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Fun (not) with computers, and a tech question
05-14-2013, 12:56 AM
I had some trouble with my main internet machine this morning... Video was fizzy. That's a known error - the video card occasionally works loose. So I opened up the box and re-seated the video card. Plugging in the computer results in a Fan Error. Have to go to work; check it this evening.
Well, it's this evening. Opened up the box again. Discovered the fan was unplugged. Plugged it back in, turned on the box. Fan Error.
Took a closer look - there are two connectors for the fan cable. Tried plugging the fan into the other connector.
Fan Error.
I'm using my 3D-render PC to connect to the internet right now.
Okay, the old system has served me well over the years - it's still happily running Win2K. Or it was until this morning. Maybe this is Skuld's way of telling me it's time to upgrade. (Not that I can afford a new PC right now, either in time or money - I have a 50th-anniversary party to plan and pay for. And I'm still working on a favour for Bob, using a completely different PC.)
But I had some data on the 2K box that I hadn't yet backed up... including the prizes for the Freebie Challenge I'm hosting this month, so I have a deadline to get the data off the drive.
Which brings me to my question.
The 2K box had a single IDE drive. The box I'm using right now has an IDE controller and a spare bay. Can I take the drive out of the old box and install it in the new box without (a) data loss or (b) OS conflicts?
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Can't answer without a bit more data. Is there anything else using the IDE connection?
More to the point, is the render machine's current boot drive IDE or SATA? If it's SATA, then you should be golden- just go into the BIOS, and make sure the SATA drive comes first in the boot order.
If it's IDE, then you need to take a long, hard look at both drives AND the cable. The proper boot drive needs to have its jumper (if it's even old enough to have jumpers; the later IDE drives moved entirely to BIOS-based boot order) set to the 'master' position, the 2K machine's drive needs to have its jumper set to the 'slave' position, and the drives (may) need to be plugged into the proper ports on the cable. Then again, they might not; IDE is a heckuva lot more fiddly than SATA, and a lot of knowing what needs doing with it (and more importantly, what doesn't) has to be done case-by-case. The later versions of IDE/PATA act more like SATA 0.5; the older ones are closer to Apple ][/IBM PC-style behavior.
tl;dr: Yes, but if they're both IDE drives, it gets a *lot* more complex.
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With Windows 2k? I'm not fully certain. In my experience, plugging in a hard drive with certain Windows OSes would result in the machine wigging out over driver/hardware incompatibility errors. I do know that Windows 7 will just shrug it's meta-shoulders and look through its generic driver database for the closest thing that matches. (This is kinda how I'm bypassing a faulty northbridge chip on my laptop - by letting Windows 7 determine what video driver is most effective. Hilarious that the native ATI Catalyst driver is incapable of doing this without screwing up my machine... again.)
But at any rate, you can at least try. If I recall correctly, it will merely BSOD on you at worst and leave everything intact on the drive. At best, it will do what Windows 7 does as I described.
EDIT: Bluemage, IIRC this is easily sorted out by ensuring that you got one drive on the same channel set as the master and the other set as the slave. Two drives max per IDE channel, one Master, one Slave. Check the jumper settings on the back of both drives and make sure you have the correct jumpers in place. If no instructions for this are printed on the drive, then you'll need to look them up online. Fortunate you are that you still have a viable machine to connect to the Internet.
EDIT2: and in case you haven't noticed: for me, this is a 'Tuesday' sort of thing. My time in the Navy had a tendency to do that to laptops. :p
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Both drives are IDE, and there's nothing else on the cable in the 2K box. I'm not sure about the render box - I'm using it to connect right now.
The render box - I suppose I should start calling it the workhorse box - is running XP. (As I said, maybe this is Skuld's way of telling me it's time to upgrade.)
Both boxes originally built by the same vendor (IBM) - I'm not sure whether this makes things easier or harder.
I'll work on the hardware tomorrow...
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IIRC you can rig this as a dual-boot system with a bit of finagling around in XP. My only real concern would be whether or not the 2k OS on the foreign drive is going to wig out at the different hardware.
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Oh, it almost certainly would. I just want to recover the data, then use the drive for swap space. (Drive from 2K machine: 40GB. Drive in XP machine: 0.5TB. Both currently have 52% free space, oddly enough.)
