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BIOS puzzle.


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I have just started trying to put W98SE on to a newly built machine. I put 2 SATA DVD drives and 1 SATA HDD drive

in it thinking that there would be no problem with them since it is a new motherboard (Vista Ready even).

However things are not going as smoothly as they should, but I can not see how SATA can be involved .

The first thing that is peculiar is that in the setting up of the BIOS the up and down arrowed keys move the highlighted area as they should, but the left and right ones will not select the attribute required, In fact there is no highlighted area.

I have reset the CMOS with the jumper, but despite of getting rid of a couple of things I managed to change and setting things back to default, the sideways arrows and the highlight problem is still there...even after changing the keyboard.

Can anyone shed a little light on this for me, please?

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I thought I had been doing that, rong,but your suggestion made me wonder. So I went and tried again. Just the same, but then I saw a little thing that suggested the + and - keys, so I went there. It seemed to work, just by scrolling the items through a little window...strange,........... but it seems to have done the trick...................so far.

Currently the installation disc is formatting C drive so it looks as though the first hurdle has been jumped.. thanks.

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This is a most strange affair. I realised, just after my last post, that W98SE would be most unhappy with 160G of HD to cope with so I created a 60G C drive partion formatted to FAT32. I then tried, unsuccessfully, to instal W98SE thereupon.

I have continued to mess about with it most of the day and have yet to get to the end of the installation process. The whole mess "hangs" just after it restarts itself for the first time, and all that happens then is that the blue ribbon moves across the bottom of the screen until I get fed up and push the self destruct button.

I have had two or three clean restarts ....reformatting C:... and always come back to the same end result.

I tried running a live Knoppix disc and all was peace and light, so it looks as though the bits of machinery are all in the right place. I only have mouse, keyboard, monitor and tower connected together so there is no router/speakers/printer.etc to worry about......yet.

Can anyone shed any more light, please?

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I had originally wondered about SATA, but on the basis that the BIOS was a thoroughly modern one I assumed that the IN/OUT would be taken care of, but, as I often prove to myself and the world, I could be quite wrong.

I had not thought that W98SE might be problematical, but I suppose it could be just as much a Luddite as I am.

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Thanks for that, Alan2273.

Having looked at the information on the seagate site I am still puzzled. Because I seem to be hitting the hanging problem at the point where the seagate site indicates W98SE should be asking for the SATA drivers. A bit odd because it is already using a SATA DVD drive to run the W98SE installation CD.

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I have no idea what I am talking about, but which SATA port is the dvd player in and which is the hard drive in and have you tried changing them around

I am beginning to realise I have no idea what I am doing.

They are plugged into the SATA ports/headers on the MB.

I am getting the feeling that your question "Is W98 happy with SATA drives ?" may shortly be answered in the negative. I remember buying one by mistake a couple of years ago on ebay and I thought that I was running that in my W98SE machine, but was surprised this morning when I took the side off to find I am not. (I wonder where it went?)

Looks like I am going to have to do a full install of Ubuntu just to prove that everything works properly and then do some more worrying. It may just be that W98SE "SP2" has what is needed in it, but if I can not get W98SE in I can not update it.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 3 weeks later...

Things have moved on a little since the back end of Novenber. The MB was capable of running SATA or EIDE or a combination by a suitable tweak of the BIOS.

After discussing his requirements with him, my friend said that as long as his works W98SE computer (he is a garage proprietor) continued to function he would be quite happy with XP or Linux. In the event it was Ubuntu 8.04 that went on, and it worked as per.

He is unfortunately in the same position as a lot of the small/medium garage people who set up some years ago using fairly sophisticated software (for the time) that was based on Ashton Tate's dBase (or Sage). These things create a customer database, vehicle records, work carried out, spares and their costs, and after each job would create and print out an invoice. The snags are a) they will only work on a printer capable of ASCII printing and B) the finished invoice looks like what it is...very old fashioned.

I am dreading his works computer falling off the desk. He has two or three chaps who work for him who, although very good motor mechanics, sometimes have less patience than they should have when using it.

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