Bad IDE cable? Load default in bios?
Check motherboard manual and bios settings?
Swap the hdd out.
Get the hdd working on primary.
when all else fails strip the system back to basics. Remove anything not required to boot like sound blaster 16 and start working on it.
Have u swapped the hdd and ide cable over for starters?

When I was first putting it together I was using a standard old-skool IDE cable and it gave me an error because it wasn't the 80 conductor variety. The Hard Drive still failed, and I assumed it was because of the cable. Then I talked to my dad (who has a bunch of old computer parts laying around) and he gave me an 80 conductor cable, so one error went away.. but not the other. It was only when I plugged it into the Secondary IDE slot that my HD stopped failing.

I'm looking at the BIOS settings right now but to be honest I don't know what to look for.

I'll try swapping out HDDs to see if maybe it's just having a personality conflict (FWIW, the HDD I have in there is a WD Caviar 20GB).

On two of my Super Socket 7 boards I got read errors on the primary IDE channel. Used the secondary instead.

But now I have an even better solution and use a PCI SATA controller card which fixes all these headaches.

Old hardware I tell you they surely steak away your time 😀

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

On two of my Super Socket 7 boards I got read errors on the primary IDE channel. Used the secondary instead.

But now I have an even better solution and use a PCI SATA controller card which fixes all these headaches.

Old hardware I tell you they surely steak away your time 😀

Quoted for truth!

Okay, so explain these "SATA Controller Cards" to me. Where can I get them and what do they actually do and, most importantly, will I have to buy a whole new hard-drive and optical drive just to make use of them?

I have an epox ss7 board, a different model to yours and its very stable and both ide channelsbwork. Yes old hardware can drain not only your time but your funds. I wouldnt buy another controller. Try another hdd and ide cable. Try primary and secondary ide. A pci slot failed on the board too? Hmm... have u loaded bios defaults? There should be something like that in your bios.

if you go the sata card u will need sata hdd and cdrom or an adapter and theres no guatentee it will fix it. Try problem solving with the hardware u have. It could be something really simple like a bios setting.

All right, here's the results.

The BIOS actually had two sets of "Defaults"--one was called Fail-Safe and the other was called Optimized. I tried them both.

"Optimized" gave me a different error message altogether--now Windows was saying it couldn't find some file or other. So I figured "now I have to reinstall it. Again."

Here's where things became a bitch.

It won't recognize my boot floppy now. It keeps saying that it's not a valid system disk. This is the same bootdisk I've been using this whole time. I had a second one, and its giving me the same error on that one too. This might've been caused by my changing the BIOS, but I doubt it.

So I'm gonna have to boot from the Win98 CD-Rom and install from it, if possible.

Also, re-tried the Primary slot. Still the same problem. Then I plugged the hard drive in using the IDE cable that the CD-ROM was using (you'll remember the CD worked fine). With this cable, however, the Primary slot didn't see the hard drive at all. So the problem is either the slot or the hard drive.

Getting back to the "can't write to drive C" issue, I suspect its because windows expects the hard drive to be the primary and not the secondary and its (for some retarded reason) trying to install to the CD-ROM drive, which of course it can't. So I tried to boot with just the hard drive plugged in, but that was a no-go... apparently, something NEEDs to be plugged into the primary or the computer won't do anything except run a POST.

So the bottom line is, I now have two floppy boot disks that suddenly refuse to work when they had been working fine up until now, and the core problem hasn't been solved and I can't test other variables without buying more stuff.

So, what I'm gonna do:

Hit Amazon/Ebay/Newegg/Dr. Robotnik's evil fortress and purchase:
-A new IDE cable, possibly two
-A new hard drive (preferably in the 20-60GB range, IDE)
-a PCI SATA controller card (just to have it on hand)
-... and either adaptors for my existing drives, or else just new drives outright, if it turns out I have to use SATA.

If none of this works, then I'll just give up on PC gaming.

Are you setting the jumpers on the hard disk and cdrom? master and slave?

WHen you hit "restore bios defaults" in the bios. It will change your boot order. Did you adjust it back?

Floppy disks are unreliable. Make another boot disk.

Yes I adjusted the jumpers on both the hard drive and the CD-ROM.

