Hi Gary,
The high pitched noise came from the top of the tower near the CDROM. It's
tone did not sound like the beeps Windows makes. It lasted for 1.5 mins.

I did upgrade with two 128MB PC100 SDRAM. Not Dimms.

I will check the CPU fan.
The other fan (larger one,exterior) near the top of the tower, works as I
can put my hand near and feel the wind.

I will do the connections you mentioned. I just wanted to rule out as much
in the AM as possible.
--
Do what you enjoy for a living!


"Gary S. Terhune" wrote:

It's late, and I'll maybe think of something tomorrow, but that "high
pitched noise" wasn't the motherboard speaker by chance? The one that beeps
(or sometimes screams) when you get those errors?

The other possibility is that what you heard was a hard drive squirming in
its last throws of death. If it was the Primary Master, its still being
connected would cause problems for the Primary Slave HD. (You have two HDs,
right?)

The other fan is the CPU fan, and you check it by putting your finger on its
center to stop it, then let go. It should immediately crank up to full
speed.

No, you can't use anything but a proper IDE cable for your drives
(motherboard to drives.) But that brings to mind power cables which brings
to mind the power supply, which is usually at the top of the machine and has
its own fan. If it went haywire, it might even have fried the drive(s).

Try connecting the CDROM drive as Primary Master and disconnecting the two
HDs (including their power connectors. Does BIOS see the CDROM drive
properly? If so, swap that out for one of the drives, doesn't matter which,
to see if that's detected properly, then test the second drive, again as
Primary Master. In other words, test each one completely separate from the
others. If not even the CDROM gets detected properly, then the controller
(what you plug into on the motherboard) is perhaps fried.

More in the morning when I've had a chance to read more carefully and do
some research.

--
Gary S. Terhune
MS-MVP Shell/User
http://grystmill.com

"grafxfriday" wrote in message
...
Hi Ben, Gary and Rebel,
OK first new info then what I did(operations) then Questions.

New Info
I do have the Windows 98 book with the cd key but no book for the eMachine
itself.
AMIBIOS version 1.20, base memory 641kb, Ext. Memory 262144.
Hard Drive is Seagate U4 Model ST34311A, 4.3Gbytes, Firmware 6.01, 8944
CYL,
15HDE and 63 SECT.
Motherboard is Intel AGPse FW8243LZ. I also found jumper settings.

Operations
Hardware
I opened the computer and reseated the cable ribbons to and from the
motherboard (3) and the CDROM ribbon also.
Reseated the 2 Dimms cards and all connections on Motherboard and CDROM.
BIOS
SETUP - I reset BIOS to auto. The only thing it detected was CDROM in
Secondary Master. (the Primary Slave was 26).
UTILITY - clicked detect IDE, went to autodetect. again the only thing
that
was detected was SM CDROM.
DEFAULT - Clicked load optimal.

Then proceeded to startup error 202:boot failure and 203:insert boot
diskette in A.
I inserted cd then pressed format HDD with step by step.
path=a:\ N.
a:\format c: invalid drive specification.
Restore HDD from CDROM.
Restore is now in progress.
C: Y.
Invalid drive specification.
cd\ Y
md c:\windows Y
IDS (then 2 more commands windows\system, windows\options. Same error
Invalid Drive Specification.)
a:\unzip - od c:\windows\options\R:\cabs.img (went from small r to capital
R)
checkdir: can't create extraction directory

Back to BIOS - I uninstalled A. The computer beeps only once now.
Error 200 and 203, insert cd, Boot to DOS prompt from cdrom.
A:\dir (all the files seem to be here)

Questions
Hardware
I remember there was a high pitched noise coming from the top of the
computer when it crashed. I am sure the exterior fan is working. How do I
check the other internal fan?
Could I unplug the A drive cable or could it be connected to the CDROM?
Operations
How can I reformat the drives?
Thank you all for your help. grafxfriday