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Quote:blackaeronaut wrote:
EDIT: Bluemage, IIRC this is easily sorted out by ensuring that you got one drive on the same channel set as the master and the other set as the slave. Two drives max per IDE channel, one Master, one Slave. Check the jumper settings on the back of both drives and make sure you have the correct jumpers in place. If no instructions for this are printed on the drive, then you'll need to look them up online. Fortunate you are that you still have a viable machine to connect to the Internet.
All I said is that you need to worry about jumpers with the older IDE parts, and occasionally cables, as well. The mechanics aren't that hard- it's knowing when you actually have to *bother* with them that's somewhat odd. It's not quite a Tuesday thing for me (that'd be more like SATA problems, as I'm not quite that experienced), but at least Thursday afternoon. ^^
Rob, I don't think it's Skuld telling you to upgrade. It's Urd telling you she's sick of doing tech support. 
Should be easy enough to check things... maybe even without turning the PC off. A bit of compressed air in the right places (try the back of the hard drive, right above the IDE/power ports... or the top rear of the drive- most* drives with the jumper settings on them have them there) should do it. I find that, as long as you're *careful*, and have a big enough case (as in a mid tower that's not totally full), a smartphone camera can get you a surprising amount of info- something about having the camera lens offset from your hand, I'd say. As long as you have autofocus and a flash, and take multiple pics, you should be able to read info off pics of labels you could never read directly.
*Some drives- Maxtors, if memory serves- put it midway up the label. If you have one of those, you'll have to pull it to get the info.
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Oops, my bad - the XP box is SATA, not IDE.
So it looks like I'll need to get an external IDE to USB adapter or enclosure... and the old-tech stores close in ten minutes. (No way am I trusting this to Best Buy.) I'll have to go shopping tomorrow. (Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...)
On the up-side, I have the drive out of the 2K box - it's a Maxtor D740X-6L, and the jumper settings are printed right on the drive case. (Yay Maxtor!)
Edit: Hmmmmm... I think I can set the XP box to boot from USB... but should I risk it?
Re-edit: Not going to risk it. I found someone who's willing to lend me an IDE-to-USB cradle.
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Always good to have one of those around. I still have one kicking around here somewhere myself and I also have a very nifty little 2.5" SATA-to-USB/eSATA enclosure. (Downside? To use the eSATA you have to supply external power... but otherwise a very nice enclosure.)
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Quite.
If you ever buy yourself some sort of external drive connection system, buy a dock or a cable... NOT an enclosure. You'll spent a *lot* less time fiddling with it. I work with an IDE enclosure and a SATA dock at work. The dock is nearly instant; the enclosure requires me to spend about 30 seconds, at best, fiddling with it to remove a drive. Then you have another 15ish seconds to put a new one in it... and this is after I stopped actually closing the case of it. >.
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Eh. Even with the dock, you'd probably have to spend a few minutes removing the mounting brackets from the last computer. (Dunno about other brands, but hard drives in Toshiba laptops always have a mounting bracket that is incompatible with everything else out there.) But as for the enclosure, my eSATA/USB one is nice in that it is a simple little clamshell affair. Snap open, insert drive firmly, snap shut.
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Had trouble with the dock - it didn't have a power connection for the drive. But I've found someone with a still-working IDE-based PC. The data has been recovered to USB dongle, and is currently being copied to my NAS. (Not moved - I want a backup.) That'll take a couple of hours... (The NAS has 5400rpm drives installed.)
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Hmm, tech question.
I inherited an old first-generation Xbox from a friend who regrets my total lack of console gaminj.
The disc tray won't open.
Any suggestions? I've tried Google and all I get is XBox 360 stuff.
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There should be hole you can stick a paperclip into.
If you have the manual for the xbox, it will tell you where the hole is located on the case.
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Also, I've heard that the DVD-Drive on Gen1 Xboxes can be replaced with a generic DVD-Drive - this being due to Microsoft pushing to make the Xbox as much like a PC disguised as a console as possible....
....Ah! Nevermind! It turns out that isn't really feasible. (Possible, yes, with a stupid amount of time and will power.) However, it may be possible to find a replacement drive on Ebay or some such... Just make sure you're not getting one of the 'Thompson' drives... those are the cheap-ass unreliable ones that break as soon as your touch it. Details here: http://www.avsforum.com/t/1053427/origi ... eplacement
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