I also changed the boot order back to the way I like it in the BIOS.

Making a new boot disc is easy enough, but this one was personalized and not one of the generic ones made by 98's install, which is why it bums me out. Still, if it must be done...

With the PCI SATA controller it allows you using large HDDs (they have their own BIOS) and of course modern HDDs. I use a notebook 250GB drive with a single 30GB partition.

There are limits you need to keep in mind and that's why I went with a single 30GB partition.

The ones I have is Silicon Image and also Promise. It's important you pick one with a BIOS chip. The cheap ones on eBay usually go under the name of "PCI RAID SATA" or something like that. There is a BIOS chip on the card, so it's easy to tell 😀

Will it work in your machine? Only one way of finding out...

Oh and some have SATA and IDE.

For the CD-Rom do not use these SATA controllers, but the standard IDE on the mainboard.

EdmondDantes wrote:

Yes I adjusted the jumpers on both the hard drive and the CD-ROM.

I also changed the boot order back to the way I like it in the BIOS.

Making a new boot disc is easy enough, but this one was personalized and not one of the generic ones made by 98's install, which is why it bums me out. Still, if it must be done...

I dont know mate!

I read your other thread. One of the PCI slots is dead and you just purchased the motherboard? Thats dodgy.
Primary IDE interface doesnt work with your hard drive.

I'd strip the system back and swap out the hard disk etc. get rid of the sound card for now.

Google a lot about the motherboard.

Epox had pretty decent gear so I thought.

Maybe go the sata controller route but I'd hate to see you get it and still have issues.

I just placed an order for some new IDE cables and a 40GB Seagate hard drive. Once they arrive I'll test them and tell you how things go.

I really hope the problem is just the drive or the cable... I'd hate for the Motherboard to be the problem.

As for the PCI slot... to be honest, for some reason my Voodoo 3 didn't like two of the PCI slots on my older comp (with a completely different motherboard) either, so it may be some weird thing the Voodoo is picky about. I don't mind if one or two don't work tho, because I'm never gonna use all five PCI slots.

The SATA controller card will be an absolute last resort. If that doesn't work, I'll give up.

what year was voodoo 3 pci released and what year was the motherboard released?

I first heard about the Epox 8KTA from this website so I would assume that's from 2000.

According to Wikipedia, the Voodoo 3 line of cards is from 1999--just a year earlier.

This is the first I've heard of age making a difference though. I always thought "if it fits in the slot, it'll work"

(Incidentally, the reason I bought a Voodoo 3--which I purchased years ago--was because according to comparisons I read, it was the only video card that did all three graphics acceleration standards: Glide, Direct3D and OpenGL. Since I own a few games that use Glide I wanted that).

EDIT: Incidentally, when stripping the Mobo down to just the bare essentials, I have to leave the video card plugged in because otherwise there's no input for the monitor.

I know that board because I ordered several of these for work in 2000. These are good Socket A boards, but heavily suffered from the capacitor plague. Look at the photos in the link, compare to the capacitors on your board.

GUYS, I THINK I DONE GOT IT FIXED!!!

All right, here's what happened.

I had completely removed all the components (video card, sound card, hard drive, CD-ROM and floppy) and put them back in my old AMD K6 where they came from in the first place. This allowed me to confirm (among other things) that the boot floppy did indeed work--just the new comp was pretending it didn't.

So I then put all the components back in the new comp... and I had an inspiration. In the case as-is, the HDD bay and the bay for optical drives are spaced far apart, which is the whole reason I was using two IDE cables. BUT, I decided to move the CD-ROM to the bay second from the top, and put the hard drive above it, so they could be master and slave on the same IDE cable (which is the 80-capacitor one). It is plugged in to the PRIMARY IDE jack.

I expected the same error as before... only to be pleasantly surprised: the Comp not only saw both drives but saw them almost instantly, and this time I was able to fully install windows, no weird error messages!

So now there's only one issue left, and it may be minor, or else not something I can help. I noticed that the opening chime Windows makes on bootup sounds distorted. But my ISA sound card is right above the power supply (literally they're almost touching) and its one of those PSUs that has a fan on top, and I think that may be the culprit. The other suspect is that the speaker cables are loose (which has caused distortion like this in the past). But since this mobo appears to have a built-in soundblaster, if I can't get my ISA working properly I'll just resort to the onboard one.

