VOGONS


First post, by CaelThunderwing

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im building a Pentium 1 PCX (200mhz) for windows 3.1 (little Overkil.)but

in the system, it has a ZIP100 Drive and a LS120 Drive (both internal ATAPI drives w/ the Zip drive as IDE Master n the LS120 as IDE Slave) it has a 8GB SCSI HDD (just all i had to spare this small.) and an S3 Verge GX Video card and a CT2230 Soundblaster 16

just while the ZIP drive works in DOS if i boot from it, trying to use GUEST to get it setup in DOS otherwise it just hangs at " Finding your IOMEGA Drive a letter..." it never fails to find a letter as it just hangs at that point.

I'm at a loss to why this is happening. Is it the fact the HDD is connected by SCSI? is it conflicting with my LS120 Drive? or did i do something wrong? (i'm posting in Software as the drives em'selves are seemingly fine, its teh software/drivers that im having problems w/)

(see my post at the bottom for how i just finally fixed the issue.)

Last edited by CaelThunderwing on 2023-04-14, 14:08. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 2 of 9, by CaelThunderwing

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Yoghoo wrote on 2022-12-03, 07:47:

What DOS version and Guest version do you use? Also make sure your LASTDRIVE parameter is high enough in your config.sys.

MS-DOS 6.22 and Last Drive is set to Z whiel i initally had the HDD partitioned in 2GB Chunks, i tried just dropping it to the Primary @GB C: Partition n it still hangs.

Reply 3 of 9, by Yoghoo

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You can try: guest letter=k. The letter k is the drive you want to use. If that doesn't work you have to play with the guest.ini. Remove all lines which you don't need. For example I had a PC where it would hang unless I removed all lines except for these 2:

ASPI=ASPIPPM1.SYS /INFO FILE=NIBBLE.ILM SPEED= 1
ASPI=ASPIPPM2.SYS /INFO FILE=NIBBLE2.ILM SPEED= 1

Mind you this is for a parallel zip drive. For ATAPI you need other lines.

Reply 4 of 9, by CaelThunderwing

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Yoghoo wrote on 2022-12-03, 14:48:
You can try: guest letter=k. The letter k is the drive you want to use. If that doesn't work you have to play with the guest.ini […]
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You can try: guest letter=k. The letter k is the drive you want to use. If that doesn't work you have to play with the guest.ini. Remove all lines which you don't need. For example I had a PC where it would hang unless I removed all lines except for these 2:

ASPI=ASPIPPM1.SYS /INFO FILE=NIBBLE.ILM SPEED= 1
ASPI=ASPIPPM2.SYS /INFO FILE=NIBBLE2.ILM SPEED= 1

Mind you this is for a parallel zip drive. For ATAPI you need other lines.

just got to trying (sorry have been sick the last few days) i have tried and its still locking teh system up.

Reply 5 of 9, by Yoghoo

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CaelThunderwing wrote on 2022-12-05, 14:40:

just got to trying (sorry have been sick the last few days) i have tried and its still locking teh system up.

No problem. Then the last thing you can do is to find out which line in the guest.ini file locks the system up. It's a bit of trail and error but the system locks up because of the detection phase so you need to remove the line(s) which causes this.

Reply 6 of 9, by CaelThunderwing

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Yoghoo wrote on 2022-12-05, 14:44:
CaelThunderwing wrote on 2022-12-05, 14:40:

just got to trying (sorry have been sick the last few days) i have tried and its still locking teh system up.

