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New HDD, has corrupted Data - AGAIN



 
 
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  #21  
Old December 19th 17, 01:56 PM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Paul[_6_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 41
Default New HDD, has corrupted Data - AGAIN

Ammammata wrote:
Il giorno Sat 16 Dec 2017 08:26:40p, ** ha inviato su
microsoft.public.windowsxp.general il messaggio
. Vediamo cosa ha scritto:

This is an old IBM brand computer from about 2001


an almost seventeen-years-old computer is like a Ford Model T
you can't ask the hardware to be fully functional after so much time
it's your mistake to pretend to work safely with it

imho


I have a few 18 year old machines, still in mint condition.

No complaints. The installed OS still runs, just like it used to.

These machines use a lot of electricity though. One machine
I measured some time ago, it used 150W just sitting there
doing nothing. Like it was a V8 car with big fins on the back :-)
The machines back then, had hardly any power-saving features.
That's one reason they make poor choices if your
electricity is expensive.

*******

They won't boot off a DVD though, because when the machines
were invented, DVDs didn't exist, and nobody prepared
for the arrival of DVDs.

I even put a DVD drive in the machines to test this.
I was disappointed, but not surprised.

On earlier computers, some of the booting process
is done by "hard drive emulation". The BIOS converts
other device types to "look like" a hard drive. And
part of that methodology involves "fixed size disks".
So when the DVD came along, it was much larger than
anything the designers had anticipated. Amongst
other problems. I don't think the BIOS knows what
the DVD command set looks like either. It wasn't
an El Torito problem I was seeing, it was a physical
layer problem - the BIOS just didn't want to touch
the drive.

One other quirk someone else in the newsgroups tested
at the time, is they inserted a SATA PCI card into
the machine. And the BIOS just ignored it, and the
OS couldn't use it. So again, if you use hardware
cards the BIOS has never heard of, there will be
problems.

But these really aren't surprises. It's to be
expected things like this will happen.

I was booting something just yesterday, and in the
boot log on the screen it said "18493843248 GB disk".
Then the next line said "this is a really big disk".
No ****. So again, modern software is never prepared
for surprises, even if the software was written
in 2017. I don't know how the booting OS in that
case, had managed to query the disk drive, but
it got an absurdly large (wrong) size from it. No software
is really "prepared for infinity and beyond" :-)

The main problem with old computers, is there's no
decent web browser to use on them. That's why the
machines sit in the Junk Room.

Paul
  #22  
Old December 19th 17, 02:34 PM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
J. P. Gilliver (John)[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 54
Default New HDD, has corrupted Data - AGAIN

In message , Paul
writes:
[]
I like to draw pictures for people.

For a single IDE drive, it *always* goes on the end, like this.

Mobo
X --------------+--------+
| |
Master
Cable_Select (if 80 wire, CS is allowed)


IF I understood the Wikipedia article, some 40 wire cables _did_ allow
CS, by omitting line 28 between the remote connectors, and master having
to be the middle one, with the unterminated bit of cable providing all
the reflections you'd expect )-:. Probably why CS wasn't used much in
the early days. I _think_ I _do_ remember seeing 40 wire IDE cables
where the cable between the remote connectors was two ribbons, i. e. had
a gap in it - not a twist like a floppy connector, just a gap, which had
I looked closer I'd have seen was the omitted line 28. (Presumably line
28 was just connected to 0 or 5V on the mobo.)

When you add a second drive, it can be like this. Or,
you can run CS on both drives, if you are using an
80 wire cable (with that twist in it). I didn't want to junk


(Not a twist, just an omission. Apparently often done by just omitting
the insert on the middle connector's line 28.)

up the diagram, by adding CS to the table for both drives.

Mobo
X --------------+--------+
| |
Slave Master
Master with Slave (some brands have a
distinction on the jumpers)


(I'd forgotten that! Wonder why.)

Do *not* do this, as the end of the cable constitutes a
stub and causes excess reflections and corrupted data.

