Installing heatsink/fan combo over CPU

When I was looking for a floppy drive last time, it seems that they all come without the cable. The cable runs between $8. and $13. with shipping and the drive runs between $15. to $18. with shipping. Before I spend about $30. for something I might not need, I want to make sure that I have to.

When I Googled the error message that I receive due to the floppy drive, one person said that he bought another floppy drive and cable and it didn't work either, so he bought another drive and cable and it didn't work. So I'm not sure if it's hardware. I'm thinking about buying a new cable first because it's the cheapest. If it doesn't work with the new cable, I'll have to start thinking about buying another drive.

But I still think that these settings might have something to do with the problem:

Original settings:

IDE Channel 0 Master [BENQ DVD DDDW165]
IDE Channel 0 Slave [None]
IDE Channel 1 Master [None]
IDE Channel 1 Slave [None]
IDE Channel 2 Master [ST3320620AS] <---
IDE Channel 3 Master [None] <---


Settings after the meltdown:

IDE Channel 0 Master [BENQ DVD DDDW165]
IDE Channel 0 Slave [None]
IDE Channel 1 Master [None]
IDE Channel 1 Slave [None]
IDE Channel 2 Master [None] <---
IDE Channel 3 Master [ST3320620AS] <---

When my computer first turned on when I pressed the Reset button, I immediately went into Setup and set the BIOS/CMOS setting to most optimized. I've since tried a number of boot order sequences but none have solved the problem. The manual says that if I don't get a short beep when my computer starts up, there's something wrong at Post, and it has to do with the floppy drive. I disabled the floppy drive in BIOS but I still don't get the short beep, so something is still wrong, but I don't have to press F1 to continue to Windows.

 

This might save you a couple of bucks. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812103015 $7.88 (cable)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16821152001 $10.48 (drive)

$18.36 total including shipping.

E

 

Denise, I cannot stop, just pooped in, I said to uninstall floppy drive driver, not disable, it will not find it if you disable it.
If after restarting, that does not work, go to floppy drive controller, and driver, and UNINSTALL DRIVER, then restart, and see how you go.
See you tommorrow(almost 23.45 here.

 

Thanks Fred . . . I appreciate you looking around for me. I bookmarked the pages until I've decided what I want to do.

 

I disabled it so that when it boots up I won't have to press F1 to continue to Windows. If the hardware is no longer any good, it'll have to wait before I can buy new again. If it's software/settings, then I'll have to wait until someone can tell me what I have to do. But from the returns that I received when I Googled the Post message "floppy disk(s) fail (40)," nobody really knows how to fix it if the drive is properly installed.

I uninstalled the floppy drive driver and the floppy drive controller. For each one, I received the "new hardware" icon in my system tray when I rebooted but the drive still doesn't work, so we can rule these two things out.

To sum it up, the first time, when Fred told me to switch the cable around, it fixed the problem . . . I received the short beep and my start-up went from the T-Force splash screen to Windows. This time it isn't doing that. It goes to the Post screen and the reason given is that "an error is found during Post." The error is that my floppy disk failed (40). A new driver and a new controller didn't fix the problem. It may have something to do with the On button no longer working or it may be because the floppy drive or cable were damaged.

I'll keep trying any software/settings suggestions that anyone gives me and, if none of them work, I'll try changing the hardware sometime down the road. I think we might all be getting a little tired of trying to get this computer up and running properly, with one problem arising after the other, trying to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it and if things are compatible between X32 and X64, and why something isn't working when it should be working. Maybe I'm just speaking for myself. Most of the computer is working. I can do just about everything I want to do with it. Maybe someday, some way, the rest will get fixed in the future.

 

Have you tried booting the computer with the floppy unplugged? I hate floppy drives. I only use them for RAID drivers or a non windows friendly BIOS flash. Do you really need one?

This thread is too long for me to search it. Just a suggestion on my part, why not start a new thread, say computer is built and up, needs tweaking? This one is just to long for me to keep up with all the stuff going on now and in the past.

Just a thought on my part.

E

 

Floppy drives are needed for SATA computers and I like the ease of saving small files easily.

I haven't unplugged the floppy drive, just disabled it. When I disabled it, it went straight to Windows without stopping at the Post screen. I re-enabled it to delete the controller but since that didn't help, I'll either disable it or unplug it unless someone comes up with a fresh idea for getting it past the Post screen by changing settings. If not, then it's a hardware issue and they'll have to be replaced.

