires displays halting or "stop-and-go" motion for ground units, even birds in the air and fish in the sea. It CAN'T be CPU or vid card; he's got an Athlon XP 2500+ Barton core and a Connect3D Radeon 9500 in there. I'm thinking that it must be that these games need some kind of patch or something from Bill Gates. When he installed A O Myth on my rig, since I have Internet and he doesn't, I think it got automatically updated; on his standalone machine, I guess the software detected that and didn't even bother to display some message telling me I should look for upgrades.

Thanks for asking!

Javora · « **Reply #48 on:** May 05, 2004, 05:15:30 pm »

Age of Mythology and Age of Empires II. Since you didn't specify here is the Age of Empires patch. Hope this helps.

E_Look · « **Reply #49 on:** May 06, 2004, 12:58:39 am »

Javora, thanks. I found those sites earlier tonight via MetaCrawler.

It turns out that these updates for the games made little or no difference!

Rather, it was the driver update (the new Catalyst 4.4 drivers, as someone posted on our forums) for the ATI card that did the trick! And the kid was beginning to suspect that Ol' Pops stuck him with a slow CPU.

BIG EDIT:

And it turns out too that this new updated ATI Radeon driver suite, Catalyst 4.4, almost (say, about 90-95%) fixed the haltingness and herky-jerkiness of SFC1 in WinXP!!!

I tested SFC1 under NO compatibility mode applied, in Win 98 mode, and Win 2000 mode and it's almost like new with no compatibility mode used!! Amazing.

E_Look · « **Reply #50 on:** April 07, 2004, 02:23:13 pm »

Knowledgeable Ladies and Gentlemen of Taldrenland,

I am building a computer for my kid, but I want to use the old hard drives from his old system. There are two, an old WD 15 Gb HD, and a newer Maxtor 40 Gb HD.

I'm not sure if I'm going to use both or just the 40 Gb one.

Is there anything I should know about using an old one instead of new one or should I just bite the bullet and get a new one (as I do understand how to do that!)?

Khalee · « **Reply #51 on:** April 07, 2004, 02:26:07 pm »

If it still works properly and is compatable with the system then no, should not be aby problems, Im useing a old one on my new computer I got last year and it's working just fine.

E_Look · « **Reply #52 on:** April 07, 2004, 04:56:37 pm »

Thanks, but are there any installation issues with WinXP and an old hard drive with stuff on it I don't want to erase?

Barabbas · « **Reply #56 on:** April 08, 2004, 04:03:51 pm »

The 15Gb and 40Gb drives aren't all that old, and if you've had no problems with them, just plug 'em into the new system and start the install from the XP CD.

Check the label on each drive and make sure you have them set properly. You new system probably has two HDD controllers, a primary and a secondary. Each controller can support a master and a slave drive. Your 40 should be the master, since it's probably faster and so you'd want that to be the WinXP system drive. Make that one a Master. The 15Gb drive could then be a Slave on the primary channel, or a Master on the secondary. Then your CD drive would either be Master or Slave on the Secondary, depending on what you choose for the 15Gb drive.

Does any of that make sense?

E_Look · « **Reply #57 on:** April 08, 2004, 08:25:17 pm »

Everyone, thanks for your answers so far.

Javora, the two drives actually are still in a system running Win 98. Can I just plug them in then, or do I still have to copy their data and then zero out before installing?

And Barabbas, that makes total sense... and I was considering the reverse, putting the OS and some executables on the 15 Gb and saving the 40 for stuffing data and image files, but I totally forgot that the newer one, the 40, must be faster!

Sethan · « **Reply #58 on:** April 08, 2004, 08:39:29 pm »

I second what Javora and Barabbas said.

A default install of XP can easily wipe the drive you are installing it on, if you are not familiar with such installs and / or careful - that is why I suggested copying all the data to the other drive first.

Barabbas is correct about making the 40GB the master - but I would put the 15GB on the secondary IDE channel (with the CD drive as the slave). If the two hard drives are on the same IDE channel and the data transfer rate of the two hard drives is different, the machine will transfer data at the slower rate of the two - even from the faster drive.

SL-Punisher · « **Reply #60 on:** April 09, 2004, 10:16:16 am »

Yea most CDROMS are still UDMA 33...definatly slower than almost any harddrive thats a couple years old to present.

Sten · « **Reply #61 on:** April 09, 2004, 12:03:35 pm »

Something else to consider how much performance do you want to get from this computer?

Assuming all you have is 2 EIDE controillers. No SCSI, or extra controller cards installed.

Assume the CDROM moves data at 300 KBs to 1.3 MBs more or less.

Check out the speed of your hardrives.

You may find you have UDMA-33 drives or 66 or possibly higher.

So why is this important if you set a Hardrive on the same controller port as the CDROM then the hardrive will transfer information at the same rate as the CDROM.

The golden rule whatever is the slowest device determines the bandwidth of data being moved.

So if your CDROM is moving data at 300-1300 KBs and your old UDMA-33 is moving at 33 MBs your old hardrive is going to pay and you are going to notice a major performance hit.

Likewise putting two hardrives on the same EIDE controller nothing says you can't mix and match them just remember the slower of the two drives is going to determine the overall bandwidth transfer rate of your HDDs.