Mobo
X --------------+--------+
| |
Oopsy
ULooz

Even in the best of circumstances, the signals on that
cable look horrible. The signals look more horrible
in that last case.


Must have been even worse with the 40 line cables!
[]
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

A biochemist walks into a student bar and says to the barman: "I'd like a pint
of adenosine triphosphate, please." "Certainly," says the barman, "that'll be
ATP." (Quoted in) The Independent, 2013-7-13
  #23  
Old December 19th 17, 02:43 PM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
J. P. Gilliver (John)[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 54
Default New HDD, has corrupted Data - AGAIN

In message , Paul
writes:
wrote:

I have no problem with SATA drives. I dont think they would work for
Win98 though. One thing about them, I dont understand why the data cable


Some BIOS/MOBOs can make them "look like" an [E]IDE drive. I don't know
if that would make W98 be able to use them.

has so few wires compared to the IDE cables, and even more puzzling why
the power connectors have all those pins, when there is still only 5V
12V and a copule grounds needed (4 wires). Why do they have all them
pins? Why didnt they just use the common 4 pin connecters they have used
for years. All that did is make power supplies more complicated and the
need to buy adapters to use older power supplies.


The SATA 7 pin data uses TX+,TX-,RX+,RX-,
and those are differential serial connections.

The data travels serially, a bit at a time, like a modem.


Yes, the clue is in the S (and the P in the alternative name for [E]IDE,
PATA).
[]
So that's how they squeezed down the data cable, by going serial.

[]
The 15 pin power is 5 groups of 3 pins each.
A pin carries 1 ampere of current. Three pins
carry 3 amps. And 3 amps is just enough for the
+12V source, to run the hard drive motor. At
one time, some hard drives would draw 3 amps for
the first ten seconds, until the spindle was up
to speed.

So the contact count for power, was made generous
enough to run existing hard drives.


It seems an odd choice to me, to use small contacts, and then use a lot
of them. Fair enough, I suppose, if you're feeding power through an
existing multiway connector (though many connectors, e. g. DIN 41612,
manage fine with varying pin sizes - I suppose not really on if you're
using ribbon cable, though, as you'd need special ribbon), but in the
case of the SATA connector, it's a separate connector anyway, so why not
just use bigger pins! But it's settled now, so I suppose we're stuck
with it. But I share James's dissatisfaction with it - the power
connector being bigger than the data one, without it being obvious
that's the reason because it has bigger pins, feels odd.
[]
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

A biochemist walks into a student bar and says to the barman: "I'd like a pint
of adenosine triphosphate, please." "Certainly," says the barman, "that'll be
ATP." (Quoted in) The Independent, 2013-7-13
  #24  
Old December 19th 17, 02:53 PM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
J. P. Gilliver (John)[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 54
Default New HDD, has corrupted Data - AGAIN

In message ,
writes:
On Sun, 17 Dec 2017 13:01:49 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

[]
I hesitate to ask, but when you say "the old drive" above, do you mean
the CD drive that failed years ago, or do you mean the HD-that-was-G/H/I
whose failure started this whole saga? If the latter, I wonder if
setting that to CS might have cured the original problem )-:!

There is no CD drive involved in any of this. In fact the CD drive in
this computer died years ago. I really dont have any need for one on my


That was the one I was thinking of - I thought maybe you'd kept it, if
only to block the hole in the front, so you could have a look to see if
it was set to be slave or cable select.
[]
Anyhow, I was referring to my old 2nd drive / Slave (G: H: I.

[]
Does anyone know whether using master/slave jumpering with a cable on
which CS works might cause problems?


(I think I've answered my own question: no, no problems; if jumpered as
master/slave explicitly, the drives will ignore what the cable's telling
them. If one was jumpered as master or slave, and the other as CS, _and_
they were in the awkward position on the cable, then they'd either both
respond at once or not at all, which might harm them.)
[]
Ah, I've just looked:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA#Cable_select says it is done
using pin 28 - often just by omitting the contact from the middle

[]
and worked fine. Maybe it dont much matter which cable comes first, but
according to several articles, the last connector goes to the first
drive (which seems backwards).