Thanks Fred

 

Sounds like bad Flop drive.

Brand New OEM Floppy Drive & cable can be had for $9.98 shipped
(add the floppy drive to your cart first, this gives you the Promotion Code "Pricewatch" then add the cable)

http://www.pcdirect.com/product.asp?promo=pricewatch&PID=1&Sku=FLMITBLACK
http://www.pcdirect.com/search.asp?SearchText=floppy+cable&CatID=0


I found the above thru www.pricewatch.com
Enjoy:major

 

Thanks Asus . . . *BIG SMILES*

I appreciate your help. And the price is within my means right now, I won't have to wait to save up the money for a couple of weeks. I just ordered it. I'll eat spaghetti all week

Denise

 

If we were neighbors I'd give a floppy drive

and some meat balls to got with that getti:dancer

 

Pleased to see Fred, and Asus, have been around, and I see that you tried uninstalling both drivers.
So I tend to agree , now, that the floppy drive is probably faulty, as Fred, Asus, and Shanemail do.
I just don't like telling you to spend anymore, unless there seems to be no fix, and eliminating all possibilities.
You see, most of us , because we build, or, work around computers , tend to have something else, we can test on, (any old base, and motherboard, usually helps, because we can test a possibly faulty part, in it.
Anyway, computers can be a trial, to even the most informed expert, - nobody will ever know it all, as it is constantly changing.
We have all been ther, and I think the others will agree, we have to be pig-heade, to beat it, and if you have time, eventually , we beat it.
Carry on, regardless - I think you will find, every geek enjoys the challenge, and we are all learning , too, from those with more, or, different, experiences.

 

It's the thought that counts ASUS

 

This has been one heck of a build. I never thought that there'd be half as many problems as there were, and the most oddball ones to boot.

Eliminating the basic possibilities first is always the right way to go and now that I have a floppy and cable on its way, this problem should be history in about a week or less.

Since you guys don't know me from Adam, the amount of time that you put into helping me build my computer is more than generous, and I appreciate every post and every thought that went into it.

I'll give you the weekend off, LOL . . . or some time to help someone else. My computer is running fine without the floppy drive but I think this problem shows the reason a floppy drive is needed for a SATA motherboard . . . it won't Post without one, unless it's disabled in BIOS, and the Automatic System Recovery disks need to be on floppies.

I had the strangest dream last night that computer technology took a huge step in advancement and the parts were all differernt, made of a liquid, lol. It must be getting to me if I'm dreaming about it.

Denise

 

It is surprising - the things that cause anxious moments, even in your sleep.
You have saved half your money (nearly) and will not have to pay premium rate calls for support, -and you can now tell a cpu, from a front door.
Even at my age, a sense of achievement is always a smashing feeling- don't lose that, now you have done it.
Whatever problems, or, faults that you have with it - you will have a very good idea, how to get over it - Plenty of help from majorgeeks

 

Ok, here are the pictures of our new computer . . . cranky as a baby with collic but it's doing well now. For some reason, pic 1 wouldn't post right, but these are the rest.



http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w239/Denise_M1/2c.jpg

http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w239/Denise_M1/3cSATACableAttached-DidntWork.jpg

http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w239/Denise_M1/4c.jpg

http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w239/Denise_M1/5c.jpg

http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w239/Denise_M1/6c.jpg

http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w239/Denise_M1/7cIDECableInstalled.jpg

http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w239/Denise_M1/8cWaitingforIDECable.jpg

http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w239/Denise_M1/9cReadytoPost.jpg

http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w239/Denise_M1/10cASparePart.jpg

http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w239/Denise_M1/11cAllHookedUpBeforeSATACard.jpg

http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w239/Denise_M1/12cNewPSU.jpg

http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w239/Denise_M1/13UpandRunningUsingResetButton-MJon.jpg

 

I wanted to label each picture but I was in "Edit" and didn't have time, so this is a description of each picture:

The 2nd picture was taken when I had the SATA cable attached to hdd and it didn't work.

The 6th picture was taken when I finally got the IDE cable installed.

The 7th picture was taken when I installed the floppy drive.

The 8th picture was taken when I was ready to POST.

The 9th picture is a spare part that I couldn't find any use for. Anybody have any ideas?

The 10th picture was taken when everything was hooked up and the computer was running before I installed the SATA card.

The 11th picture was taken after I installed the new PSU.

And the 12th picture shows the system up and running using the Reset button. MajorGeeks was on the monitor

Does anyone have a child/grandchild who watches Dora The Explorer? Her theme song is "We Did It!"