E_Look · « **Reply #62 on:** April 09, 2004, 02:23:24 pm »

Yes, but it seems to me that many people just wire up the CDROM drives as slaves to their HDs. Then again, for many systems, how many IDE ports do you have on the motherboard? This is why, when I added an extra CDROM drive, another HD, I had to set up the two CDROMs as slaves to the primary and secondary HDs.

Are you saying maybe I should have set one HD as primary master, other as primary slave, and the CDROMs on the secondary line? Would this improve data throughput rates?

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #64 on:** April 10, 2004, 06:10:00 am »

What I've done is put the DVD and DVD burner on the secondary IDE, the 80G and 40G on the primary, and installed a controller card for the 20 and two 10's (I can't get rid of anything)..of course I put in a 550 W pwr supply and some extra fans, but everything has been working well. I seem to recall a while back that it was not good to mix and match HD with CD/DVD drives..so I've kept that strategy.

Mike

E_Look · « **Reply #65 on:** April 10, 2004, 12:27:47 pm »

550 W!! (And all that extra hardware!) Wow, Capt. Mike, did you put in some extra case fans or something?

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #66 on:** April 10, 2004, 04:13:54 pm »

Of course I did...read everything... have 2 extra fans and it's in the coolest room of the house

Mike

SL-Punisher · « **Reply #67 on:** April 12, 2004, 02:39:29 am »

You also should consider purchasing a addin PCI ATA-100/133 board if you have a hard drive that supports it and the IDE controllers on your motherboard are a bit old (ATA 33/66)

Here check this out:

http://www.pcclub.com/product_list.cfm?cat=Controller%20Cards&subcat1=Ultra%20ATA&subcat2=ATA%20133

E_Look · « **Reply #68 on:** April 16, 2004, 02:36:21 am »

Well, I began the assembly of the computer tonight, and it's "half" done: all I've gotten to so far is to install the CPU, its heatsink, the RAM, the video card, and power supply. Respectively, they are:

AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton (and the retail package heatsink it came with)
2 sticks of Kingston DDR-2700 RAM (CL = 2.5)
Connect3D Radeon 9500 (alas, not the one with the "L" shaped chip pattern, i.e., the one that can be flashed up to a 9700) and
Thermaltake 420 W PSU (as far as I can see, not SATA ready, but I don't care, as I"m reusing old HDs), all hooked up to a
DFI NFII Ultra-AL (nForce 2 400 chipset) board (yeah, yeah, I know, my RAM is not dual channel, but I think this is a small matter)

Everything is wrapped up in a lime green (hey, it's for a kid!) Raidmax steel case with one of those kid-approved see-thru side panels... oh yeah, I will also stick in a third case fan that has green glowy LEDs, which is why kids approve of having a plastic case side in the first place.

I just hope I didn't screw up the little square of thermal contact goop on the underside of the heat sink; the heatsink of the northbridge chip, which is very close to the CPU socket, was kind of huge and impeded my installation of the CPU heatsink. (But I think I did it right, though.) You have to get the three plastic lugs on the side of the socket base closest to that northbridge chip close to the three openings in the plain side of the heatsink clip (as it won't go in by themselves) and then use your finger to push the metal clip at each cutout/lug point to get the lugs through, and then swivel down the heatsink as far as possible without forcing, then with gentle but firm pressure press the green tab on the remaining clip so that the three cutouts on that side secure themselves on the lugs of the other side of the socket base. This is the part of PC assembly I heat (fear) the most. It was easier with my Socket 754 MSI board and its Athlon 64; that went in fairly easily.

Now how am I going to stea... uh, remove the HDs and CDROM and zip drives out of his current system without him noticing?? Still, I think this beats spending another $100-200 for another HD, CDROM, and zip.

I hope I haven't bored all of you. Thanks for all your input! I will do as you all suggest, transferring the data to one of those drives, "zeroing" out that first one, and then installing XP fresh on a cleaned drive... and will do my best to keep the HDs and other drives on separate lines.

But I think I recall I used to have a problem with hooking up a zip drive either as master OR slave with a CDROM drive. I think I HAD to make it slave to a HD. And, bummer... this mobo only comes with ONLY ONE IDE ribbon cable (not even round, at that!). Ah, well, I think I can reuse the old IDE cables, too!

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #69 on:** April 16, 2004, 05:45:54 am »

To remove his hardware w/out him knowing it...take hime to the woods with a burlap bag and a bat, tell him to go out calling "here snipe, here snipe" and while he's occupied...go home and grab it

Mike

E_Look · « **Reply #71 on:** April 16, 2004, 04:37:25 pm »

Or easier, I could get him over to a friend's house, where there is X-Box or GameCube or some other such puerile systems. He will then forget about his PC. (I tried ST:Shattered Universe at my bro-in-law's- it is as some said, a fighter game... somewhat reminiscent of a Wing Commander fighter going after some Kilrathi capital ship... give my any of the SFCs and a compatible PC any day!)

Of course, I could do as you suggested, except maybe tell him to bag a Wampus who will give you his $$$ to release him so he can come back to buy a plot with crystite, hopefully to out earn the mechtrons or whatever they were called.