Lesson Learned: The solution is always something stupid and simple... like both devices needing to be on the same damn cable, even if that doesn't make any sense at all.

Well, I'm off to game!

EDIT: That sound distortion I mentioned? That appears to only happen with Windows sounds. Played Hexen II and its sound effects and music all played just fine and sounded beautiful, so unless something develops, it looks like everything is in perfect working order.

It's good that your rig is finally working, but it sounds like you haven't discovered the root of the problem. There's no good reason that a hard drive and CD-ROM should be forced to share the same cable, and that's not an optimal configuration.

If there is actually some hardware fault in the motherboard, then it could manifest itself in a variety of unpredictable ways that will leave you puzzled: intermittent blue screens, odd hardware incompatibilities, etc. When you have time, you should follow some of the recommendations above and check your caps and/or power supply. Are you certain that every one of the power lines is working properly and that there are no swollen or leaking caps on your motherboard?

EdmondDantes wrote:

GUYS, I THINK I DONE GOT IT FIXED!!! […]
Show full quote

GUYS, I THINK I DONE GOT IT FIXED!!!

All right, here's what happened.

I had completely removed all the components (video card, sound card, hard drive, CD-ROM and floppy) and put them back in my old AMD K6 where they came from in the first place. This allowed me to confirm (among other things) that the boot floppy did indeed work--just the new comp was pretending it didn't.

So I then put all the components back in the new comp... and I had an inspiration. In the case as-is, the HDD bay and the bay for optical drives are spaced far apart, which is the whole reason I was using two IDE cables. BUT, I decided to move the CD-ROM to the bay second from the top, and put the hard drive above it, so they could be master and slave on the same IDE cable (which is the 80-capacitor one). It is plugged in to the PRIMARY IDE jack.

I expected the same error as before... only to be pleasantly surprised: the Comp not only saw both drives but saw them almost instantly, and this time I was able to fully install windows, no weird error messages!

So now there's only one issue left, and it may be minor, or else not something I can help. I noticed that the opening chime Windows makes on bootup sounds distorted. But my ISA sound card is right above the power supply (literally they're almost touching) and its one of those PSUs that has a fan on top, and I think that may be the culprit. The other suspect is that the speaker cables are loose (which has caused distortion like this in the past). But since this mobo appears to have a built-in soundblaster, if I can't get my ISA working properly I'll just resort to the onboard one.

Lesson Learned: The solution is always something stupid and simple... like both devices needing to be on the same damn cable, even if that doesn't make any sense at all.

Well, I'm off to game!

EDIT: That sound distortion I mentioned? That appears to only happen with Windows sounds. Played Hexen II and its sound effects and music all played just fine and sounded beautiful, so unless something develops, it looks like everything is in perfect working order.

Congratz mate:)

fixed and without forking out more $$$

Sound distorted huh?

What kind of speakers do you have?

Software Volume up too high?

Hardware Volume up too high?

I guess its possible its the PSU being so close like you say.

What onboard sound card is it?

You can always do like you say. Disable it in the BIOS probably and put a sound card in there.

I had distortion problems in the past but it turned out to be the speakers I just purchased on ebay.

The only other distortion problems I have are normal : Old creative cards hooked up to good speakers/receiver.

rgart -- Actually I had already disabled the onboard and was using an ISA Sound Blaster 16. I had actually considered removing that and just going with the onboard sound.

Turned out there was no need. The distorted sounds only happened with windows sounds--never with games, and now they don't even happen with windows sounds. The only other sound-related issue I had was Windows wanted to put the SB16 at IRQ 10, which of course would've been bad, but a few tweaks here, a magic word there, and now my sound card is on IRQ 5 just where I like it.

SiliconClassics -- I did check the caps. None of them looked rotten to me.

So far I haven't had any other problems--not even a blue screen.

you know this may be way off base..... but Epox did not use good capacitors on their boards... I have an MVP3G5 that is extremely fussy about the power supply it will work with. The caps could still look good (mine do) and still have problems.