Multiple bus type devices in a computer?

[DJW]

Multiple bus type devices in a computer?

I have a friend I may help put one of my extra IDE hard drives in his
computer. It was assembled by a small local company. It is running
Windows 98SE and is about seven years old. Currently it has a scsi hard
drive in it. And the computer also has two optical drives in it One is
a CD-RW and the other a CD-ROM How it is connected to the motherboard I
am not sure. Might it or for sure would there also be a secondary IDE
connector on the motherboard and if I have a spare IDE cable might we
be able to hook up an IDE drive also? I already know about SCSI drives
in relation to their use with Older Apple Macintoshes with ID numbers
and terminators.

Do PCs use ID numbers and terminators with their SCSI devices? And with
the IDE hard drive would I have to jump or not jump it to slave or
would it be jumped as master for sure if it's the only thing on that
other IDE cable?

Would it matter which bus the boot drive is on? Can the scsi remain as
the bootable drive? At the time of partitioning and formatting on a IDE
drive is any thing done differently to set it up to accept an operating
system and becoming a bootable drive? I know with what I have seen in
setup software for both scsi and IDE some mention of bootable is there.

I do not know who made the motherboard. The CD for it he says has ABIT
BX_ 1.61E on it. He says it has IDE formatters and drivers on it but no
mention of scsi that he can see with windows explorer.

Once I open the computer will I find the scsi connected to a controller
card or do PCs mother boards have scsi built into them sometimes, all
the time or never?

And about the software drivers do I need to worry about installing them
since there are IDE opticals already in use. Could it be that they put
the hard drive as a scsi because the IDE was used up for the opticals?
Could there not be a secondary IDE connector on the motherboard? Or are
scsi faster drives and that is why they went with it instead of an IDE?

 

[Dave]

Multiple bus type devices in a computer?

I have a friend I may help put one of my extra IDE hard drives in his
computer. It was assembled by a small local company. It is running
Windows 98SE and is about seven years old. Currently it has a scsi hard
drive in it. And the computer also has two optical drives in it One is
a CD-RW and the other a CD-ROM How it is connected to the motherboard I
am not sure. Might it or for sure would there also be a secondary IDE
connector on the motherboard and if I have a spare IDE cable might we
be able to hook up an IDE drive also? I already know about SCSI drives
in relation to their use with Older Apple Macintoshes with ID numbers
and terminators.

Do PCs use ID numbers and terminators with their SCSI devices? And with
the IDE hard drive would I have to jump or not jump it to slave or
would it be jumped as master for sure if it's the only thing on that
other IDE cable?

Would it matter which bus the boot drive is on? Can the scsi remain as
the bootable drive? At the time of partitioning and formatting on a IDE
drive is any thing done differently to set it up to accept an operating
system and becoming a bootable drive? I know with what I have seen in
setup software for both scsi and IDE some mention of bootable is there.

I do not know who made the motherboard. The CD for it he says has ABIT
BX_ 1.61E on it. He says it has IDE formatters and drivers on it but no
mention of scsi that he can see with windows explorer.

Once I open the computer will I find the scsi connected to a controller
card or do PCs mother boards have scsi built into them sometimes, all
the time or never?

And about the software drivers do I need to worry about installing them
since there are IDE opticals already in use. Could it be that they put
the hard drive as a scsi because the IDE was used up for the opticals?
Could there not be a secondary IDE connector on the motherboard? Or are
scsi faster drives and that is why they went with it instead of an IDE?

You're thinking too hard. Almost all mainboards (at least ones that old)
have 2 ide connectors. Each IDE connector can support up to two IDE
devices. You probably will need a IDE cable. Hopefully, the two optical
drives are on the SAME ide cable, currently, which means that you need an
IDE cable for the IDE hard drive. As for how the hard drive should be
jumpered, that depends on the hard drive. For some hard drives, a single
drive would be jumpered as Master. For other hard drives, a single hard
drive has NO jumper installed. There should be a diagram on the hard drive
itself showing what jumper setting is required.

You won't need any software for the new hard drive. However, if the hard
drive is new enough, the mainboard bios might not recognize it. If a BIOS
version (that will recognize the new hard drive) is not available, you can
download drive overlay software from the manufacturer of the hard drive,
that will allow the hard drive to be used at full capacity anyway. -Dave

 

[Paul]

Multiple bus type devices in a computer?

