W
WoofWoof
Bill said:
No problem, Bill ... I did realise that. My comment was really a
follow up to what paul had said.
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No problem, Bill ... I did realise that. My comment was really a
follow up to what paul had said.
B
Bill Anderson
I just looked in the BIOS and noticed there are even more options then I
remembered.. On my system (P4P800-E Deluxe) there are three options:
Boot Device Priority - sets the boot sequence
I have this one. It shows three things only -- although I will SWEAR that
it showed a fourth "disabled" option a day or two ago. Right now it shows
my floppy, my IDE DVD-RW drive, and my Maxtor hard drive.
Hard Drives - lists both my hard drives and lets me select which one(s) to
show under Boot Device Priority.
This one disappeared earlier today when I disconnected the SCSI controller,
but now that I've reinstalled the SCSI controller with two SCSI CD-ROMS
attached, the option has returned. But now it shows fewer devices than
before. That's because I have only one hard drive connected now, and none
of my SCSI scanners -- the only SCSI devices connected now are my two SCSI
optical drives. And since I've also removed two of my three physical hard
drives from the system, the "hard drives" option shows only two devices: my
Maxtor hard drive and the first of my two Plextor SCSI CD-ROM drives.
That's right -- it thinks my SCSI CD-ROM drive is a hard drive.
If I designate my SCSI CD-ROM as Hard Drive #1, I get these three options in
the boot devices menu: Floppy, IDE DVD-RW, and SCSI CD-ROM. That won't
work. I need a hard drive in the list.
I want the list of three to be Floppy, SCSI CD-ROM, and Maxtor HDD. HOW DO
I DO THAT?!!! Argh.
CD-ROM Drives - lists my dvd-drive and my dvd-burner and lets me select
which ones to show under Boot Device Priority.
I don't have this one. Wonder why? Maybe because I have only one IDE
optical drive?
Normally, it shows the first hard drive under Hard Drives and the first
cd-rom-drive under CD-ROM-drives, plus the floppy, under Boot Device
Priority,
That's exactly what I want to happen. Only I need the system to consider my
SCSI CD-ROM as a CD-ROM, not a hard drive as it's doing now.
but I can switch to any other device enabled in the other menu's
by selecting one of the devices in the boot sequence and pressing Return.
I'll bet you have two or more IDE CD-ROMs and two or more physical hard
drives and that's why BIOS is giving you both a Hard Drive and a CD-ROM
menu. With only one IDE CD-ROM, I get no CD-ROM menu. I'll bet. Maybe.
You think?
I don't have any SCSI-devices, so I can't say where these should show up.
Beats me why it should show a SCSI-scanner as a boot-device though.
Amen.
Something else you might try is under Boot Settings Configuration. This
lists the option 'Interrupt 19 capture', which is disabled on my system.
I took your advice and enabled it, and I really do believe this is why I now
see the SCSI CD-ROM listed with my hard drive. I feel like I'm now
tantalizingly close to the solution. When I boot with a bootable CD in the
SCSI CD-ROM drive it actually looks like it's about to boot from the CD. It
says "there is a bootable CD in your drive and it even tells me that it's
remapping A: to something else but it flashes by very fast and I've never
hit pause to really read it. Still, the bottom line is that it does NOT
boot from the CD.
According to the comments next to this, this is neeeded for add-on cards
which have ROM-based setup-utilities. Most SCSI-cards show an option to
start from SCSI if a bootable SCSI-device is found. (That's what the
Adaptec-card in my precious computer used to do when I put a bootable cd
in
the SCSI cd-rom-drive. That option would show up after the BIOS finished
booting.)
Yes, exactly. That's the way it worked with my P4T-E.
Maybe you have to enable this option for the system to start the
boot-rom on the scsi-card in order to get that option? (In which case,
you'll probably also have to disable the full-screen logo at start-up, in
order to see that option..).
Well, I tried and it didn't work. But it did change things a bit, so I'm
going to keep at it.
Thanks very very much for the input. You have no idea how much I appreciate
others helping me think this through.
By the way, I'm typing this from WindowsXP Media Edition, which installed
without a single hiccup once I'd removed the SCSI devices from the equation.
Bill Anderson
P
Paul
"Bill Anderson" said:A couple of times when installing Win98 I got a "not enough memory" message,
so I just rebooted and the problem didn't show up the next time through.
Bill Anderson
You have 2x512MB of memory, and are booting Win98.
In my experience, Win98 is only truly happy with 512MB of
memory. It is supposed to be usable with from 512MB to 1GB,
depending on how much address space you are burning up via
the video card and AGP slot (AGP aperture), but in some experiments
I did with one of my older systems, it only truly behaved
well at 512MB (zero anomalies, zero crashes, no funny slowdowns
or misbehavior).
