Trying to boot old pc from hardrive

Message

Canadianpride · #1 Post by **Canadianpride** » Fri 23 Jun 2006, 01:31

Hmmm, I've installed puppy 2.01 on an old pc and tried to boot it with a wakepup floppy. For some reason I doesn't detect the files on the hard drive. Right now it is set up as an ide slave to another hard drive. Could this be the problem? For some reason when I attempt to just conect the hard drive that has puppy on it my moniter won't turn on. I've heard about jumpering your hardrive could it not be jumpered right?
I'm trying to explain this as best I can but I no I'm not doing a great job. I could use the help. Thanks!

#2 Post by **Flash** » Fri 23 Jun 2006, 03:43

First tell us a little more about your hardware. How much RAM have you? How are your hard drives partitioned? How are the partitions formatted (what filesystems)?

Canadianpride · #3 Post by **Canadianpride** » Fri 23 Jun 2006, 17:04

Well, I'm running 48 mgs of ram. The hardrive is a 4 gig with a 512mb linux swap partition and a 3.5 gig Fat32 partition with puppy installed to it. When the wakepup floppy wouldn't boot I wrote down what files it needed. I then booted the cd and checked my hardrive. It had the files I needed. On the floppy it said I needed a marker file. I think I have one it says idehd I think not sure. Also I have a Maxtor 1 gig in the pc as well. When I try to take it out and conect my 4 gig as the primary ide master then the moniter just shows black. Hope that cleared it up a bit.
Thanks. Matthew.

Ian · #4 Post by **Ian** » Fri 23 Jun 2006, 19:17

To change the jumper settings on a hard drive look at the end where the power and IDE cables plug in and there should be a small section with a number of double rows of pins.

On two of these pins there should be a small black plastic coated connector, this is the jumper.

Have a look at the top label on the hard drive and there should be a diagram showing where the jumper is positioned for Master, Slave or Cable Select.

If there is no diagram try moving it to the leftmost side, you will probably need a pair of tweezers or small needle-nosed pliers to change it.

Do you get any messages when you try to boot the 4G on its own or does the machine just do nothing, it should at least beep.

Canadianpride · #5 Post by **Canadianpride** » Fri 23 Jun 2006, 21:54

Ok, Now when I attempt to start with just the 4 gig, the pc starts. When it's jumpered to Master though it seems to stall and nothing happens. But if the jumper is in any of the other positions then it sees the cd drive atleast and allows me to boot from that but not from my hardrive. The wake pup floppy doesn't see the idehd marker on the drive for some reason.
Thanks, Matthew

Canadianpride · #6 Post by **Canadianpride** » Sat 24 Jun 2006, 18:01

Any idea's guys? Could it be a problem with my bios since the bios doesn't seem to see the 4 gig unless it's conected as a slave?

purple_ghost · #7 Post by **purple_ghost** » Sun 25 Jun 2006, 01:19

The frustation of being messed with by hard drive jumper settings.

You have partially answered your own question. The BIOS sees the hard drive as being secondary.

Hmmm. Several thoughts arise.
My computer has two IDE cables. Those are the cables which have twenty pin connectors that plug into CD-ROM drivers and Hard Drives.
Each of these two IDE cables has on it a connector which goes to the MotherBoard. AND two more connectors which might be plugged into something like a hard drive or optical drive..

I have been told that if I looked at my MotherBoard carefully I would find the two places which these cables plug in would be marked like 0 and one or One and Two. This refers to which IDE controller which they plug into.

I know that the connector furthest from the Mobo for the first IDE controller should be connected to a driver which is "jumpered" to be Master. The next connector should be plugged into a drive "Jumpered" as a slave. So with my two IDE controllers. Each connected to one of these cables. Each cable have two places to plug in a drive. I have the capability to plug in two masters and two slaves. That is on one cable there may be a Master and a Slave. And the other cable, a Master and a Slave. To make it more complicated. Some systems want the drive to be jumpered as "Cable Select." I know nothing about Cable Select. Hopefully your BIOS would warn you if the CD is listed as "Cable Select". If your CD drive is not jumpered as a "cable select." You would be safe to guess that your system uses Master - Slave configuration. How would you know whether your CD is Cable Select. I will speak to that later. Basically I would go on the assumption that what you have is Master - Slave for the moment.