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #72 on:** April 16, 2004, 06:11:32 pm »

My Atari 800 still runs w/it's happy drive...when the kids come over we still play a game or two of M.U.L.E. And I still abuse Alternate Reality, the city and the dungeon. That is a great RPG. It's just too bad it got lost in the shuffle.

Hope everything works out..

MIke

E_Look · « **Reply #73 on:** April 16, 2004, 11:21:03 pm »

"My Atari 800 still runs... "

I'm jealous.

SL-Punisher · « **Reply #74 on:** April 19, 2004, 04:40:53 am »

I hear they're steam powered

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #75 on:** April 19, 2004, 05:33:54 am »

No, but you have to keep the hamster on his wheel @ 3600 RPM so you don't lose your game

Mike

E_Look · « **Reply #76 on:** April 19, 2004, 01:17:35 pm »

Seriously, I wish they'd release a Windows version of Star Raiders.

My favorite part was docking with and backing away from the starbase. In those days, that was a visual treat!

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #77 on:** April 19, 2004, 04:19:04 pm »

I do remember that game. It is amazing what some programmers could do with only 64K of memory available. Nowadays, you need 512M just to get things to operate in a timely manner.

Mike

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #78 on:** April 21, 2004, 10:06:53 pm »

So how has the snipe hunt worked out??

Did your son get any?

Mike

E_Look · « **Reply #79 on:** April 21, 2004, 10:52:27 pm »

Nah, I think in a day or two, when he's konked from "too much schoolwork" (yeah, right... why in my day, we had to... ), I'll download the zeroing out software from the sites Javora posted and sneak into his comp, load the stuff, and wipe the 40 Mb drive clean. Then, I'll disconnect it along with the CDROM and install them in the new system. This ought to last him the next ten birthdays, at which time he ought to go build his own rig... if he saves his pennies.

You know, I don't think my kids would even know what an Atari 800(0?) is. I'll bet they'd jeer at the graphics, and let that color their view of the gameplay. Some games today, whatever format they be in, are mainly graphics... all flash and candy, while the gameplay is a bit thin.

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #81 on:** April 22, 2004, 05:25:04 am »

There are some emulator sites for the Atari out there, but I haven't been to any in a while. I think they also have places to get the old games...suppose I should do a Google and see...if anyone get's there first, post it.

Mike

E_Look · « **Reply #82 on:** April 22, 2004, 11:09:33 am »

Some years ago, I tried an Atari emulator for Win 95 or 98, but the Star Raiders game for it wouldn't run properly.

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #83 on:** April 22, 2004, 05:06:44 pm »

Try http://www.atari-explorer.com/emulation-8bitQS.html They have the ROMs too..I've heard that V4.0 is out, and have seen people saying they run it under XP..could be fun, will try it this weekend as the wife will be away at a conference.

Let me know if you have any luck.

Mike

E_Look · « **Reply #84 on:** April 25, 2004, 10:56:30 pm »

Thank you all for all your most helpful input. The system got built and works fine, except one of the fans that came with the case is kaput. Oh, well, I'll replace it with one of those glowy LED fans.

One little warning in case anyone is interested- if you build a Win XPsystem with a zip drive in it, leave it unconnected to the mobo until AFTER Windows XP is installed. Otherwise, it will wreak minor havoc by assigning your (main) hard drive some other letter besides C: (in my case, I got E:) and any subsequent programs that look for drive C: as the hard drive will not find it and lots of software may not work or even get installed (properly).

I had to disconnect the zip drive and reinstall XP (that's really not too bad, as far as problems go, but it's still annoying) to set things right.

And- Microsoft's website is of little help in this matter. They acknowledge the problem, but no solution.

E_Look · « **Reply #85 on:** April 26, 2004, 11:46:54 pm »

Whoops...

... one other annoying thing:

The 250 Mb ATAPI Zip drive won't work- I mean, it gets power, accepts and ejects disks, but it seems that whenever it tries to access the zip disk, the system sort of hangs... until I pop the disk out. I just refuses to read the disks!

I have already tried to disable it control via the BIOS, checking connections and jumpers; the only thing I haven't done yet is searching to see if there are any new drivers for it at Iomega's site.

Oy, wotta pain.

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #86 on:** April 27, 2004, 05:27:00 am »

There probably are newer drivers...however, I installed a new controller card and put the zip on the secondary line (I've got more crap stuffed in this thing...won't throw a working hard drive away)..the zip works fine..

I hope everthing works out.

Mike

E_Look · « **Reply #87 on:** April 28, 2004, 11:19:29 pm »

I'm e-mailing Iomega support. They tell me something, I try it and tell them (truly) that it didn't work, they tell me something else, and round and round it goes. Zip drives do tend to be problematic at times, but oh, the capacity and rewritability!

Stormbringer · « **Reply #89 on:** April 29, 2004, 12:37:25 am »

I concur USB is the way to go. Many now do not need drivers on the host and are treated as a removable hard drive drive by whatever machine they are plugged into. The 1 GB ones are far too expensive though.