We did it!!!!!

:clap .:cloud9 :drink :highfive :celebrate :grouphug :eek :dancer :guitar :celebrate ​

 

I just went to the general Hardware page. I knew there were a lost of posts in this thread but it's also had 7,635 views! I really do hope this thread helps a lot of people.

 

Glad your compruter is up and running more or less. Thanks for posting the picts! And good job on your wire management! That is one thing I can't seem to do very well, but your's is pretty clean looking.

I love the pict of the compruter and all the external drives. Let us know how it goes with the new floppy drive.

E

 

Takes a womans touch to be that synchronised with that many wires to drives.
What have you done about sata controller card, Denise?
That extra bit, - can you turn it so that we can see the plug points?

 

You guys are funny. I think my wires are a mess and I still have to straighten them out, lol.

It's kind've fuzzy because the camera didn't take good close-up. In the area of the bracket that contains the pieces, there's a screw, then a black unmovable square plastic thing that's about 1/4" in height, length and depth, then a round yellow port, then another screw. The screws keep this area secured to the bracket, so it's only the black unmovable square thing and the port. The end of the wire has a 2 pin plug that looks like the system status plugs but it doesn't have a label on it.

This is a 2nd view of the part that I didn't include with the first set of pics.

http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w239/Denise_M1/sparepart2ndview19.jpg

 

I haven't done anything with the SATA card yet. I want to enjoy my computer for a couple of weeks before it goes down again . . . I'm not optimistic about the card.

You can see in the fifth picture down (where I removed the SATA cable and plugged in the IDE cable) that I plugged in Walter's 4-pin CPU plug too.

I also received the fan and the new floppy in the mail. I'm going to wait until the weekend's over to plug in the SATA card. If it doesn't blow anything again, I'll give it a few days and then I'll install the fan, wait a few days, and then install the floppy. I'm being overly cautious this time.

Some of the external hard drives aren't connected yet. I didn't label the power cords and even though the plugs fit into a drive, it doesn't turn on, so I'm switching them around to find the correct power supply for each of them. I thought they were the same but inside, the pins have different layouts. I'm also missing a power cord and I can't figure that out at all. The area that I worked in is only about 6'X8' but I can't find it.

 

S/PDIF pci bracket

 

Thanks shanemail . . . what's it good for?

 

Audio
SEE AN EXPLANATION HERE
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t51869.html

 

Perhaps the others might be able to tell you more, but further information at
http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&message.id=12170

I cannot elucidate more, as I have never had cause to use it.

 

Off Topic.

I thought you might get a kick out of this DeniseM. I tried to get a system up and folding today, did not work, has some issues! I will figure them out when I have time to mess with it. I just thought you might like to see a minimal type computer...

And I am sorry about the off topic post. Hope everyone has a good weekend.

E

 

Off post, but a good lesson on how not to -- Fred, what a way to treat your goodies :eek
, or, are they all 'baddies', strewn over the floor, :hammer where's your antistatic sheet? Motherboard, and hard drive on the floor- ouch.:cry :banghead
We know, -------this was a joke ??????????

 

Come one Backlogic, I am in LA and we rarely get static (high humidity). And the board is on a box, on the floor of a closed off room, and I live alone, Fred does not go in that room. And it is just junk, except for the CPU, PSU and RAM. I was falling behind on my folding, and trying to get a borg up!

I did not have an extra case! Actually, you can get some weird grounding issues with a mobo, and building a 'phone book' PC will identify it. Although, I would not recommend doing it on the floor!

E

 

Gotya , Fred_G,
Made you tell us more, though, didn't it.:neener
Just laughing with you, - I could feel you r you can't see a box in the picture.- bet you never thought of that when you posted it roflmao
Can't be serious all the time, we would get too bored.

 

Hi!

I must've clicked the wrong link to get here last time as I haven't received any notifications that there were new posts. And I didn't get to see Fred's picture!

I didn't understand almost any part of the question in the link you gave me, shanelmail. I was shaking my head, asking "what the heck is he talking about?" Then the responder said

I LMAO!

But I kept reading and still thought they were speaking Chinese, but I got that it has something to do with audio/analog/digital signals . . . quite over my head so the part will most likely stay in the spare parts box.

Thanks for the link that you gave me too, baklogic but, again, it was too involved for me.

I'm glad that I decided to just visit and discovered some posts!