I can mix Optical drives and hard drives on the two cables. Just so long as I configure the master slave correctly.

If I am going to use an DVD Burner. Then it must be configured as a Master, and on the end of the cable furthest from MOBO. That is: It must be like that if I am going to use the burner as a burner. It will read and boot from the DVD burner even if it is set as a Secondary.

Which brings up the next principle in this. The BIOS will try to make some sense of what it sees. Even if it is wrong. And will try to use it.

So like. What do your cables look like? Do you only have one IDE cable with how many connectors on the business end. And how do You normally have them plugged in when they are running another OS. Or is this a Puppy install on a Dead in the Water machine, No OS?

I know that different hard drives have different number of pins and different configurations for "jumper settings." To make some of this more frustrating. I have a hard drive in which the drawing of jumper settings is upside down to how the jumper should be applied. I usually can figure out which way the drawing goes by locating where the power connector goes. Power comes into the hard drive with a four pin connector. Sorry if you already know all this. It just seems proper for me to go into a bit of detail. Someone may come along and read this with no knowledge of this stuff.

If I were you. I would carefully read the manufacturers name and model number off of the drive and go to the 'Hard Drives Support' website. Then poke around until you find the drawings which show the 'Jumper Settings". Write that down. I think I will remember and then wonder where I went wrong.

If you also got the numbers off the CD drive and see how its Jumper is currently. Then you can have some idea of whether the CD is a "Master", "Slave", or "Cable Select"

I bet you probaby know that from your BIOS.

I know that when I installed a new hard drive I got a Bootable CD from Seagate which would also analyze my current configuration. Shows how many IDE Controllers I have and how many of what drives and what kind of partitions. That kind of tool will be available on the Hard Drive website under support.

For Windows 98 there is free program named Everest which will also show the configuration of hardware. and software.

You did not tell us some other things about your computer which might be of some help. Does your computer currently have anything properly running on it. Like Windows something.

I know that if the hard drive is 'jumpered' as a (secondary or slave) and the it has Windows on it. No Let me put that differently. With Windows 98 SE, like I have installed. If the first partition does not have a bootable OS. Then somehow the thing will go to the next partition and see if it can boot Windows 98 off of it. Meaning if your hard drive has been configured as a secondary. Then it is possible for Windows to start from it.

There being some more confusion in that usually Windows demands that part of it working is that Windows be installed on the first available hard disk partition. Yeah. I know that is a little contradictory.

But that may explain why you can boot Windows from the hard drive even though it is configured as slave.
Anyway. Do you have installed a GRUB or LILO or any other kind of boot commander installed?

I know that someone, wisely I may add. Advised me not to buy more RAM for the machine I had. I already had 256 MB. Still. You might look around and find more RAM from an old machine, somewhere. If you are a person who can afford to exchange a few dollars to relief what can turn out to be some serious frustration. Then I suspect that you can buy 128 MB of basic SDRAM DIMM from somewhere for maybe twenty dollars. To mention a common place to buy things in the US. newegg.com. I am aware that the price for that kind of RAM is being treated like it is a valuable antique. Some people will try to overcharge you for it. And the price is going up.

Anyway. figuring out which is the right RAM and whether you have an open place to plug it in. That is whole other big topic.

IF you are running some OS on that computer. Does the something like the Windows Scandisk and run clean. How much open space do you have left on that hard drive? Have you run Defrag to get the max use of that space?

A few weeks ago I wandered through my local Computer Renaissance shop and they had used 1.2 Gigabyte drives on for ninety nine cents. Not worth the gasoline to drive over there. However. Having a small hard drive like that would make it easier for me to play with Puppy and not worry about losing the things on my other hard drive.

When I first started using Puppy. After I found I really like it. I thought I would prefer to put it on a hard drive and from now on boot Puppy like I have been booting Windows. Now I really prefer to use Puppy from the CD. It allows me to easily change the OS. It prevents some security problems.