E_Look · « **Reply #90 on:** April 29, 2004, 11:01:46 am »

Well, gentlemen, that's what I had to resort to. The only problem is that on my other system, I seem to have a ground fault or something with the front side USB ports. The system sometimes shuts down, hangs, or reboots if I even touch the metal near the port with a USB connector. Otherwise, I think I'd forget about the Zips these days. I hear you all on this one.

E_Look · « **Reply #92 on:** April 30, 2004, 08:41:15 pm »

The problem is, El Klutzo here put the computer together. Hey, how come they don't file the edges down on all those sheetmetal pieces??!!

I'm going to check your link right now.

E_Look · « **Reply #93 on:** May 01, 2004, 03:08:15 am »

Okay, Javora,

I checked my (individual) front USB port pins and connectors and they were all correctly connected. You know what the problem I think turned out to be? Bad case design- the connectors by the actual front of case USB ports are so close to the metal housing for the ports that the little square openings on the connector that the pins go through might cause shorting, I guess especially if one of the pins is for power. I put a strip of electrical tape on the metal housing by the connector and so far, except for the very first time I tried it, seems to work. That time, it crashed the system, but upon rebooting, this seems to have gone away!

Did my first "case mod" ever- drilled a few holes on the side panel and added an extra fan. Boy, if you're not careful, drilling with the hole cutter mandrel on a loose piece of sheetmetal could either cause the drill to slip and cut your fingers off or cause the sheetmetal to go flying and cut your head off! I should have clamped it down, but I feared scratching the nice paint job, which I did anyway, so, safety first next time! (I actually then held it down on a piece of wood with my knee, which caused a couple of shallow dents that could be seen if viewed a certain angles, but not too bad.

<mutter... mutter... e-tape of all things... mutter>

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #94 on:** May 01, 2004, 06:41:22 am »

There are these things called quik grips, nice rubber jaws, easy on and off. I use them at work to clmp things to the bench. they come in multiple sizes, and well worth the investment.

Glad you got everything going. How's the kid like the new machine?

Mike

E_Look · « **Reply #96 on:** May 02, 2004, 11:53:32 pm »

Heck, I used to use heatshrink tubes all the time. But, and I'm positive you must have seen this before, the leads from the front side USB ports go into this black plastic connector and in there soldered or crimped to their various separate pins. The problem is, there is a tiny square hole in that plastic connector block right in front of the crimped part and some of the pin/lead combinations are just loose enough inside the block that they seem to wiggle a bit if the wire is jiggled a bit. I suspect some of these might "lean" a bit out that little square "window" close enough to the metal USB port housing that there might be some small arcing across to each other. There is NO way to get heatshrink over those areas, even if I pulled out the wire/pin combination, for if I then put the heatshrink over those portions, they might not fit back into the plastic connector block.

Ah, what's one piece of e-tape in a place I'm never going (hopefully) to look at again?!

And as to the case maker- it's Codegen and they don't even make this particular model anymore. I don't think they're the best cases at all; in fact the first thing I did to it was to swap out it's included power supply for a really good one (Antec Truepower 430 W supply), so I don't think highly of any of their stuff. But, I got it as a gift and that does beat having to pay another $25-100 USD for one (personally, I'd stick to the lower end of that price spectrum, later with the looks and pizazz and all that). Oh, that and that the finish is this cool metalflake medium gray (yeah, I've got unhip tastes), so I stayed with it.

E_Look · « **Reply #97 on:** May 05, 2004, 12:51:41 pm »

Capt. Mike-

He LOVES it! He loves the color of the case and lights, the fact that there ARE lights at all (two green LED fans, two red LEDs on the mobo [whatever for, I have no idea], and the two standard LEDs on the front panel, green for power and red for the HD activity.

And, it runs Age of Mythology, Age of Empires, and of course StarCraft. I haven't let him install StarLancer or any of the SFC on it yet... there's enough there to distract him from studying. Maybe this weekend.

It runs fairly cool... I gave him a better case than I've got, so air flow for him is essentially a non-issue. SFC1 will definitely be an issue though, but he likes SFC3 (horrors!) over the other three (though he likes OP, too), probably because it's TNG. He's of the generation that thinks the Captain of the Enterprise is a bald Frenchman.

Oh, of course, there's a cloud around every silver lining- I've got to hunt for the patches and upgrades to the Age of Microsoft games. I don't play 'em myself, so I'm not exactly up on what's out there for them. Age of Mythology and Age of Empires displays halting or "stop-and-go" motion for ground units, even birds in the air and fish in the sea. It CAN'T be CPU or vid card; he's got an Athlon XP 2500+ Barton core and a Connect3D Radeon 9500 in there. I'm thinking that it must be that these games need some kind of patch or something from Bill Gates. When he installed A O Myth on my rig, since I have Internet and he doesn't, I think it got automatically updated; on his standalone machine, I guess the software detected that and didn't even bother to display some message telling me I should look for upgrades.

Thanks for asking!

Javora · « **Reply #98 on:** May 05, 2004, 05:15:30 pm »

Age of Mythology and Age of Empires II. Since you didn't specify here is the Age of Empires patch. Hope this helps.

E_Look · « **Reply #99 on:** May 06, 2004, 12:58:39 am »

Javora, thanks. I found those sites earlier tonight via MetaCrawler.

