My sick Motherboard.....computer builder enthusiasts HELP!

[Macros746]

Hello everyone,
I'm building my parents a frankencomputer (left over from parts I've upgraded over the years) and I am having motherboard issues. I bought over Pricewatch an exceedingly cheap case which, after plugging it into my motherboard, turned out to be faulty (It gave a whing, a beep and then died never to give power again). I know the motherboard still worked before that because I had put it back into my rig as a stop gap only a couple of months ago. So a couple of hours and a trip to COMPUSA later I had a very nice, three times as expensive case. I hooked everything up, and it fired up perfectly....except...It absolutely won't detect the CD-ROM drive or the Harddrive. I have tried hooking them up on one IDE, I have tried one on each IDE nothing. I have used the Western digital diagnosis software and it doesn't find a drive. I plugged the drives themselves back into MY computer and both worked beautifully. So it seems there is something wrong with my IDE ports yes? Could there have been a surge from the crappy power supplly that only fried that part of the motherboard? So tell me guys, do I have to invest more money in this bad boy and get a new motherboard as well? Talk ta me.

Thanks in advance,

Macros

p.s. Spinrite also couldn't detect the drive, but it seemed to say that the 'harddrive controller' is working fine.

[Macros746]

bump

[PORNOST4R]

it sounds like your ide contr. is dying ... sorry, it is dead . buy a new board, I think, there is no help for that board. the only thing you could do, is to try it in an another case, but I doubt that could change something.

P.

[Macros746]

Yeah that is what I was afraid of. I just thought that maybe there was some obscure IDE switch or something that I had inadvertantly tripped..... Well folks, it just goes to show that, to a certain extent, you get what you pay for. 28 dollar case = piece of shit that fried my motherboard...compusa 60 dollar case....beautiful, functional, and still can't save my motherboard...sigh.

Macros

[eyeofbeholder]

Have you thought about buying an add on PCI IDE controller? Compusa has these for about $30.

[Kdiddy]

Before you give up on the board, try using a different IDE cable, I had a cable go bad and give me the same problems. Take the IDE cable from your machine, and hook it to that mainboard on those drives, before you decide to ditch the board.

[Macros746]

Thanks for all of your responses. I tried about seven different cables unfortunately...sigh. The PCI IDE controller.....does that act the same as the on board ports? I.E. I can boot my computer from a HD connected to a PCI card? Is that correct?

Macros

p.s. get back to me as soon as you can...I just ordered another EPOX motherboard...I'd much prefer to buy a $30 card....

[Macros746]

Another question occurs to me. If I buy an IDE card don't I need drivers for it that will only install in windows? And, if I can't get the harddrive operational to load windows in the first place won't it be impossible to utilize the IDE PCI card? Or is it just something you activate in BIOS?

Macros

[Nerk01]

No a PCI IDE Controller is auto detected in the bios and the first hard drive on it will be recognized as C:

[w00kiee]

'I.E. I can boot my computer from a HD connected to a PCI card? Is that correct? '

why not? back in my day all hds were hooked up through cards (isa at the time) and we liked it that way!

[draganong]

did you set the MS/SL or CS jumpers correctly ? Also, is the IDE cable CS ?

[Macros746]

As far as I know...yes. The jumpers are set correctly (although I will check again when I get home. But this is motherboard and harddrive are from my original computer and worked together fine...and none of the settings have changed so it should be fine. As to the cable select I'm really not sure. How does one tell cable select cables from regular cables?

Macros

[eyeofbeholder]

I was wrong on that $30 IDE controller. It's $5 cheaper. See
http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=50000818

[Macros746]

Well, I got a PCI IDE card and, as promised, it immediately recognized the Hard drive and recognized that there was a CD-Rom drive plugged in and booted to Windows. BUT...the CD-ROm won't function. I think it MAY be because it is an ATA100 controller card and my cd-rom drive doesn't support that access rate. But, in any case, tonight I am on the phone to Maxtor technical support to see if they can iron this out. If you guys have any more suggestions about how to get this up and running I'm all ears. Thanks again for all of your help

Macros

p.s. eyeofbeholder...thanks for that link. When I went to Compusa last night they only had the more expensive $50 Maxtor controller...I may just have to return it in favor of the one you sent. But, if I can get it running tonight I'll probably just leave the more expensive one in and get the damn thing in the mail

[speedy]

Reading all the posts quickly it seems the problem is getting a hard drive and CD drive you pulled from one computer to work in another. Take a deep breath. Pull the drives. Check the master/slave setting on the hard drive. If you only have one hard drive it should be MASTER. Install it on the first primary IDE channel. Boot. Get into to your BIOS while booting. Be sure NOTHING is on any of the other three channels while you're in BIOS. If that drive works correctly, shut down.

Next be sure the CD drive is set to MASTER. Install on the secondary IDE master channel. Boot, go to BIOS again while booting, set to AUTO or manually set if needed. Reboot. Watch and the BIOS should detect both your hard drive and CD drive and if needed install drivers for it.

If you have a 2nd hard drive set it to slave and go through the same steps to set it up in BIOS as a slave device on the primary channel. If you have a 2nd CD drive or a CD-R/CD-RW drive set to slave and repeat steps one more time on the secondary IDE channel.

If for some reason you must use a controller card then you FIRST need to disable the motherboard IDE controller through BIOS. Instructions how should have come with the external card.

All the things you've said indicate you either have a master/slave conflict on one or more drives or you have the data cable on backwards on one or more drive or that there is a conflict between the motherboard IDE controller and same on some external card.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: speedy on 2001-12-19 08:10:01 ]</font>

[Bluez]

sadly you already bought the pci ide card, i would strongly suggest to get rid of the main board, there is no telling what else has become unstable, and mainboards are getting *very* cheap... if it's an old processor, there's bound to be someone around to have some old mainboards, heck, i just threw away a few P1 and 486 boards, not much use these days...

also, having TWO pci controllers in a machine can cause some havoc with some OS'es... but there is no standard rule for that...

[Macros746]

Bluez,
no harm done. I am going to try to get everything running but if I can't I'll simply return it and get a motherboard instead. The reason this rankles so much is that this project was supposed to be a cheapy way to give my parents a much better computer then they have now (they are still running a Powerbook 520c...bless their hearts) And the bills are rapidly mounting. If I can't get it to work I have a unlocked duron sitting around and I'll drop it in a new EPOX board. But, you'd have to know my parents to understand, an overclocked Duron in an EPOX board is SUCH overkill for what they want to do that it seems a shame to waste it.....

Macros

[zzyzzx]

I would have also mentioned to check the BIOS on the MB first. I assume that you are putting the HD and CD-ROM on different IDE channels?

[eyeofbeholder]

Macros746, did you ever get your Frankencomputer working?

[Macros746]

eyeofbeholder (just captured that movie the other night

I finally gave up and bought a cheapy MB when I started to get AGP issues with the old half fried board. Now everything is working smoothly. After trying all of these workarounds I almost had heart failure just plugging everything in and having it work right of the line. Now I am trying to tweak this old Voodoo 3 so it's TV out works (my parents don't have a monitor and I don't particularly want to ship one to Nebraska But, other than that, it is all working like a dream. Thanks for all of your help everyone.

Macros

smiling proudly over my frankencomputer with a brand new motherboard and case

p.s. in good news though, the CPU I found in a computer someone had thrown away on the street turned out to be a VERY overclockable Duron 750......FREE CPUs...gotta love New York City