I recognize that if you do not have at least 128 MB of RAM. Then booting from CD might not seem so attractive.

Sorry if I said too much. Also please forgive me if I was overly simplistic. I do not mean to insult your current knowledge or experience. I just wanted to make what I was thinking as obvious as possible. I hope if one of the more knowledgable guys can come along and correct what ever miss-statements I have made.

purple_ghost · #8 Post by **purple_ghost** » Sun 25 Jun 2006, 02:05

I really should mention this point before allowing you to spend a lot of time or even worse, money, getting that machine going.

I assume from the size of the RAM you are working with that you plan to use that machine with Dial-Up. Linux has problems working with the typical internal modems which are the staple of older computers. Puppy Linux also has problems with internal modems.

It is a rather complicated topic. My own experience is that I gave up on trying to get an internal modem to work with Linux and paid cash for the standard solution. I paid forty dollars for an external, serial modem. A Modem which will easily and happily work with nearly any version of Linux with no complications whatsoever.

My previous comment about working with Puppy off the CD. Have you ever gotten Puppy up with just the CD?

It is my understanding that you can run Puppy Two with less than 128 MB of RAM. I have never tried it because it is not my situation. Is that what you are trying to do? That is. You can not get Puppy to finish booting from the CD because of limited RAM. So you have been doing things to get Puppy to boot off your Hard Drive?

Usually we start Puppy from the CD first time then use the Puppy Options to accomplish a hard drive install and such.

If you have not seen Puppy running then you would not have quite the same perspective as the people who post here.

I know I had problems with trying to get a WAKE PUP floppy to work with a USB key and wished someone had left the files with the correct file names to download with the floppy.

Still I have something unusual with my USB hub which possibly renders using a WAKE PUP as not being possible. At least not easily possible.

I know the first time I boot to Puppy Two I do a Shut down. Where I am given the opportunity to save a file onto whatever FAT 32 partition that Puppy sees at that time. I can select that partition and Puppy will create a little file to save my configuration and somethings in.

If I start and shutdown again. Then I see a file on my typical FAT 32 partition which ends with swp.

While how to do this from limited RAM I am not sure of. Is this what you are trying to get to happen? Get Puppy up for the first time. Or is it that you are just having problems with the location of the Hard Drive and getting Puppy to see it?

Sage · #9 Post by **Sage** » Sun 25 Jun 2006, 05:00

There's a lot of good stuff there from PG and I intend to read it all later!
For the mean time, I would only reiterate that it is necessary to know everything about HD jumpering (manufacturer's websites contain all the specs and data needed), drive connection, how to read the opening BIOS screen AND cable select!
www.unixwiz.net/techtips/ide-cable-select.html
When using old kit, beware of old cables with line 28 cut. [Also heed warnings about ringing on modern HW with 80w cables!].
Proprietary boxes often used CS. Apart from all this, older HDs had a range of special 'features' to give a 'better user experience' !! That's why you need to take good advice and buy a dozen, if you're buying, and mix 'n match. [Incidentally, 1.2Gb is overkill for a routine Puppy installation; can always add a second drive if ambition grabs you]. The advantage of old kit is that there's no DRM and other wonderous controlling malware.

Sit Heel Speak · #10 Post by **Sit Heel Speak** » Sun 25 Jun 2006, 06:33

Questions:

1. Which WakePup are you using? Perhaps the answer is simply to change the PHOME= from hda1 to hda2 in linld.cfg or isolinux.cfg or the line which calls the bootloader in autoexec.bat.

2. Have you tried installing the Grub bootloader via either Grub4DOS or WinGrub, and then editing menu.lst to point to the appropriate drive?