It turns out that these updates for the games made little or no difference!

Rather, it was the driver update (the new Catalyst 4.4 drivers, as someone posted on our forums) for the ATI card that did the trick! And the kid was beginning to suspect that Ol' Pops stuck him with a slow CPU.

BIG EDIT:

And it turns out too that this new updated ATI Radeon driver suite, Catalyst 4.4, almost (say, about 90-95%) fixed the haltingness and herky-jerkiness of SFC1 in WinXP!!!

I tested SFC1 under NO compatibility mode applied, in Win 98 mode, and Win 2000 mode and it's almost like new with no compatibility mode used!! Amazing.

E_Look · « **Reply #100 on:** April 07, 2004, 02:23:13 pm »

Knowledgeable Ladies and Gentlemen of Taldrenland,

I am building a computer for my kid, but I want to use the old hard drives from his old system. There are two, an old WD 15 Gb HD, and a newer Maxtor 40 Gb HD.

I'm not sure if I'm going to use both or just the 40 Gb one.

Is there anything I should know about using an old one instead of new one or should I just bite the bullet and get a new one (as I do understand how to do that!)?

Khalee · « **Reply #101 on:** April 07, 2004, 02:26:07 pm »

If it still works properly and is compatable with the system then no, should not be aby problems, Im useing a old one on my new computer I got last year and it's working just fine.

E_Look · « **Reply #102 on:** April 07, 2004, 04:56:37 pm »

Thanks, but are there any installation issues with WinXP and an old hard drive with stuff on it I don't want to erase?

Barabbas · « **Reply #106 on:** April 08, 2004, 04:03:51 pm »

The 15Gb and 40Gb drives aren't all that old, and if you've had no problems with them, just plug 'em into the new system and start the install from the XP CD.

Check the label on each drive and make sure you have them set properly. You new system probably has two HDD controllers, a primary and a secondary. Each controller can support a master and a slave drive. Your 40 should be the master, since it's probably faster and so you'd want that to be the WinXP system drive. Make that one a Master. The 15Gb drive could then be a Slave on the primary channel, or a Master on the secondary. Then your CD drive would either be Master or Slave on the Secondary, depending on what you choose for the 15Gb drive.

Does any of that make sense?

E_Look · « **Reply #107 on:** April 08, 2004, 08:25:17 pm »

Everyone, thanks for your answers so far.

Javora, the two drives actually are still in a system running Win 98. Can I just plug them in then, or do I still have to copy their data and then zero out before installing?

And Barabbas, that makes total sense... and I was considering the reverse, putting the OS and some executables on the 15 Gb and saving the 40 for stuffing data and image files, but I totally forgot that the newer one, the 40, must be faster!

Sethan · « **Reply #108 on:** April 08, 2004, 08:39:29 pm »

I second what Javora and Barabbas said.

A default install of XP can easily wipe the drive you are installing it on, if you are not familiar with such installs and / or careful - that is why I suggested copying all the data to the other drive first.

Barabbas is correct about making the 40GB the master - but I would put the 15GB on the secondary IDE channel (with the CD drive as the slave). If the two hard drives are on the same IDE channel and the data transfer rate of the two hard drives is different, the machine will transfer data at the slower rate of the two - even from the faster drive.

SL-Punisher · « **Reply #110 on:** April 09, 2004, 10:16:16 am »

Yea most CDROMS are still UDMA 33...definatly slower than almost any harddrive thats a couple years old to present.

Sten · « **Reply #111 on:** April 09, 2004, 12:03:35 pm »

Something else to consider how much performance do you want to get from this computer?

Assuming all you have is 2 EIDE controillers. No SCSI, or extra controller cards installed.

Assume the CDROM moves data at 300 KBs to 1.3 MBs more or less.

Check out the speed of your hardrives.

You may find you have UDMA-33 drives or 66 or possibly higher.

So why is this important if you set a Hardrive on the same controller port as the CDROM then the hardrive will transfer information at the same rate as the CDROM.

The golden rule whatever is the slowest device determines the bandwidth of data being moved.

So if your CDROM is moving data at 300-1300 KBs and your old UDMA-33 is moving at 33 MBs your old hardrive is going to pay and you are going to notice a major performance hit.

Likewise putting two hardrives on the same EIDE controller nothing says you can't mix and match them just remember the slower of the two drives is going to determine the overall bandwidth transfer rate of your HDDs.

E_Look · « **Reply #112 on:** April 09, 2004, 02:23:24 pm »

Yes, but it seems to me that many people just wire up the CDROM drives as slaves to their HDs. Then again, for many systems, how many IDE ports do you have on the motherboard? This is why, when I added an extra CDROM drive, another HD, I had to set up the two CDROMs as slaves to the primary and secondary HDs.

Are you saying maybe I should have set one HD as primary master, other as primary slave, and the CDROMs on the secondary line? Would this improve data throughput rates?

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #114 on:** April 10, 2004, 06:10:00 am »

What I've done is put the DVD and DVD burner on the secondary IDE, the 80G and 40G on the primary, and installed a controller card for the 20 and two 10's (I can't get rid of anything)..of course I put in a 550 W pwr supply and some extra fans, but everything has been working well. I seem to recall a while back that it was not good to mix and match HD with CD/DVD drives..so I've kept that strategy.

