The time has come for a nice big HD!!

[welshboy]

A brief history of me and my computer....

Sept 1997 - Bank Account gets stung heavily for a P166MMX, 32Mb RAM, 2.1Gb HD system (<audience> oooooooo!!!)

Y2K - Install modem - everything O.K
Install Voodoo II accellorator - everything eventually O.K
Replace CD-ROM drive - piece of cake!

These last few months have seen a desperate shortage of HD space and
I feel the time has come for a nice big supplement! I have plenty of room inside the case and the IDE cables are fine for the job in hand, but what I am a little unsure about is can the system take it???

I have been in contact with various people over the last 2 weeks and have had varying opinions. The computer manufacturers reckon I should be O.K but may have to partition the new drive. My college I.T tutors/technicians reckon I should be alright. The motherboard manufacturers on the otherhand (chaintech by the way) were a bit more downbeat and said I would only be able to get about 4Gig out of the MB!!

A little bit of Info about my motherboard - Chaintech 5TTM1 (if that means anything to anybody??!!) Intel 82430TX chipset, award bios, 2 * UDMA33 IDE ports. If u want to know more, ask and I will try to answer as quickly as possible...
Who is right? can anybody tell me??
Please be aware that I would like to have the new drive up and running inside of a week to 10days- pay day on friday!!(WOOHOO!!!!)and I'm down to my last 50MB!!!!!
Final notes - I am running Win95 OSR2 with USB support (last version to be released so I'm told....), the HD I am considering is the Seagate U10 series(I havent decided which capacity to go for yet but it will either be the 10 or 20Gig versions)

[Paleo Pete]

I'm running the Intel 430 series chipset, works pretty well, but don't put more than 64MB RAM in it. The Intel 430 series will not allocate more than 64MB memory, and more than that will slow the computer down. But that's not an answer to your question...just some info I thought might be helpful in the future when you decide the 166 isn't running fast enough. By the way, I think it can handle up to 200MMX, mine can.

I wouldn't try to go larger than about 8GB hard drive. I don't know for sure if this board has a drive size limitation, but many of the older ones do. You'll be better off if you stay at 8GB or below. The version of Win95 you're running can handle larger drives, and if you partition it as FAT 32 it will handle large partitions. I would keep the partitions 4GB or lower. Set it as Master, and move the other one to the middle connector on the ribbon cable, set that one as Slave.

Use the drive installation software that comes with the drive, or download it from the manufacturer's website, and you can usually transfer all data from the old drive to the new one in a matter of minutes. No Windows installation will be necessary in this case. If you use fdisk you'll have to format the drive and start all over, which I recommend only as a last resort, but if you want to start fresh, it's not a bad idea.

Check my website, posted below, and you'll find plenty links to info that will be helpful, especially at Trish's, in the Motherboard/BIOS section, including links and info to identify the motherboard and possibly get a manual for it which will help clear up some of the confusion about hard drive issues, etc.

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If you had everything...Where would you put it?

Computer Information Links (http://www.geocities.com/paleopete/)

[welshboy]

Hmmm 64Mb max eh.... I have actually upgraded my system RAM to 96Mb and everything is fine - all software recognises the RAM and it all appears during the POST checks...

My motherboard is actually a very early ATX board - it has a handfull of PCI/ISA slots but I am able to use DIMM's or SIMM's (2D,4S) and my USB ports are on a plate wired to the motherbaord, effectively blocking one of the PCI slots (I have moved them aside as I don't actually use them!)

As for proccessor upgrades, I can in fact upgrade to a 233MMX if I wanted to! (I'm not sure but I think I may be able to set the MB voltage/freq settings so that it can take a Cyrix MII or AMD K6-2 processor)

Back to the HD issues.....

I had pretty much decided I was gonna use fdisk, and format the drive so that I had a nice fresh drive on which I could install Win95 again and effectively "build" the system up again without any unwanted stuff that I have accumulated over the last 3 years.....

I will have a quick look at those links before I go ahead and buy a drive...

[Paleo Pete]

I have a very good article printed out, but can't find it on the net again. Here are a couple of references to the 64MB limitation of the 430 series chipsets. You get the best performance out of memory when it's cached, and the 430 series will only cache 64MB. Any more than that, your system probably runs slower than it should. Pull some, run it with 64MB and see for yourself...The system will recognize the RAM, and will use it, but will actually run faster with no more than the maximum it can allocate, or cache. The 430TX and mine, the 430FX can only cache 64MB.

WinMag Article (http://www.winmag.com/fixes/txchips.htm)

i430HX and i430TX info from Intel (http://www.mmx.kz/support/chipsets/430HX/)

Motherboard Homeworld (http://www.motherboards.org/buyold.html)

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If you had everything...Where would you put it?

Computer Information Links (http://www.geocities.com/paleopete/)

[This message has been edited by Paleo Pete (edited 09-27-2000).]