Canadianpride · #11 Post by **Canadianpride** » Mon 26 Jun 2006, 05:09

Wow, I'm overwhelmed by all the info right now. My mobo has two cables one with only one ide head going to the cd drive which is jumpered to master, the other has two ide heads with one connected to the hardrive. Now I have actually booted from the cd and it works alright. It recognized the swap partition on the hardrive and alows me to save data and install puppy to the drive. I'm using the wakepup that is created by 2.01 not exactly sure which version that is. I only want this old pc for my bro (poor college student) who just needs a word editor and a few other basic programs. Internet access isn't a problem because it's not alowed in the dorms. The reason I was attempting to install and get it to boot from hardrive was because I assumed it would improve preformence. Would this be true. Because other wise I suppose I could just keep booting from the cd. I don't have a lot of computer know how, having opened up a pc for the first time a few weeks ago and just starting to use Linux. I really appreciate all your help. Puppy linux is one of the few linux's that runs on my new P4 dual core machine, and the only that has run on my older ones.
Oh one more thing, The drive is formated as FAT32 is it possible that my bios want's it to be FAT16?
Thanks for all the help.
Matthew

Sit Heel Speak · #12 Post by **Sit Heel Speak** » Mon 26 Jun 2006, 05:24

Canadianpride wrote:My mobo has two cables one with only one ide head going to the cd drive which is jumpered to master, the other has two ide heads with one connected to the hardrive.

So, now that you have only one hard drive on it, hda1, does wakepup work?

Canadianpride wrote:The drive is formated as FAT32 is it possible that my bios want's it to be FAT16?

No. Filesystem (FAT32, FAT16, NTFS, ext2, ext3, reiserfs) matters only to the operating system, not to the BIOS. Leave it as it is, FAT32.

Sage · #13 Post by **Sage** » Mon 26 Jun 2006, 07:22

A couple of additional points:
Single and Master do not necessarily require the same jumper setting on all drives - cf. manufacturer's data sheets.
Linux and XP override BIOS settings (a corollary to what SHS says), but the opening BIOS screen, which can be stopped for inspection by pressing the 'Pause' key, contains important diagnostic information about your drives, your memory and your BIOS type & date (it may need updating).

Rickrandom · #14 Post by **Rickrandom** » Mon 26 Jun 2006, 07:41

If you're just trying to improve boot-up time, you can copy some of the files from the CD to the hard drive. I can't recall which files, but it'll be on the forum if you search. This will help reduce boot-up time, especially if it's a slow old CD drive.

Then you (or your brother) can still boot from the CD, but Puppy will look for the (big) files on the hard drive, and load from there more quickly.

When the PC has booted, you (he) can eject the CD and play music, etc.

At shutdown, Puppy will save any settings, new files, etc, inside the one file on the hard drive, so they'll still be there at the next boot-up. he CD doesn't need to go back in for shutdown, although it will need to be in for the next boot-up.

Hope this helps....

Canadianpride · #15 Post by **Canadianpride** » Mon 26 Jun 2006, 15:08

That's the thing I can't understand. When I have the two hardrive's installed it detects both and show's them in the bios boot screen. When only the 4 gig is in it doesn't detect it during the bios boot screen. But it does from the cd and even allows me to save my files to the drive. Wakepup doesn't work either way. I've checked the pictures on the drives the jumper postition got set acording to what that says. But if I have the hardrive in master position then it doesn't even make it to bios and just sits there.
RickRandom I'll try to find to find that. The interesting thing is that puppy already boots remarkably fast on that elderly pc. I've heard people saying that two big of a swap partition can wreck the hardrive. I have 48 mgs of ram and a 512 mb swap partition is this going to be trouble.
Thanks! Matthew.

marksouth2000 · #16 Post by **marksouth2000** » Mon 26 Jun 2006, 19:50

Canadianpride: you may need to try using a different IDE cable to connect your misbehaving hard drive. They are quite fragile. Try swapping them around with a spare.

Also, there are some "gotcha" tricks to watch for with jumper settings. Most often, the jumper setting diagram refers to when the drive is viewed from behind. However, some Fujitsu drives have jumper diagrams that refer to when you hold the drive upside down and view it from the rear. (I'm running off just such a one right now!)