No, as the article explains, if you only have one drive, and it was
connected to the middle connector, you'd have an unterminated stub of
cable, which isn't good electrically (reflections and so on). Apparently
for the 40 as opposed to 80 cables that _was_ the case, as they just
left out line 28 to the second connector (i. e. master was on the middle
connector).


I better understand this now. I know I have the cable right now, and
since I changed that jumper to CS, it looks like everything works fine
now. (At least so far). I have copied and deleted files and defragged
and scandisked, and ran Norton Dick Doctor. I even ran scandisk from
Dos. Everything checks out ok.

I sort of am wondering if the problem on my old slave drive may have
been caused by the jumpers being incorrectly set, but I had them drives
that way for at least 2 years. I'd think that would have shown up a lot
sooner.

I too am wondering that, but I agree it seems unlikely that the problem
would show up after a while - I'd have thought it would be there from
the start, or not at all. And the fact that it only showed up in one
position (partition) does sound like a surface fault. (The fact that
reformatting now shows no fault _may_ mean the drive's electronics are
"sparing out" the dud bit, and the drive is usable again, but like you I
wouldn't use it for anything important.)

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

(please reply to group - they also serve who only look and lurk)
(William Allen, 1999 - after Milton, of course)
  #26  
Old December 19th 17, 03:11 PM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
J. P. Gilliver (John)[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 54
Default New HDD, has corrupted Data - AGAIN

In message , Paul
writes:
[]
I have a few 18 year old machines, still in mint condition.

No complaints. The installed OS still runs, just like it used to.


Yes, in the support department I worked in until March, we had one that,
when you turned it on, did a ticking memory test (remember those?),
until it got up to its massive 4M (IIRR) of memory, and then loaded DOS
4.x from its (10M it might have been) hard disc. It was one of those
heavy old machines with a machined metal case, and the huge power lever
switch on the side - original IBM style I think. It was kept to test
equipment (the company made avionics) of the same vintage; since it
worked, and we only got those units in once in a blue moon, it was not
worth rewriting all the software and redesigning the test hardware to
run on anything more modern.
[]
I was booting something just yesterday, and in the
boot log on the screen it said "18493843248 GB disk".
Then the next line said "this is a really big disk".


What, those actual words? I like it when I come across someone with a
sense of humour!
[]
The main problem with old computers, is there's no
decent web browser to use on them. That's why the
machines sit in the Junk Room.


Indeed. Or rather, there are decent web browsers for them, but there are
few websites that will now run with those browsers. (As a browser,
Firefox 2 - or even Netscape 6 to 9 - are fine. It's just that web pages
these days are mostly made using compilers that assume more capabilities
on the part of the browser, even when not necessary.)

Such machines can have standalone uses, such as the one above described,
or controlling hardware (such as machine tools), or even as servers -
print, storage, etc. - in even more modern networks, they don't _have_
to sit in the junk room. (There are even the usual stories about servers
- the story usually says Linux - which have been walled up somewhere,
and continued for years.)

Paul

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

(please reply to group - they also serve who only look and lurk)
(William Allen, 1999 - after Milton, of course)
  #27  
Old December 19th 17, 03:35 PM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
[email protected]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 25
Default New HDD, has corrupted Data - AGAIN

On Tue, 19 Dec 2017 07:56:17 -0500, Paul wrote:

Ammammata wrote:
Il giorno Sat 16 Dec 2017 08:26:40p, ** ha inviato su
microsoft.public.windowsxp.general il messaggio
. Vediamo cosa ha scritto:

This is an old IBM brand computer from about 2001


an almost seventeen-years-old computer is like a Ford Model T
you can't ask the hardware to be fully functional after so much time
it's your mistake to pretend to work safely with it

imho


I have a few 18 year old machines, still in mint condition.

No complaints. The installed OS still runs, just like it used to.