I have a friend I may help put one of my extra IDE hard drives in his
computer. It was assembled by a small local company. It is running
Windows 98SE and is about seven years old. Currently it has a scsi hard
drive in it. And the computer also has two optical drives in it One is
a CD-RW and the other a CD-ROM How it is connected to the motherboard I
am not sure. Might it or for sure would there also be a secondary IDE
connector on the motherboard and if I have a spare IDE cable might we
be able to hook up an IDE drive also? I already know about SCSI drives
in relation to their use with Older Apple Macintoshes with ID numbers
and terminators.

Do PCs use ID numbers and terminators with their SCSI devices? And with
the IDE hard drive would I have to jump or not jump it to slave or
would it be jumped as master for sure if it's the only thing on that
other IDE cable?

Would it matter which bus the boot drive is on? Can the scsi remain as
the bootable drive? At the time of partitioning and formatting on a IDE
drive is any thing done differently to set it up to accept an operating
system and becoming a bootable drive? I know with what I have seen in
setup software for both scsi and IDE some mention of bootable is there.

I do not know who made the motherboard. The CD for it he says has ABIT
BX_ 1.61E on it. He says it has IDE formatters and drivers on it but no
mention of scsi that he can see with windows explorer.

Once I open the computer will I find the scsi connected to a controller
card or do PCs mother boards have scsi built into them sometimes, all
the time or never?

And about the software drivers do I need to worry about installing them
since there are IDE opticals already in use. Could it be that they put
the hard drive as a scsi because the IDE was used up for the opticals?
Could there not be a secondary IDE connector on the motherboard? Or are
scsi faster drives and that is why they went with it instead of an IDE?

Here is an alternate opinion:

http://forums.storagereview.net/index.php?showtopic=8784

Your options could be size dependent. The older machines had limitations,
either in the BIOS, or in the hardware. A drive overlay may fix them, but
at the expense of potential trouble down the road, any time a utility
is used, that doesn't understand the overlay.

Here is another doc about large disks:

http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/tp/137gb.pdf

Abit has a few FAQ pages as well. This page lists the motherboards
and BIOS needed to handle >137GB disks on the Southbridge IDE
interfaces (without a drive overlay).

http://fae.abit.com.tw/eng/faq/generic/check137gb.htm

The motherboard you are working with, could be a BH-6. Abit tested
motherboards with a 75GB IDE drive here. I guess this basically defines
motherboards that natively handle >64GB and <137GB or so. I have a
motherboard from that era, with a 440BX chipset, and I have used a
120GB drive on mine. But I used the latest BIOS that was available,
to do it.

http://fae.abit.com.tw/eng/faq/generic/check75gb.htm

BIOS updates for Abit motherboards can be found here:

http://fae.abit.com.tw/eng/download/bios/index_old.htm

So, you can try a drive overlay, and take whatever the risks are
with doing that.

Or you can pick up a Promise controller and plug that into a PCI
slot. With one of these, you can select a larger drive if you
want. Since the card uses "SCSI emulation" to hide the IDE drive,
there aren't the normal IDE limits. This card needs a driver
installed, so if you are doing an OS install on this drive, a
driver has to be installed via pressing F6 at the appropriate
time during the OS install or repair install. If the disk is
only used for data, then it is pretty easy to install the Promise
driver, right after you have installed the card in a PCI slot.
(And any utilities, like Ghost, may also need a way to access
the Promise card as well, at the DOS level, so the Promise card
can be a barrier to easy use of programs like that. I'm not a
Ghost user, and cannot tell you if Ghost works with the
Promise TX2 out of the box or not.)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816102007

Some drives have a "32GB clip" jumper, which will limit the size
translated by the BIOS and OS. That is also an easy fix, if you
need just a little bit of storage, and don't want to worry about
details. You can buy a 40GB/60GB/80GB and install the jumper,
then connect to the machine via the secondary IDE cable you claim
is left over on the motherboard. If your friend's storage needs
are small, clipping a drive with the jumper is pretty transparent
from a usage perspective. (Just don't pull the jumper off by
accident later!) You may have to dig around the disk drive
manufacturer's web site, to find the appropriate jumper info.
That technique means no BIOS updates, no drive overlays or
using the manufacturer's utilities, just plug and play (and
use the format/partition utils in the OS).

For example, this 80GB is $50.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822145126

And this is comprehensive jumper info for the Hitachi drive.

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/7k160/7k160jum.htm

This picture shows drive jumpering, with the 32GB clip jumper
installed across D-B:

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/7k400/c2gbjum.gif

HTH,
Paul