The Compaq Alteration...Assembly notes cont...
Status
I am posting from the Zeus Machine. The essential software is installed (Win95, Partition Magic, Netscape 3.0)
The side panels are still off. The machine is now on the floor under the desk where it belongs. The current hardware configuration is
Iwill XA 100 mobo super seven
Pentium 200 MMX (Compaq)
32 MB old DIMMS (Compaq)
Matrox MII 8 MB PCI
two IBM deskstar 8 6.5 GB IDE
two IBM Ultra Wide SCSI 2.1 GB
Adaptec AHA 2940 Ultra 2 Wide SCSI adapter
Diamond Supra Express modem
Turtle Beach Daytona PCI sound
Sony IDE CDROM (Compaq)
Floppy (Comapq)
Speakers (compaq)
Iwill mobo
The only complaint I have so far is the manual. I have not been able to figure out where the panel lights (power LED, harddisc activity) and the reset switch attach to the board. The manual clearly indicates where they go. The problem is the board connectors are not the same as the manual. The manual shows 9 pins for the connectors and the board has a double row of ten (total 20). Will I do any harm if I use the trial and error approach?
Video Card
I replaced the Matrox G100 AGP with a Matrox MII 8MB PCI ($219). I could not wait for Win98 and did not want to search the Microsoft site for AGP upgrades. The default driver would only let me use 640 x 480 resolution. I can only handle low resolution for 5 minutes. You simply can not get enough information on a screen.
The MII is great. I set the resolution to 1024 x 768 on a 17 in monitor. Finally I have virtual resolution on my home machine. The virtual desktop area is set to 2048 x 768. That is the max I can get with 16 bit color. I set it up so the extra screen is to the right of the primary screen. Maybe I can get more if I upgrade to 16 MB RAM.
I am using Microsoft trackball and the Intellimouse software. Speed is set to max with max acceleration and medium slowdown for executables. With these settings I can access the second screen very quickly with a quarter turn on the ball.
I am holding onto the G100 so I can try a dual monitor setup with Win98.
Modem
The Diamond Supra Express has made a significant difference. I am connected at 40,000 for the first time. Pages load much faster. This still has to be considered a primary bottleneck however.
Sound
This has been the most difficult card to install and configure. Time consuming might be a better description. The machine had to boot several times. This card uses a lot of resources ( I believe most sound cards do) There is still one yellow exclamation in the device manager for legacy search. I hear beeps through the case speaker that is attached directly to the mobo and Tanya Tucker through the speakers. For some reason I do not hear dial tones or modem sounds. I have the CD controls and volume controls on the virtual screen to the right along with the Task Bar. Keeping the Task Bar off the primary screen lets me make use of the full screen for reading and posting.
SCSI
I could not resist the SCSI temptation. I opted for the Adaptec AHA 2940 U2W host adapter($399 @ Fry's). The card supports fifteen SCSI devices. There are four connectors and all of them can be used. One can mix old and new SCSI on the same card. It is recommended that one does not mix devices on the ULTRA 2 branch (two of four connectors, one is internal and one is external). If the fast and slow are mixed on this branch it will slow the ULTRA 2 devices. The adapter comes with four cables. The ULTRA 2 cable looks expensive. One cable has an in-out connector. This cable attaches to one of the two ultra SCSI connectors (50 pin). The cable has two internal connectors on the ribbon and the in-out connector on the end. At first I thought I would lose a slot as it is attached to a slot plate. I removed the plate (removed two screws). I popped out a cutout in the case and attached the in-out connector. Now I have two external connectors, one 68 pin ULTRA 2 and one 50 pin ultra.
The card comes with Adaptec SCSI software, a rather extensive software package for creating CDR, CD players, SCSI utilities etc.
The two 2.1 GB IBM SCSI drives ($179 each @ FRY's) are Ultra Wide drives. They did not have any Ultra 2 drives. I am not up on the differences yet. Perhaps I will pick up an ULTRA 2 4.5 GB performance drive for standard operations. I do not know the functions of my drives yet. I will have to get a feel for the capabilities befor I can decide the drive usages. At minimum one will be a KOTD (Keep On Truck'n Drive)
I still have one PCI slot left. This could be used for a Mylex SCSI RAID controller. I could stripe the two IBM drives for a performance boost.
I do not know how this would effect the boot sequence. The BBS (Bios Boot Specification) may or may not make provisions for two SCSI controllers. The AMI bios on the Iwill XA 100 mobo only has one SCSI option. My guess is the first host adapter found on the PCI bus would be the boot adapter. It could still work if the first adapter had no boot device. The bios would probably then move to the second adapter.
Boot sequence and drive letter assignment
With AMI bios set to Primary/secondary/SCSI the system boots the Primary and assigns it C: The secondary is assigned D: the lower ID SCSI is drive E: and the higher ID SCSI is drive F:.
With AMI bios boot sequence secondary/primary/SCSI the secondary is C:, the primary is D: and the SCSI are E: and F: as before.
With AMI bios set to SCSI / primary / secondary and the Adaptec bios set to target ID 1 the SCSI drive with ID 1 becomes C:, the SCSI drive with ID 2 becomes the D Drive , the primary IDE is E: and secondary is F:.
With AMI bios SCSI / primary / secondary and Adaptec bios set to boot target ID2 the SCSI drive with (oops do not know yet, no OS on the 4th drive yet) I tried this without an OS on the second SCSI drive. The system booted IDE. Primary IDE became C:, secondary D:, first SCSI ID E: and second SCSI ID F:.
With AMI bios set to SCSI / primary / secondary and Adaptec bios set to boot target 0 (no drive in this system has ID 0) the system boots from SCSI with the lower ID C: and the next ID D:, primary IDE is E: and secondary IDE is F:
Partition Magic
Partition magic has proven effective for cloning drives. It is by far the most useful tool I have for viewing drives and formatting , reformatting, and changing formats.( Thanks Dave). I was not able to clone the 6.5 GB IDE drive to the 2.1 GB SCSI drive. There was less than two GB of files on the larger drive but it still would not clone. I resized the 6.5 GB active partition to 1.6 GB and then it cloned. I then resized both drives back up to 6.5 and 2.1 Gb.
The file copy procedure in Windows explorer might be the best way to go for some drive transfer operations as it does not care about partition sizes. (or is XCOPY easier?)
Zeuspaul |