I'm going to be installing the SATA card in about an hour. Under a bunch of things, I found the disk that came with it. Wish me luck!

 

Your picture wasn't visible in Advance Mode Reply, Fred, but I can see it now. What's the term "folding" mean?

I don't think there is an off-topic in this thread, lol . . . it's full of everything imaginable I think. I have to agree that it's a mess and I'm very happy that it's not my mess to fix.

 

Well, I installed the SATA card and my computer didn't die this time . . . that's a good sign! . . . but I didn't connect any ext hdds to it, on the other hand. But it's still a good sign. I'll connect a drive to it another day. I know . . . I'm chicken.

 

DeniseM, here is a link to the Major Geeks folding team's official site. http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=38105
Or: Stanford's site http://folding.stanford.edu/

That should explain it to you. I fold for a different team, but the end results are good!

E

 

Well, it explains it to a point but what exactly needs to be done besides downloading the folding program and installing it?

 

Well, you would then put your name in. And then you put your team number in. And just let it run. I think the Major Geeks team number is 12072. I normally run the graphical client, it usually will prompt you for the info when you install the folding program. If it does not, right click on the red gear looking thing in the bottom right of the screen and left click Configure, then enter your name and team #. If you need additional info, check out http://forums.majorgeeks.com/forumdisplay.php?f=24

E

 

Hi everyone. I hope your Easter was a good one!

I installed the SATA card and software a few days ago. Today, I plugged one of the SATA ext hdds into one of its ports but My Computer isn't recognizing it and it's not listed in Device Manager. It looks like the SATA card might have been damaged as well. I'm going to connect the 4 drives using 1394 cables and chalk the card up as a loss, along with the SATA bracket, floppy drive and PSU.

Denise

 

Fred, you had mentioned that you have some spare cables and such. Do you have an extra power cord that goes from the box into the outlet? I have the part that plugs into the drive which also has the converter.
I lost 2 complete power cords and 1/2 of another and I can't find them anywhere. I have no idea how that could have happened. I can do without one of the power cords because I have one from the ext hdd that broke, and I can swap one power supply with another drive when I need it, but I need to have the half of the power supply cord for one of my drives. It's port has a strange layout of pins and no other plug can fit in it.
If you don't have one, do you or does anyone else know where I can buy one? I Googled it but came up with 1/2 hour's worth of nothing.

Denise

 

Hi,

I finally got all of the external hdds organized and attached to my pc (for the most part). I attached a partial Belarc that shows my ext hdds. Breaking the 300Gb ext hdd hurt. . . I needed the memory. Even though it looks like I have a lot of memory, I could fill it up within a month. The Belarc also doesn't show one of my ext hdds that can't be on at the same time as another one. Either one or the other can be on, but not both . . . don't know why. And one more ext hdd isn't connected because I can't find the power cords (2½ of them) for it. I looked in couch cushions, under beds, behind furniture, in closets, etc, in case my grandson ran off with them when I wasn't looking, but I haven't found them yet.

I'm really upset that I can't connect my ext SATA hdds because the entire reason I went SATA was for the speed and it seems that I lost it during the meltdown. So, to offset things a bit, I'm going to start saving so that I can buy more RAM. I'm hoping to buy 2 twin sticks of 1G ea in a few months.

Since I've been using XP Pro X64 for a while now, I've gotten to like it. I don't notice an increase in speed but I also haven't had any problems with drivers or programs since the initial bout of setbacks (which were enough to last a lifetime).

I haven't installed the new floppy drive yet because I wanted to wait and see how the SATA card would react to a drive connected to it. Since it looks like it might be dead, I'll be installing the floppy drive pretty soon.

Denise

 

DeniseM, Be glad to send you a cable if I have one. What exact power cable do you need?

E

 

Hi Fred,

The external hard drive came with a 2-piece power cord, not a cable. The first piece gets plugged into the hdd and at the end of the cord is the adapter. Then there's a second cord (the one that I'm missing). It would plug into the adapter and the plug into a wall outlet. There is an enclosure in the adapter where there are 3 prongs. The prongs that are situated inside the enclosure almost look like a regular 3-prong plug but the prongs are all the same size in diameter and square-ish/rectangle-ish. The middle prong is taller than the other two. The rear of the adapter says

Other than that, I can't describe it much better. I don't have a digital camera and close-ups with disposable cameras don't come out very well.

Denise

 

Sorry DeniseM, don't have anything like that. Contact the enclosure company. If they can't help, you might try an electronics store or Radio Shack, just write down what you had in your post, but it might be cheaper to buy a new enclosure, not sure.

