Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Computer Learning -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stang who wrote (25031)	1/26/2002 9:11:56 PM
From: SIer formerly known as Joe B.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 110653

Forgot to report a little PC weirdness I encountered this week. Some of you may remember me mentioning my old Pentium 233 a while back. Cheeky told me to throw it away. Any how this week I built 2 mostly new boxes for 2 friends that had old Compaqs both Pentium 166. One friend and his family are still beginners and don't do much beyond browsing and Email. The other friend is a web designer who uses a MAC, the PC is for his kids and just to see how the sites he designs look on a Windows PC. Both my friends wanted to spend as little as possible but end up with something sufficient to suit their needs for a fews years. To keep the price down I used their old CDroms, floppies and puny hard drives. I planned on using Duron 900 processors with a 266 FSB. The place I buy my supplies from told me they longer carried the 900 Durons but gave me 950s for $2 more which seemed like a great deal. When I finished putting together the 1st box it wouldn't get past the post. My first thought was the old hard drive, it's one of the old flat ones that's the same length and width as a CDrom, wasn't compatible so I tried the hard drive from my old 233. It also didn't work but I did discover the problem. The 950 Durons were 200 FSB not 266 so I had to reset a jumper. The PC then booted with my old hard drive and also booted with the old flat hard drive. The 2nd PC went together real quick. When I put the hard drive back in my 233 it wasn't recognized set as primary master as it has been set for 4 years. I tried a new data ribbon cable, I tried it as secondary master, I tried another hard drive, a 20 GB WD from an AMD 1200 PC, it also wasn't recognized. At this point I'm starting to get really pissed. The next thing I tried was making the CDrom the primary master and the hard drive the primary slave and that worked! I reversed them and of course once again the hard drive wasn't recognized. What could be wrong with the motherboard for this to happen? The problem ain't serious but not being able to figure out why it's happening is really bugging me. The 233 works as good as ever with the hard drive as a slave and I only use it as a loaner for people who's PC I'm working on but I sure wish I could understand why this is happening. Anybody got any ideas?