Mike

E_Look · « **Reply #115 on:** April 10, 2004, 12:27:47 pm »

550 W!! (And all that extra hardware!) Wow, Capt. Mike, did you put in some extra case fans or something?

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #116 on:** April 10, 2004, 04:13:54 pm »

Of course I did...read everything... have 2 extra fans and it's in the coolest room of the house

Mike

SL-Punisher · « **Reply #117 on:** April 12, 2004, 02:39:29 am »

You also should consider purchasing a addin PCI ATA-100/133 board if you have a hard drive that supports it and the IDE controllers on your motherboard are a bit old (ATA 33/66)

Here check this out:

http://www.pcclub.com/product_list.cfm?cat=Controller%20Cards&subcat1=Ultra%20ATA&subcat2=ATA%20133

E_Look · « **Reply #118 on:** April 16, 2004, 02:36:21 am »

Well, I began the assembly of the computer tonight, and it's "half" done: all I've gotten to so far is to install the CPU, its heatsink, the RAM, the video card, and power supply. Respectively, they are:

AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton (and the retail package heatsink it came with)
2 sticks of Kingston DDR-2700 RAM (CL = 2.5)
Connect3D Radeon 9500 (alas, not the one with the "L" shaped chip pattern, i.e., the one that can be flashed up to a 9700) and
Thermaltake 420 W PSU (as far as I can see, not SATA ready, but I don't care, as I"m reusing old HDs), all hooked up to a
DFI NFII Ultra-AL (nForce 2 400 chipset) board (yeah, yeah, I know, my RAM is not dual channel, but I think this is a small matter)

Everything is wrapped up in a lime green (hey, it's for a kid!) Raidmax steel case with one of those kid-approved see-thru side panels... oh yeah, I will also stick in a third case fan that has green glowy LEDs, which is why kids approve of having a plastic case side in the first place.

I just hope I didn't screw up the little square of thermal contact goop on the underside of the heat sink; the heatsink of the northbridge chip, which is very close to the CPU socket, was kind of huge and impeded my installation of the CPU heatsink. (But I think I did it right, though.) You have to get the three plastic lugs on the side of the socket base closest to that northbridge chip close to the three openings in the plain side of the heatsink clip (as it won't go in by themselves) and then use your finger to push the metal clip at each cutout/lug point to get the lugs through, and then swivel down the heatsink as far as possible without forcing, then with gentle but firm pressure press the green tab on the remaining clip so that the three cutouts on that side secure themselves on the lugs of the other side of the socket base. This is the part of PC assembly I heat (fear) the most. It was easier with my Socket 754 MSI board and its Athlon 64; that went in fairly easily.

Now how am I going to stea... uh, remove the HDs and CDROM and zip drives out of his current system without him noticing?? Still, I think this beats spending another $100-200 for another HD, CDROM, and zip.

I hope I haven't bored all of you. Thanks for all your input! I will do as you all suggest, transferring the data to one of those drives, "zeroing" out that first one, and then installing XP fresh on a cleaned drive... and will do my best to keep the HDs and other drives on separate lines.

But I think I recall I used to have a problem with hooking up a zip drive either as master OR slave with a CDROM drive. I think I HAD to make it slave to a HD. And, bummer... this mobo only comes with ONLY ONE IDE ribbon cable (not even round, at that!). Ah, well, I think I can reuse the old IDE cables, too!

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #119 on:** April 16, 2004, 05:45:54 am »

To remove his hardware w/out him knowing it...take hime to the woods with a burlap bag and a bat, tell him to go out calling "here snipe, here snipe" and while he's occupied...go home and grab it

Mike

E_Look · « **Reply #121 on:** April 16, 2004, 04:37:25 pm »

Or easier, I could get him over to a friend's house, where there is X-Box or GameCube or some other such puerile systems. He will then forget about his PC. (I tried ST:Shattered Universe at my bro-in-law's- it is as some said, a fighter game... somewhat reminiscent of a Wing Commander fighter going after some Kilrathi capital ship... give my any of the SFCs and a compatible PC any day!)

Of course, I could do as you suggested, except maybe tell him to bag a Wampus who will give you his $$$ to release him so he can come back to buy a plot with crystite, hopefully to out earn the mechtrons or whatever they were called.

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #122 on:** April 16, 2004, 06:11:32 pm »

My Atari 800 still runs w/it's happy drive...when the kids come over we still play a game or two of M.U.L.E. And I still abuse Alternate Reality, the city and the dungeon. That is a great RPG. It's just too bad it got lost in the shuffle.

Hope everything works out..

MIke

E_Look · « **Reply #123 on:** April 16, 2004, 11:21:03 pm »

"My Atari 800 still runs... "

I'm jealous.

SL-Punisher · « **Reply #124 on:** April 19, 2004, 04:40:53 am »

I hear they're steam powered

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #125 on:** April 19, 2004, 05:33:54 am »

No, but you have to keep the hamster on his wheel @ 3600 RPM so you don't lose your game

Mike

E_Look · « **Reply #126 on:** April 19, 2004, 01:17:35 pm »

Seriously, I wish they'd release a Windows version of Star Raiders.

