A few PC things I need help with...

[Gluk Schmuck]

I have just spent about 2 and a half hours putting the best bits of 2 PCs into one half decent one.

What I need to know is:
1. Is there a thing which allows you to put two blocks of RAM into one slot on the motherboard? If so then what is it called?
2. How do you install a new HD into a PC which already has one? *knows it's hard but wants to try*

That's all, for now.

[Doug]

GS, I added an 8.4 GB hard drive to my existing computer, which came with only a 2.1 GB. It actually wasn't hard at all. I cabled it with the existing ribbon cable, and changed the new one to the boot drive. The software that came with the drive (Western Digital) copied over the contents of the old drive to the new one. There are some considerations such as designating one of the drives the master and the other the slave, but the directions that came with the drive covered that stuff. The only other consideration was that with Windows 95, the largest partition I could have was 2.1 GB, so my computer thinks I have 5 hard drives. The new one is split into C:, E:, F:, and G:, and the old one is D:.

As far as the memory slot ("adapter" I guess it would be called), I've never heard of anything like that. I could be wrong, but I don't think they exist. Memory is cheap enough, though, that it might be affordable to take out what you have and just completely replace it with a higher capacity piece.

[Gluk Schmuck]

Originally posted by Doug:
I cabled it with the existing ribbon cable

I attached it to the existing ribbon cable and power cable and the PC didn't load up.
And the HD I want to install doesn't have any software with it because it was already in another PC.
Thank you!

[Pilot]

Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*If the cable that is attached to the Primary IDE port of the motherboard has 2 connectors, then attach the new hard drive to the extra connector. I would reccommend designating the new hard drive as Master (MA) and the old drive as Slave (SL). On Western Digital's "Caviar" series of drives, the designating jumpers are between the 40 pin interace connector and the power connector on the end of the drive. What brand/model hard drives are you using? Having the larger hard drive as the boot drive is always a must.

Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Once the drives are connected in this fashion, auto detect the drives in the CMOS setup, if the setup does indeed have this option. Otherwise you will have to enter the drive geometry manually. Once this is done, use a program such as EZ-DRIVE or Max Blast to copy the entire partition from the 2gb to the larger one. You may then go back and erase the old 2gb, and boot from the larger one. Make sense? If you don't have and of these utilities, I'd be more than happy to email them to you.

Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*As for the memory riser, The only ones that I know of that have been made are 72pin to 30-pin adapters. These will make 4 30-pin simms fit into one 72-pin slot. There's definetely no such thing for 168-pin dimms.

Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Doug, you say that you had to partition into 2.1gb partitions? This must either mean that you have Windows 95A, or your old drive was set up with 16-bit partitions (FAT16), which will go up to only 2.1gb. What you need is to set up 32-bit partitions (FAT32) so that you can recognize up to 100gb. This can only be done with Windows 95B (OSR 2.1) or higher. If you have Windows 95B or higher but are stuck with FAT16 partitions, then use a program such as PartitionMagic to merge them into one big FAT32 partition.

[ January 06, 2002: Message edited by: Pilot ]

[Doug]

Sorry I wasn't that helpful, GS; I didn't realize you were putting the drives for the 2 old PCs together. Looks like Pilot's got you covered, though.

Originally posted by Pilot:
Doug, you say that you had to partition into 2.1gb partitions? This must either mean that you have Windows 95A, or your old drive was set up with 16-bit partitions (FAT16), which will go up to only 2.1gb. What you need is to set up 32-bit partitions (FAT32) so that you can recognize up to 100gb. This can only be done with Windows 95B (OSR 2.1) or higher. If you have Windows 95B or higher but are stuck with FAT16 partitions, then use a program such as PartitionMagic to merge them into one big FAT32 partition.

At the time I added the drive, I did have W95A. I was perfectly happy with it, but a few months ago I was forced to upgrade to Windows Me. I know that can handle FAT32, but can I make the conversion with PartitionMagic without backing up everything and restoring it after the change to FAT32? My impression is that changing the FAT is data-destructive, like formatting.

Thanks for the info, Pilot.

[Pilot]

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbspYes. Partition Magic will allow you to convert from FAT16 to FAT32 without doing anything destructive. I know that Windows 98 came with a FAT32 drive converter.. but I don't know about Windows ME.

[Gluk Schmuck]

Originally posted by Pilot:
Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*If the cable that is attached to the Primary IDE port of the motherboard has 2 connectors, then attach the new hard drive to the extra connector. I would reccommend designating the new hard drive as Master (MA) and the old drive as Slave (SL). On Western Digital's "Caviar" series of drives, the designating jumpers are between the 40 pin interace connector and the power connector on the end of the drive. What brand/model hard drives are you using? Having the larger hard drive as the boot drive is always a must.

Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Once the drives are connected in this fashion, auto detect the drives in the CMOS setup, if the setup does indeed have this option. Otherwise you will have to enter the drive geometry manually. Once this is done, use a program such as EZ-DRIVE or Max Blast to copy the entire partition from the 2gb to the larger one. You may then go back and erase the old 2gb, and boot from the larger one. Make sense? If you don't have and of these utilities, I'd be more than happy to email them to you.

The drives are the same size. All I know is that they're 0.5Gbs each, I don't know the brand. But they might be getting a new (as in bought from a shop) 4Gb HD at some point. I think I'll install these then swap one of the HDs for the 4Gb one later.
What's the CMOS setup?


*wishes his mum would stop saying he knows loads about computers*
Ahh well, at least her saying I know loads is forcing me to learn more.

[Pilot]

Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Then I was appearantly mistaken. The drives are about 540mb each? The CMOS setup is the setup routine built into the BIOS. You might notice a message that says something along the lines of "Press DEL to enter setup" when you first turn on your computer? Can you tell me what brand the computer is? If it's an HP or a Compaq, then it can be a bit more tricky.

[Gluk Schmuck]

The vital stats:
OS: Win 95 B
BIOS: Phoenix (don't know the version)
Age: Ancient
Brand: I don't know, I'll ask *emails owners*
HDs: Yes, I was surprised that they were that small (I was also surprised that they passed safety checks because one of them didn't have anything holding the case on!)

[Pilot]

Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Good. With Windows 95B, you can set up FAT32 partitions. This option if offered if you run FDISK; it asks at the beginning if you want to enable "Large Disk Support" Answering Y will enable FAT32, and answering N will enable FAT16. I don't even know if you need to set up partitions or not, but there you go.

Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*With a Phoenix BIOS, you can enter the CMOS setup by pressing CTRL+ALT+ESC when the computer is counting memory, and in some cases CTRL+ALT+S. Sometimes the CTRL+ALT+S can be pressed at the command prompt.

[Gluk Schmuck]

Thank you, I'll try that next time I go over there.

Do you do this stuff professionally, BTW?