The miracle with PC hardware isn't how complex or unreliable of finicky it is, it's that it ever manages to stumble along at all.

purple_ghost · #17 Post by **purple_ghost** » Mon 26 Jun 2006, 22:58

I once worked a guys computer which had a funny option in the BIOS. To change the settings of the IDE hard drive. The BIOS did not detect changes on the IDE cable automatically. Rather there was a point in the BIOS which required the person sitting at the keyboard to initiate the search down the IDE cables while in BIOS.

For the record. I only asked whether you might have a FAT 16 on the hard drive because I was not sure Puppy Two would happily work with FAT16. At least some of the programs might not work. I do not know. Just a thought of something to look at.

Does the older computer lose its Date/Time settings? As you probably know that losing Date/Time settings is an indication that the BIOS battery might be gone. That might mean there are other BIOS settings which might not be correct for you current hardware situation.

I should say again. When I first started using Puppy I felt I wanted to install Puppy on the hard drive. I have found that using the CD has some definite advantages. It is not such a bad way to use a computer. You get a clean copy of your basic OS every time you boot. Perhaps that is not so important to someone who does not get online.

To be perfectly clear about starting from the CD. Once Puppy has started. Then you can remove the Puppy boot CD from the drive and and use the drive any which way you want. Play music. copy things from the drive. Burn things with the drive.

purple_ghost · #18 Post by **purple_ghost** » Mon 26 Jun 2006, 23:18

If this was a Windows 98 system. I know that part of installing Windows 98 is to run fdisk on the hard drive(s) Partition(s) and to set the first partition to be --- "active." Else you can not boot from the hard drive. How this might relate to your problem I am not sure.

I understand you are pulling the first hard drive. (Which works when jumper settings as master). Outof the machine. Then you can not get the computer to recognize the second drive. (Now) plugged in as the drive furthest from the MOBO on the IDE cable. Which the computer will only see as secondary. Irregardless of how the jumpers are set.

Is there some reason not to just leave the first drive in. Then trying to set the WakePup to see the puppy stuff on the second drive.

In fact. What is on the first drive that prohibits you from using it for Puppy? Just a question. Do what is right for your needs.

Canadianpride · #19 Post by **Canadianpride** » Tue 27 Jun 2006, 05:05

purple_ghost wrote:
In fact. What is on the first drive that prohibits you from using it for Puppy? Just a question. Do what is right for your needs.

The main reason I don't want to use the first drive is that It's only a 1 gig and completly full of my Dad's old sermons. Also It's very old and not running well at all.
Cmos battery is fine and keeps date well.

Marksouth2000 I'll try another ide cable, but I don't think that's the problem since it does detect the hardrive and even mounts it once I boot from cd. The jumper looks like this ::::. so I'm sure I hooked it up right since there's that one point by itself that I could use as refrence from the diagram.
Thanks for all the help, If I can't get it to work soon I'll just keep booting from cd I guess.
Thanks! Matthew.

Sit Heel Speak · #20 Post by **Sit Heel Speak** » Tue 27 Jun 2006, 05:55

Many IDE hard drives from 1994 to 1999 in the 512MB to 8GB size range do not play nice with each other if they are different brands.

I built about two dozen systems during that time, using Western Digital, Seagate, Quantum, Maxtor, Fujitsu, and Conner drives. The worst offender as far as not having the jumpers behave as they should when installed alongside other brands, was Western Digital.

The manner in which you have your CD and even _floppy_ drives connected, can also cross up the IDE channel signals and foul things up. Also, dust inside a floppy drive can short across its cable wires and mess up all IDE devices including your hard drives.

Perhaps it would give us a key clue if you specify what brand, size, and model each of your two hard drives is. Also, the CD drive.

And if possible, I would also like to know the brand and model number of floppy drive--or, if that's not feasible, then my next question is, as you are looking at the rear of the floppy drive, is the floppy cable connector positioned to the right or to the left of the power connector? Also, if you are able to remove the floppy drive or its front bezel, do you see a lot of dust inside it?

Also, while we're at it, what is the brand and model of mainboard? What BIOS brand and version is on it?

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Trying to boot old pc from hardrive

Trying to boot old pc from hardrive

I have felt the same frustration.

Have worked with Linux and Modems yet?

Have you looked for +

almost forgot.

Re: almost forgot.