No problem. Then the last thing you can do is to find out which line in the guest.ini file locks the system up. It's a bit of trail and error but the system locks up because of the detection phase so you need to remove the line(s) which causes this.

i took another stab today Thinking this is all somehow related to my SCSI Card n HDD as no matter what i did, i'd hear the drive n see the card re-init (its one of the Adaptec ones w/ an LED on-card)

i had Just upgraded last week in my OG Xbox (i hate how the last gen ones are called the Xbox "One" >_>) it's Hard Drive, i had no use at first w/ its original Stock HDD, so i put it back in long enough to run ConfigMagic so i could let the console unlock teh drive itself (if you dont know, the OG Xbox requires its HDD to be Security-locked, and i involved it mainly because i didnt have the eeprom backed up for that drive anymore ^^;;) and put it in this rig im slowly working on...

well i found out what in everything seems to be the issue but not what i expected, after it was still hanging, i stripped it down to just its video card the LS120 drive and ZIP100 drive.. even after removing everything relating to the SCSI n Parallel) port drivers in the guest.ini.... still nothing! gave it one last hail mary shot.. copied a fresh copy back off the floppy i had of the .ini, shut the PC down and disconnected the LS120 Drive.. GUEST.EXE instantly set it to Drive D:

i have No clue if its this Specific LS120 drive or if its the fact its there, thats causing the Issue (the only other working drive i have is in another build and atm, it being a little late into the night, i dont feel like getting it out of the other room, and stripping it down for the drive JUST for testing... )

Does anyone know why this is occurring? i do have 2 other ZIP100 drives intended for use in other builds, and the one in the currently affected build.. unlike the others has a Master/Slave/Cable Select and a Master A/Slave A/Cable Select A setting for the jumper drive select jumper. i dont know which Mode i have it on but i do have it in one of the cable select Modes. either later tonight if i dont fall asleep early like i have been or tomorrow morning i'll try the opposite Drive select Mode that its in, as well see if its happening if the LS120 is on the other IDE Channel. (right now i've had both on the same channel [Secondary Master/slave]) and see if it still locks up.

Reply 7 of 9, by chinny22

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I think your on the right track.
I've had HDD's and Optical drives that simply don't play nice on the same cable.
Sometimes jumping it for Master/Salve rather then cable select works sometimes you have to use cable select.
Sometimes it only works if one of the devices in primary,
Sometimes it only works with specific device on the end of the cable.
and sometimes it just never works and you have to put them on separate cables.

What I'm basically saying is keep trying every combination between your 2? 4? ide channels and cross your fingers.

Reply 8 of 9, by CaelThunderwing

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chinny22 wrote on 2022-12-12, 10:11:
I think your on the right track. I've had HDD's and Optical drives that simply don't play nice on the same cable. Sometimes jump […]
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I think your on the right track.
I've had HDD's and Optical drives that simply don't play nice on the same cable.
Sometimes jumping it for Master/Salve rather then cable select works sometimes you have to use cable select.
Sometimes it only works if one of the devices in primary,
Sometimes it only works with specific device on the end of the cable.
and sometimes it just never works and you have to put them on separate cables.

What I'm basically saying is keep trying every combination between your 2? 4? ide channels and cross your fingers.

i got a new issue now that i got it making to Windows. 3.11 is locking up either instantly after starting it at the dos prompt. or as soon as the program Manager loads up. which strangely at first GUEST wasnt assigning the LS120 drive a letter it is now and im not sure why Windows 3.11 is locking up. Kiiinda close to saying Screw this and turning it into a 95 Box. would make using both the LS120 drive & ZIP 100 drive hassle free to use, but at the same time , the effort i had of writing all the floppies i needed. (windows, drivers, network drivers, DOS etc.) im slightly curious if i Might have a better time in this setup using FreeDos or DR Dos versions that patched out 3.X's AARD code.

Reply 9 of 9, by CaelThunderwing

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while i've toyed on n off w/ this tried diffrent systems n threw extra $$ at other drives thinking mine were Dead... it seems it was the GUEST version,

4.21 (from the 5.3 Guest Tools archive floating around) was the issue.

vers 6 from here: https://archive.org/details/iodrv-dos-x86-10 works w/ a teeensy cavet. regardless if it loads first or after my CDROM Driver & the DOS driver for the LS120 drive, it creates 2 duplicate drive letters for the ZIP drive. (E & F mapped to the same one ) and whiel windows 3.11 Sees both, the duplicate letter returns Drive does not exist.

Not perfect, but it finally works!