These machines use a lot of electricity though. One machine
I measured some time ago, it used 150W just sitting there
doing nothing. Like it was a V8 car with big fins on the back :-)
The machines back then, had hardly any power-saving features.
That's one reason they make poor choices if your
electricity is expensive.

*******

They won't boot off a DVD though, because when the machines
were invented, DVDs didn't exist, and nobody prepared
for the arrival of DVDs.

I even put a DVD drive in the machines to test this.
I was disappointed, but not surprised.

On earlier computers, some of the booting process
is done by "hard drive emulation". The BIOS converts
other device types to "look like" a hard drive. And
part of that methodology involves "fixed size disks".
So when the DVD came along, it was much larger than
anything the designers had anticipated. Amongst
other problems. I don't think the BIOS knows what
the DVD command set looks like either. It wasn't
an El Torito problem I was seeing, it was a physical
layer problem - the BIOS just didn't want to touch
the drive.

One other quirk someone else in the newsgroups tested
at the time, is they inserted a SATA PCI card into
the machine. And the BIOS just ignored it, and the
OS couldn't use it. So again, if you use hardware
cards the BIOS has never heard of, there will be
problems.

But these really aren't surprises. It's to be
expected things like this will happen.

I was booting something just yesterday, and in the
boot log on the screen it said "18493843248 GB disk".
Then the next line said "this is a really big disk".
No ****. So again, modern software is never prepared
for surprises, even if the software was written
in 2017. I don't know how the booting OS in that
case, had managed to query the disk drive, but
it got an absurdly large (wrong) size from it. No software
is really "prepared for infinity and beyond" :-)

The main problem with old computers, is there's no
decent web browser to use on them. That's why the
machines sit in the Junk Room.

Paul


Interesting. I never knew these old computers could not handle DVDs.
I've never used much optical media of any sort, so I never even thought
about it.

I do somewhat question where the dividing line is as far as power
hungry computers, VS those which are less hungry. This old machine never
seems to throw out much heat. It's a basic Pentium with coppermine
processor. The original power supply was 100W, which was too small as
soon as I added extra HDDs and other stuff. That PS failed, so I
replaced it with a 350W supply which I have used since.

However some of the old dual core machines were power hogs. I knew
someone with a Dell dual core machine that had 3 fans. You did not dare
run that thing in hot weather if the house had no AC. One of the fans
died in that machine and it was hot enough to fry an egg on it. I
replaced the fan for that person. What amazed me was that machine
running XP home ed. was 5 times slower than my 2001 machine I am using
right now. I actually thought the CPU had gotten so hot that it was
fried, but I was told that machine had always been that slow. A few
years later I acquired 2 similar machines. One was identical, the other
similar. Both of them were also very slow, and ran very hot.

I have since learned that those early dual core Dell machines were
always slow and were lousy computers. (Because of that, I'd never buy a
Dell). Although I never measured the power draw on those machines, I
know that heat is power consumption and those beasts were almost like
electric heaters. I am sure they sucked lots of power.

But the newer stuff runs cooler even with quad cores and a lot more
power needs. So, I kind of wonder if my 2001 machine is really not all
that bad on power use???

You got that right as far as no browser support anymore.... I keep
hoping someone will create a browser for them, but I wont hold my
breath.
I do have to keep asking why the internet is so bloated these days. It
actually worked better in the old days and was 10X more useful back
then. nd no, it's NOT videos thats causing the problems. I can run darn
near any video on this old computer with no problems, unless I am
defragging or running a HDD scanner at the same time. (Using Win98).

Of course the video software matters too. I use Media Player Classic.
Simple to use with no crap and no bloat.