There are two fixes for the "out of memory" problem with Win98.
One fix is the equivalent of physically removing some of the
memory. That fix will allow you to leave 2x512MB in the machine,
but when Win98 is booted, the fix will cause the OS to ignore
whatever part of that total amount of memory that you want. I
used that option to allow me to have more memory installed,
but only let Win98 see 512MB of it.
The second fix can set min and max for vcache. That
fix is the one that people use, to try to pass the 512MB
limit, and venture to use memory totals of from 512MB to 1GB.
1) MaxPhysPage in System.ini, is like physically removing RAM
from the system, without needing to touch the RAM. The value is
coded in hexidecimal. This mod is suitable for dual boot systems,
where the non-Win98 system can use more than 512MB, but you
prevent Win98 from seeing more than the amount you specify.
Memory pages are 4KB each, and the number on the
line below is in hex. Thus 20000 hex is 131072 decimal, times
4KB each, gives 512MB:
[386Enh]
MaxPhysPage=20000
2) MaxFileCache (in the Vcache section of System.ini). This limits
Vcache to the number of decimal KB specified. Vcache should not
be larger than 512MB, so a value of 524288 is the maximum
recommended. (See Q253912 in MS Knowledgebase.)
[VCache]
MaxFileCache=524288
Note that, if you use MaxPhysPage and set it to 20000, you don't
need to do the Vcache fix. If MaxPhysPage is set to between 20000
and 40000, you need the Vcache fix. If MaxPhysPage is larger than
40000, or MaxPhysPage is not used and greater than or equal to
1GB of memory is present, you may have severe problems of one sort
or another. On my system, severe problems set in at 768MB, but
when I reported this, several other posters claimed to have no
trouble with more than 768MB.
(Some limits)
http://groups.google.com/[email protected]
(More background)
http://groups.google.com/[email protected]&rnum=9
HTH,
Paul
W
Wim Zefat
Op Fri, 12 Nov 2004 19:50:12 -0500 schreef Bill Anderson:
That might point to a way around your problem. There are several ways to
boot from a SCSI-device, depending on the computer's BIOS, the SCSI-card's
BIOS and how these work together. Some of the better (and more expensive)
cards offer a way to boot from a SCSI cd-rom, even if the computer's BIOS
does *not* have any options for this. From your comments, this is what your
system seems to be trying to do.
Try setting the boot sequence to floppy, hard drive and IDE cd-rom, with
the *floppy* as the first boot device. No need to have the SCSI cd-rom in
there at all. Just put a bootable cd in the SCSI cd-rom and the system
*should* boot from that anyway.
This works like this: a bootable cd contains two separate data areas - the
boot image and a separate area containing everything else. When the
SCSI-card sees a bootable cd, it remaps floppy A to B (which you saw
happen), then it creates a virtual 'floppy' A and remaps the contents of
the bootable image from the cd to that. The system then thinks it's booting
from floppy A, while it's really booting from the cd instead. (A: does not
allow access to the entire cd though - just to the boot image. The rest of
the cd, the second data area, shows up as usual, under the normal cd drive
letter. The OS that boots from the cd (usually DOS) has to load it's own
SCSI-driver (which has to be compatible with your SCSI-card) for that to
work. Otherwise you get the silly situation that you can boot from cd, only
to find that the system does not see the cd/drive you just booted from.)
If this doesn't work the first time, try again and try pressing the space
bar a couple of times while booting - you might have to press a key to tell
the SCSI-card that you want to boot from the SCSI cd-rom. At least, on my
old system it would say something like 'press a key to boot from cd'. On
your new system, that option might be flying past so fast that you haven't
got a chance to actually see it...
Succes at last!
Hope you solve your prolems.
Wim
I took your advice and enabled it, and I really do believe this is why I now
see the SCSI CD-ROM listed with my hard drive. I feel like I'm now
tantalizingly close to the solution. When I boot with a bootable CD in the
SCSI CD-ROM drive it actually looks like it's about to boot from the CD. It
says "there is a bootable CD in your drive and it even tells me that it's
remapping A: to something else but it flashes by very fast and I've never
hit pause to really read it. Still, the bottom line is that it does NOT
boot from the CD.
That might point to a way around your problem. There are several ways to
boot from a SCSI-device, depending on the computer's BIOS, the SCSI-card's
BIOS and how these work together. Some of the better (and more expensive)
cards offer a way to boot from a SCSI cd-rom, even if the computer's BIOS
does *not* have any options for this. From your comments, this is what your
system seems to be trying to do.
