Pretty sure it's dead

[lymponus]

Okay, 700 miles later and my brother's computer still isn't working.

My guess is, I fried the motherboard. Primary IDE connection doesn't recognize any drives attached, and the hard drive light on the case is constantly on. I'm trying to use the Promise controller card, and the Western Digital diagnostics can tell that the drives are attached but can't access them.

Does it matter, on ATA/100 IDE cables, where the master and slave drives are attached? In trying to get the computer to pass the POST screens, I switched the two drives (adjusted jumpers) but didn't switch the cable. My guess is I burned out a controller on the mboard.

The Promise controller card runs my old ATA/33 hd just fine, but won't access the new WD800JD drives, so I have a feeling the card may not be working right either. Running the WD Data Lifeguard, I get a Data Request Timeout error, which means the hard drives aren't communicating. Both are giving the same errors, so I find it hard to believe I got two bad hard drives at the same time.

What do you guys think? Appreciate your input.

Lymponus

"All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope." - Sir Winston Churchill

 

[Traqr]

You've run all your tests with the same cable attached? Try that first! IDE cables are cheap, and usually made cheaply. If both of your controllers (mobo & promise card) are having trouble seeing the drives, it's probably not the controllers. If both drives are giving the same problem, it's probably not the drives. Oh, and master <i>should</i> be on the end of the cable, but in practice I haven't seen much difference, so long as there <b>is</b> a drive on the end connector; those pesky signal reflections have to be damped by I/O resistance or they'll muck up everything.

<font color=blue>Learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make them all yourself.</font color=blue><font color=green>
<i>Canadian Flight Safety periodical, ~1987</i></font color=green>

 

[lymponus]

That's what I was hoping was wrong. Bought two 'rounded' cables off ebay really cheap, so thought that might be the problem. Bought two new flat cables, didn't make any difference.

Brought my brother's old hard drive home with me to check on my computer, seems to be working fine. I found a program to locate the BIOS id (ctbios) and am going to see if I can find an update. Will probably take the hard drives to a computer shop and check them on a newer computer to see if the hard drives are good or not.

This should have only taken a few hours to install the HD and the OS. I guess I need to look at this as a learning experience (a friend of mine calls these character builders).

Lymponus

"All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope." - Sir Winston Churchill