E

 

Thanks for trying Fred

 

I found the power cord that I needed for the ext hdd. It's a pc power cable. I took the cable from my old pc and plugged it into the power adapter and into the wall and it did the trick.

 

Pleased you found it.:celebrate
Computer running well ?:dancer

 

Ironic. I have a ton of those laying around! Glad you got it going.

E

 

Hi baklogic and Fred

Since the processor is supposed to be dual core, I installed the RAM sticks into the dual core position of slots 1 and 3 instead 1 and 2. I don't think it's working as well as it did when they were installed in slots 1 and 2. I bought 2 more 1G twin sticks of RAM and put them in slots 2 and 4 and I see no improvement in the speed. Doing simple things such as inserting a DVD into the DVD drive causes a stoppage of everything else, such as I can't rename a folder until My Computer recognizes the DVD, in about 10 seconds, so I think something isn't right. It happens other times too, such as when I'm copying files from one drive to another. I don't see anything moving faster than before I installed the 2x 1G sticks of RAM. They're recognized in My Computer though. Another mystery but par for the course for this build, lol.

I think I mentioned that the SATA card doesn't work. It might have been damaged when I first installed it and the PSU overloaded. I haven't yet but I'm going to remove it and uninstall the SATA card software. When I boot up, a screen appears that asks me if I want to set up a RAID array so removing the software will eliminate that screen.

Other than that, the pc is doing fine.

It was very unusual that the one particular ext hdd uses a computer power cable. All the others that I have use a 2 prong power cord. I still haven't found the original cord and can't imagine what could've happened to it.

It was good to hear from you guys again :grouphug

Denise

 

Denise, remember back when we were all helping to get this up and running, the question of putting in a floppy sata driver came up.
Well, as most geeks (I must be one, cos I can't keep off them) we learn all the time.
Raid was a niggle , as I don't use it, and just have mine as seperate drive letters, but I missed one thing that came up recently -
If we setup without inserting a sata driver to the motherboard, it works as on the IDE, and we don't get the full sata speed benifit - if I had known that before........
So this could be a reason for not being as quick as you would like - perhaps one of the others could elucidate on that, as it was news to me- or, even dispute it.

 

Another thing - Western Digital have a sata controller instalation download for their discs- I cannot rember your disc manufacturer.
If a manufacturers sata driver is installed, I wonder if it would help your sata controller .

 

I don't remember the topic of installing a floppy driver but I do remember us talking about the need for SATA to have a floppy drive. I've been very lazy for the past couple of weeks and I haven't yet installed the floppy drive. Is there such a thing as a SATA driver for a PATA floppy drive?

I didn't set up a RAID array either. My motherboard came with a SATA disk. I don't know what's on the disk but I would think that it would include anything that I'd need in order to run the pc as SATA. My internal hdd is also SATA. I remember when I connected the int hdd to the mobo using a SATA cable, it didn't work. I had to connect them using an IDE cable but I don't remember the reason for it. It still doesn't make sense to me though . . . it's logical to me that a SATA motherboard + a SATA int hdd = the need for a SATA cable to connect the two.

The SATA ext hdds also came with disk with SATA drivers, which I installed.

I understand what you're trying to get at but I'm not following you completely.

My int hdd is a Seagate Barracuda, shown in the attachment.

Denise

 

I have an idea to run by you about this: "Since the processor is supposed to be dual core, I installed the RAM sticks into the dual core position of slots 1 and 3 instead 1 and 2. I don't think it's working as well as it did when they were installed in slots 1 and 2. I bought 2 more 1G twin sticks of RAM and put them in slots 2 and 4 and I see no improvement in the speed."

I think you are confusing a dual core CPU with DDR RAM. A dual core CPU is 2 CPU's in one chip. DDR ram doubles it's speed when it is in the right slots on the mobo. Also, can you list the specs of each type of RAM? If you mismatch the ram, it will make all of them run at the speed of the slowest stick of RAM.

Try the new RAM in slots 1 and 2 and see if it is as fast as the old RAM in the same slots. Also, check and see if your mobo supports 4Gigs of RAM.

I am glad Damion is running!

Backlogic I recently found out my Seagate SATA drives had a jumper that limited them to the old SATA 1.5. I took the jumper off, no difference. I am thinking about setting them up in a RAID0 Tuesday, will let you know if I notice a difference from the RAID0 I had a while back. Interesting.

E