First post, by Odiseo
Hello all. I was a regular visitor of this forum several months ago. Basically, I was looking for some parts with which I could upgrade my old computer (a Compaq Deskpro 4000). Eventually, I managed to find what I needed (evergreen spectra 400 CPU upgrade, Voodoo 12MB, hardware DVD decoder, extra RAM, USB controller, a riser board with more PCI slots). I inserted everything and installed Windows XP. Installation succeeded, but the thing was unbearably slow.
Therefore, I bought a cheap Windows 2000 disk. During installation, however, the PC crashed. I tried to install the OS again, but it kept crashing, always on the same moment during installation. Therefore, I got the hard drive (6GB) out of the PC, inserted it into my better PC (Pentium 4), formatted it once more and installed Windows 2000 (while the disk was still in my Pentium 4). The installation succeeded; I could use the Pentium 4 in Windows 2000. Then, I got the disk back out of the Pentium 4 and reinserted it into the Deskpro. After POST, an error appeared informing me that “NTLDR was missing”. I found a solution to that problem; apparently, I had to copy two files to the root of the disk: ‘NTLDR’ and ‘NTDETECT.COM’. I did that, once more with the use of my Pentium 4.
I reinserted the hard drive into the Deskpro. It must have been then that I incorrectly connected one or more power or IDE cables, resulting in the state the PC has been in ever since: it won’t boot, the screen stays black. Whatever combination of connecting the IDE and power cables I tried, nothing seemed to help.
All that was months ago. Today, I got the thing back out to try and find a solution once more. I formatted the hard drive with the use of my Pentium 4 and installed Windows 2000 (succeeded). This time around, the two files I mentioned earlier were copied to the root of the hard disk during installation of WIN2K. I got the disk back out of my Pentium 4, reinserted it into the Deskpro and turned it on. The display remained black. I once more tried to connect the different cables in all kinds of combinations, all to no avail.
The parts concerned are the following (for the moment I don’t connect the riser board with the PCI cards):
--one hard disk, has 40 pins (Does that make it PATA?)
--one floppy drive
--one CD drive
--one DVD drive
--an evergreen spectra 400 CPU upgrade
--cables:
one 40-ribbon cable: has 40 pins
one 80-ribbon cable: has 39 pins and one blue connector.
If I’m not mistaken, it is necessary to connect the 80-ribbon to the primary disk drive (and its slave), with the blue connector on the motherboard, the middle connector on the master and the connector on the far end on the slave. I read this in a technical guide. However, the computer I’m trying to set up is very old (1995), so I don’t know whether I should take this advice for granted. I used the 40-ribbon to connect the CD and DVD drives.
I have been considering my floppy drive might be causing all of this. I got the impression it wasn’t detected, so I figured it died. I tried to connect the floppy to my Pentium 4, which did detect the drive. Still, any floppies I inserted into the drive weren’t detected (strange). I tried another old floppy drive I had lying around: same story (drive detected, floppies not detected).
This PC and all the cheap upgrade parts I bought worked when I installed Windows XP on it (though it was awfully slow), so Windows 2000 must surely work on it as well. I figure the problem is the IDE and power cables. Basically, what I need to know is how to connect the different cables in a Compaq Deskpro 4000. What is the correct combination?
Thanks for the help.