My favorite part was docking with and backing away from the starbase. In those days, that was a visual treat!

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #127 on:** April 19, 2004, 04:19:04 pm »

I do remember that game. It is amazing what some programmers could do with only 64K of memory available. Nowadays, you need 512M just to get things to operate in a timely manner.

Mike

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #128 on:** April 21, 2004, 10:06:53 pm »

So how has the snipe hunt worked out??

Did your son get any?

Mike

E_Look · « **Reply #129 on:** April 21, 2004, 10:52:27 pm »

Nah, I think in a day or two, when he's konked from "too much schoolwork" (yeah, right... why in my day, we had to... ), I'll download the zeroing out software from the sites Javora posted and sneak into his comp, load the stuff, and wipe the 40 Mb drive clean. Then, I'll disconnect it along with the CDROM and install them in the new system. This ought to last him the next ten birthdays, at which time he ought to go build his own rig... if he saves his pennies.

You know, I don't think my kids would even know what an Atari 800(0?) is. I'll bet they'd jeer at the graphics, and let that color their view of the gameplay. Some games today, whatever format they be in, are mainly graphics... all flash and candy, while the gameplay is a bit thin.

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #131 on:** April 22, 2004, 05:25:04 am »

There are some emulator sites for the Atari out there, but I haven't been to any in a while. I think they also have places to get the old games...suppose I should do a Google and see...if anyone get's there first, post it.

Mike

E_Look · « **Reply #132 on:** April 22, 2004, 11:09:33 am »

Some years ago, I tried an Atari emulator for Win 95 or 98, but the Star Raiders game for it wouldn't run properly.

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #133 on:** April 22, 2004, 05:06:44 pm »

Try http://www.atari-explorer.com/emulation-8bitQS.html They have the ROMs too..I've heard that V4.0 is out, and have seen people saying they run it under XP..could be fun, will try it this weekend as the wife will be away at a conference.

Let me know if you have any luck.

Mike

E_Look · « **Reply #134 on:** April 25, 2004, 10:56:30 pm »

Thank you all for all your most helpful input. The system got built and works fine, except one of the fans that came with the case is kaput. Oh, well, I'll replace it with one of those glowy LED fans.

One little warning in case anyone is interested- if you build a Win XPsystem with a zip drive in it, leave it unconnected to the mobo until AFTER Windows XP is installed. Otherwise, it will wreak minor havoc by assigning your (main) hard drive some other letter besides C: (in my case, I got E:) and any subsequent programs that look for drive C: as the hard drive will not find it and lots of software may not work or even get installed (properly).

I had to disconnect the zip drive and reinstall XP (that's really not too bad, as far as problems go, but it's still annoying) to set things right.

And- Microsoft's website is of little help in this matter. They acknowledge the problem, but no solution.

E_Look · « **Reply #135 on:** April 26, 2004, 11:46:54 pm »

Whoops...

... one other annoying thing:

The 250 Mb ATAPI Zip drive won't work- I mean, it gets power, accepts and ejects disks, but it seems that whenever it tries to access the zip disk, the system sort of hangs... until I pop the disk out. I just refuses to read the disks!

I have already tried to disable it control via the BIOS, checking connections and jumpers; the only thing I haven't done yet is searching to see if there are any new drivers for it at Iomega's site.

Oy, wotta pain.

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #136 on:** April 27, 2004, 05:27:00 am »

There probably are newer drivers...however, I installed a new controller card and put the zip on the secondary line (I've got more crap stuffed in this thing...won't throw a working hard drive away)..the zip works fine..

I hope everthing works out.

Mike

E_Look · « **Reply #137 on:** April 28, 2004, 11:19:29 pm »

I'm e-mailing Iomega support. They tell me something, I try it and tell them (truly) that it didn't work, they tell me something else, and round and round it goes. Zip drives do tend to be problematic at times, but oh, the capacity and rewritability!

Stormbringer · « **Reply #139 on:** April 29, 2004, 12:37:25 am »

I concur USB is the way to go. Many now do not need drivers on the host and are treated as a removable hard drive drive by whatever machine they are plugged into. The 1 GB ones are far too expensive though.

E_Look · « **Reply #140 on:** April 29, 2004, 11:01:46 am »

Well, gentlemen, that's what I had to resort to. The only problem is that on my other system, I seem to have a ground fault or something with the front side USB ports. The system sometimes shuts down, hangs, or reboots if I even touch the metal near the port with a USB connector. Otherwise, I think I'd forget about the Zips these days. I hear you all on this one.

E_Look · « **Reply #142 on:** April 30, 2004, 08:41:15 pm »

The problem is, El Klutzo here put the computer together. Hey, how come they don't file the edges down on all those sheetmetal pieces??!!

I'm going to check your link right now.

