First post, by Hamby
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I have a Socket 7 motherboard with a K6-2 300mhz cpu, 256mb ram, Voodoo 3 2000 video card, Awe32 sound card and (iirc) 3Com ethernet card
The HD is a 4gb divided into 2, 2gb partitions. It also has a CD drive, a 5.25 and a 3.5 floppy drive. This system was working a year or so ago when last I had it on. It's currently running DOS 6.22 with WFW 3.11. Well, it was.
I decided to blow it out with compressed air to make sure there wasn't dust on anything, then replace the HD with a CF to IDE adapter with an 8GB CF card, then install Win98se on the CF card. But first I tried firing it up....
It couldn't recognize the hard drive. No problem, insert Windows 98 install CD into the CD drive... doesn't recognize it, although both the HD and the CD drive are getting power. The bios couldn't find the hard drive.
Dug out a Win98 startup/install 3.5" floppy... made sure the floppy drive was connected (it's recognized in the bios), it has power... nothing. Doesn't even try to access the floppy (although the drive does do the default seek when the system is starting). I tried connecting just the CD drive, still nothing.
However, I connect the CF to IDE to the same IDE cable as the HD... the bios recognized the card as an 8GB drive.
I'm guessing the IDE controller is giving out on the motherboard... but then why wouldn't it recognize the floppy? I suppose it's possible that the floppy, CD and HD all happened to go bad at the same time, but that seems very unlikely.
My next step will be to try to replace the 3.5" floppy with one of a couple others I have sitting around (after I clean and lube them). I was going to just format the CF card on my Win7 PC, but the cheap multicard reader I installed a couple years ago can't mount a CF card.
Should I continue pursuing this, or should I just buy a new Socket 7 motherboard? I considered a super socket 7 as replacement, but they're asking almost $200 on ebay for them... forget that.
Is it even the motherboard? Is there something else I can/should look into?