  #28  
Old December 19th 17, 04:27 PM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Ammammata
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 7
Default New HDD, has corrupted Data - AGAIN

Il giorno Tue 19 Dec 2017 12:12:01p, ** ha inviato su
microsoft.public.windowsxp.general il messaggio
. Vediamo cosa ha scritto:

You sound like one of todays spoiled rotten youth who cant stand to have
anything more than 2 years old


bull**** [cutting all the trash talk you wrote]

I'm 50yo, my home personal computer is a 10+ yo laptop where I put an SSD
to make it faster than light, and I'm saving money for my twins, using free
software (linux mint)

this doesn't mean that my opinion is what I wrote above: at *work* I have
an updated (4yo) computer just because my job requires such a device;
at home I make daily backups because I know that sooner or later the hw
will die

and to close this discussion, my 1993 486dx still runs windows nt4, the
1996 double pentium-pro runs w2k and the [unknown] thinkpad 380ED, with
MSDOS 6, allows me to play Duke Nukem 3D whenever I want.

r cre ohban znab, irqv qv naqner nssnaphyb, r cevzn qv cneyner znyr qv
dhnyphab snv nyzrab svagn qv vasbeznegv fh puv fvn r pbfn snppvn, pbtyvbar

--
/-\ /\/\ /\/\ /-\ /\/\ /\/\ /-\ T /-\
-=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- - -=-
http://www.bb2002.it

............ [ al lavoro ] ...........
  #29  
Old December 19th 17, 04:30 PM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Ammammata
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 7
Default New HDD, has corrupted Data - AGAIN

Il giorno Tue 19 Dec 2017 01:56:17p, *Paul* ha inviato su
microsoft.public.windowsxp.general il messaggio news1b29f$2hp$1@dont-
email.me. Vediamo cosa ha scritto:

I was booting something just yesterday, and in the
boot log on the screen it said "18493843248 GB disk".
Then the next line said "this is a really big disk".


I remember, running a game on my old 486 with 20Mb RAM, the message shown
on screen: "Please check your RAM because there must be an error"

--
/-\ /\/\ /\/\ /-\ /\/\ /\/\ /-\ T /-\
-=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- - -=-
http://www.bb2002.it

............ [ al lavoro ] ...........
  #30  
Old December 19th 17, 07:50 PM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Paul[_6_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 41
Default New HDD, has corrupted Data - AGAIN

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Paul
writes:
wrote:

I have no problem with SATA drives. I dont think they would work for
Win98 though. One thing about them, I dont understand why the data cable


Some BIOS/MOBOs can make them "look like" an [E]IDE drive. I don't know
if that would make W98 be able to use them.


Intel provided that mode specifically for legacy OSes. Because
it shows up in I/O Space for the registers, and it uses INT14
and INT15 for the interrupt coming from those logic blocks. It
looks exactly like a crusty old IDE Southbridge.

That was Compatible IDE mode.

I managed to install Win98SE on an Asrock VIA board with a Core2
processor, and it screams. Even though it only can use one core
of the processor. So yes, you can run Win98 on at least some
modern hardware.

I think the Compatible mode disappeared at some point.

The Native IDE mode, the registers are in PCI space, and the
interrupts fall where-ever the equivalent of INTA would go.
WinXP has a driver for that, in-box I believe. WinXP doesn't
have an ACPI driver, which comes later in time.


It seems an odd choice to me, to use small contacts, and then use a lot
of them. Fair enough, I suppose, if you're feeding power through an
existing multiway connector (though many connectors, e. g. DIN 41612,
manage fine with varying pin sizes - I suppose not really on if you're
using ribbon cable, though, as you'd need special ribbon), but in the
case of the SATA connector, it's a separate connector anyway, so why not
just use bigger pins! But it's settled now, so I suppose we're stuck
with it. But I share James's dissatisfaction with it - the power
connector being bigger than the data one, without it being obvious
that's the reason because it has bigger pins, feels odd.
[]


It was designed as a backplane connector, with the 7 and 15 portions
in a fixed relation to one another. Kinda a 22 pin connector with
a gap. The wafer design means it can be made as cheaply as
USB. Just extend the PCB of the hard drive, to make some contacts.

While the personal computer application rates the connector
at 50 insertions, I would expect the backplane application, with the
extra guidance provided by the packaging, the insertion count would
be a lot higher. The backplane doesn't have to do any "pinching"
to hold the connector on.

Paul
 




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