E_Look · « **Reply #143 on:** May 01, 2004, 03:08:15 am »

Okay, Javora,

I checked my (individual) front USB port pins and connectors and they were all correctly connected. You know what the problem I think turned out to be? Bad case design- the connectors by the actual front of case USB ports are so close to the metal housing for the ports that the little square openings on the connector that the pins go through might cause shorting, I guess especially if one of the pins is for power. I put a strip of electrical tape on the metal housing by the connector and so far, except for the very first time I tried it, seems to work. That time, it crashed the system, but upon rebooting, this seems to have gone away!

Did my first "case mod" ever- drilled a few holes on the side panel and added an extra fan. Boy, if you're not careful, drilling with the hole cutter mandrel on a loose piece of sheetmetal could either cause the drill to slip and cut your fingers off or cause the sheetmetal to go flying and cut your head off! I should have clamped it down, but I feared scratching the nice paint job, which I did anyway, so, safety first next time! (I actually then held it down on a piece of wood with my knee, which caused a couple of shallow dents that could be seen if viewed a certain angles, but not too bad.

<mutter... mutter... e-tape of all things... mutter>

Capt. Mike · « **Reply #144 on:** May 01, 2004, 06:41:22 am »

There are these things called quik grips, nice rubber jaws, easy on and off. I use them at work to clmp things to the bench. they come in multiple sizes, and well worth the investment.

Glad you got everything going. How's the kid like the new machine?

Mike

E_Look · « **Reply #146 on:** May 02, 2004, 11:53:32 pm »

Heck, I used to use heatshrink tubes all the time. But, and I'm positive you must have seen this before, the leads from the front side USB ports go into this black plastic connector and in there soldered or crimped to their various separate pins. The problem is, there is a tiny square hole in that plastic connector block right in front of the crimped part and some of the pin/lead combinations are just loose enough inside the block that they seem to wiggle a bit if the wire is jiggled a bit. I suspect some of these might "lean" a bit out that little square "window" close enough to the metal USB port housing that there might be some small arcing across to each other. There is NO way to get heatshrink over those areas, even if I pulled out the wire/pin combination, for if I then put the heatshrink over those portions, they might not fit back into the plastic connector block.

Ah, what's one piece of e-tape in a place I'm never going (hopefully) to look at again?!

And as to the case maker- it's Codegen and they don't even make this particular model anymore. I don't think they're the best cases at all; in fact the first thing I did to it was to swap out it's included power supply for a really good one (Antec Truepower 430 W supply), so I don't think highly of any of their stuff. But, I got it as a gift and that does beat having to pay another $25-100 USD for one (personally, I'd stick to the lower end of that price spectrum, later with the looks and pizazz and all that). Oh, that and that the finish is this cool metalflake medium gray (yeah, I've got unhip tastes), so I stayed with it.

E_Look · « **Reply #147 on:** May 05, 2004, 12:51:41 pm »

Capt. Mike-

He LOVES it! He loves the color of the case and lights, the fact that there ARE lights at all (two green LED fans, two red LEDs on the mobo [whatever for, I have no idea], and the two standard LEDs on the front panel, green for power and red for the HD activity.

And, it runs Age of Mythology, Age of Empires, and of course StarCraft. I haven't let him install StarLancer or any of the SFC on it yet... there's enough there to distract him from studying. Maybe this weekend.

It runs fairly cool... I gave him a better case than I've got, so air flow for him is essentially a non-issue. SFC1 will definitely be an issue though, but he likes SFC3 (horrors!) over the other three (though he likes OP, too), probably because it's TNG. He's of the generation that thinks the Captain of the Enterprise is a bald Frenchman.

Oh, of course, there's a cloud around every silver lining- I've got to hunt for the patches and upgrades to the Age of Microsoft games. I don't play 'em myself, so I'm not exactly up on what's out there for them. Age of Mythology and Age of Empires displays halting or "stop-and-go" motion for ground units, even birds in the air and fish in the sea. It CAN'T be CPU or vid card; he's got an Athlon XP 2500+ Barton core and a Connect3D Radeon 9500 in there. I'm thinking that it must be that these games need some kind of patch or something from Bill Gates. When he installed A O Myth on my rig, since I have Internet and he doesn't, I think it got automatically updated; on his standalone machine, I guess the software detected that and didn't even bother to display some message telling me I should look for upgrades.

Thanks for asking!

Javora · « **Reply #148 on:** May 05, 2004, 05:15:30 pm »

Age of Mythology and Age of Empires II. Since you didn't specify here is the Age of Empires patch. Hope this helps.

E_Look · « **Reply #149 on:** May 06, 2004, 12:58:39 am »

Javora, thanks. I found those sites earlier tonight via MetaCrawler.

It turns out that these updates for the games made little or no difference!

Rather, it was the driver update (the new Catalyst 4.4 drivers, as someone posted on our forums) for the ATI card that did the trick! And the kid was beginning to suspect that Ol' Pops stuck him with a slow CPU.

BIG EDIT:

And it turns out too that this new updated ATI Radeon driver suite, Catalyst 4.4, almost (say, about 90-95%) fixed the haltingness and herky-jerkiness of SFC1 in WinXP!!!

I tested SFC1 under NO compatibility mode applied, in Win 98 mode, and Win 2000 mode and it's almost like new with no compatibility mode used!! Amazing.

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Topic: New computer assembly with old hard drives (Read 15776 times)