Try setting the boot sequence to floppy, hard drive and IDE cd-rom, with
the *floppy* as the first boot device. No need to have the SCSI cd-rom in
there at all. Just put a bootable cd in the SCSI cd-rom and the system
*should* boot from that anyway.
This works like this: a bootable cd contains two separate data areas - the
boot image and a separate area containing everything else. When the
SCSI-card sees a bootable cd, it remaps floppy A to B (which you saw
happen), then it creates a virtual 'floppy' A and remaps the contents of
the bootable image from the cd to that. The system then thinks it's booting
from floppy A, while it's really booting from the cd instead. (A: does not
allow access to the entire cd though - just to the boot image. The rest of
the cd, the second data area, shows up as usual, under the normal cd drive
letter. The OS that boots from the cd (usually DOS) has to load it's own
SCSI-driver (which has to be compatible with your SCSI-card) for that to
work. Otherwise you get the silly situation that you can boot from cd, only
to find that the system does not see the cd/drive you just booted from.)
If this doesn't work the first time, try again and try pressing the space
bar a couple of times while booting - you might have to press a key to tell
the SCSI-card that you want to boot from the SCSI cd-rom. At least, on my
old system it would say something like 'press a key to boot from cd'. On
your new system, that option might be flying past so fast that you haven't
got a chance to actually see it...
By the way, I'm typing this from WindowsXP Media Edition, which installed
without a single hiccup once I'd removed the SCSI devices from the equation.
Bill Anderson
Succes at last!
Hope you solve your prolems.
Wim
W
WoofWoof
Paul said:You have 2x512MB of memory, and are booting Win98.
In my experience, Win98 is only truly happy with 512MB of
memory. It is supposed to be usable with from 512MB to 1GB,
depending on how much address space you are burning up via
the video card and AGP slot (AGP aperture), but in some experiments
I did with one of my older systems, it only truly behaved
well at 512MB (zero anomalies, zero crashes, no funny slowdowns
or misbehavior).
There are two fixes for the "out of memory" problem with Win98.
One fix is the equivalent of physically removing some of the
memory. That fix will allow you to leave 2x512MB in the machine,
but when Win98 is booted, the fix will cause the OS to ignore
whatever part of that total amount of memory that you want. I
used that option to allow me to have more memory installed,
but only let Win98 see 512MB of it.
The second fix can set min and max for vcache. That
fix is the one that people use, to try to pass the 512MB
limit, and venture to use memory totals of from 512MB to 1GB.
FWIW, here's the info posted in the win98.setup group some time ago by
one of the Microsoft MVP's:
"There is a specific problem that happens with Windows 95/98/Me when
there is MORE than 512 mb of RAM installed and that is caused by an
excessively large disk cache. There is a simple cure - just add the
following line to the [vcache] section of c:\windows\system.ini:
MaxFileCache=512000 "
B
Bill Anderson
Wim said:Succes at last!
Hope you solve your prolems.
Wim
Well, I have solved my problems, I suppose. I finally gave up on the
two SCSI CD drives and ditched them. (Well, they're safely resting in a
cabinet until I need them someday.) I went out to a local computer
store and bought an IDE Plextor DVD-RW DVD+RW to go with my Pioneer
DVD-RW. $129. And I bought an 80 Gbyte WD S-ATA HDD to replace my 40
Gbyte Maxtor EIDE HDD. $79. So now I have an S-ATA drive from which to
boot, two large WD HDDs on the primary IDE channel, and two DVD-RWs on
the secondary IDE channel.
But even that wasn't easy because the Asus bios insisted on regarding my
SCSI flatbed scanner and my SCSI slide scanner as hard drives. And when
I first plugged the S-ATA drive in, the ASUS bios did not see it at all,
no matter how I fiddled with the bios. The only hard drives the BIOS
would report were the two EIDE drives and the two SCSI scanners. (Ever
tried to boot from a scanner?) It wasn't until I removed the two EIDE
drives and the two SCSI scanners from the equation that the ASUS BIOS
would see the S-ATA drive. It now saw my new drive and the two IDE
optical drives, so I just installed WinXP with things set up like that.
Then, when WinXP was running fine (it installed without a hitch), I
plugged the two EIDE hard drives back into the primary IDE channel.
When they showed up just fine in the BIOS (after a little reshuffling),
I plugged the scanners back into the SCSI adapter, and now they're
running fine.
Very weird. But it's working like a charm now. Thanks to you and to
Paul and to the others for your help. Now I know why I play with my
computer as a hobby but I don't try to make a living at it.
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