sickboy

Since the postings are a bit scarce at the minute I thought I'd try and start a discussion. Not exactly about Scoobs, (well my PC name is Scoob...), but I know how many members are in IT....

Anyone tried Windows 2000 yet?

I installed it yesterday (PII 400, 192Mb RAM) and my first impressions are very good. It seems quite sprightly and has a well polished feel. There are loads of new features too.

On the plus side Unreal Tourney, Half Life and Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4 work fine. On the minus side, my CD writer is not supported-bummer.

I do have win 98 on a separate HDD to go back to if need be!

Here's a conundrum for anyone interested- answers on a postcard please.

I've installed to a SCSI disk, and disconnected the IDE one. (Also turned IDE disk off in the Bios). IDE disk has Win 98 and is bootable. Ordinarily you can't boot to a SCSI device if you have any IDE disk in? Right? (this is my understanding of SCSI rules).

Well, I thought I'd connect the IDE one back, thus booting back to Win 98.

Odd but it boots to W2K and see the IDE disk (it's still disable in BIOS).

How queer.

If anyone is still awake I'd be grateful for enlightenment. It's not exactly a big deal, I just wouldn't mind what going on!

Ian Cook

You can boot from a SCSI device if you have IDE devices fitted.

As long as the IDE device is not the Active partition.

[This message has been edited by Ian Cook (edited 18-01-2000).]

sickboy

Cheers Ian.

It does have an active Win 98 partition on the IDE disk. I'm going to enable it in BIOS and it should boot.

In the past I could never get this to happen (may have been due to my old BIOS?).

Weird that it still see's the IDE disk via W2K even though it's disabled?

You know when you were told Father Christmas didn't exist........

JamesH

Why not make your system dual-boot.

That's got you thinking....

Mark Pitchford

Sickboy,

Is your CD writer a SCSI one?

Is it plugged in to an Adaptec controller card?

Have you got the proper ASPI layer installed?

What build of Win2K is it?

Are you sick of the questions yet?

I've got a SCSI writer connected to an Adaptec 2940UW and it works great in Win2000...

Mark

Paul Wilson

I don't know too many TLA's and FLA's for me

sickboy

Mark,
I've got a Yamaha CDR 100 based writer (actually a Plasmon external, which is now internal!). To be fair it is 5 years old (it cost £1000 then (4x write 4x read.)

It's conneced to an Adaptec 2940AU (Ultra but not wide) with the 1.32 BIOS.

No ASPI layer installed. Just W2K. I did install Easy SCSI 5 and Easy CD Creator 4.01- but with no luck.

Easy CD does see the Yamaha CDr100- just can't talk to it under W2K.

Cheers

pat

Sickboy,

Windoze 2000.... oh yes, I remember, that thing I was playing around with early last year... very cute shading on the mouse pointer, but why did they have to move things around so much? And why all of these naff wizards that hode most of the details?

Anyway, back on topic.... your CD writer... it is possible that the WINASPI API has changed somewhat under Win2000 so that your CD writing software may be getting upset... wait for a W2K version? :-)

Discs... ah yes, that makes perfect sense. You've disabled the IDE HDD in the BIOS, so no Int13 handler for the IDE channels will be provided by the BIOS. But NT (like Linux) provides its own IDE drivers, so of course it will see the drive even if the BIOS doesn't (and therefore boots from SCSI).

The normal boot order is IDE first, then SCSI. With some mainboards / SCSI adapters you can force the system to boot SCSI before IDE... rare but there are a few examples out there.

If you want to boot off a SCSI disk when an IDE device is connected (and enabled for Int13 in the BIOS) and your mainboard / BIOS won't allow you to boot SCSI before IDE you can still install your OS onto the SCSI HDD as long as your bootloader gets written to the MBR of the IDE HDD. Of if you're running ARCSBIOS/AlphaBIOS/SRM console you just tell it what you want to boot and it does... I like Alphas.... must get round to blowing MILO into flash :-)

Ian,

Booting from a disc other than 0x80 (drive C) requires an operating system capable of such a task; DOS will NOT boot from anything but the first hard disk. Linux is quite happy because LILO just works out where on the disk surface the kernel is and loads it... it doesn't really care about partitions at that stage (although you would tell the kernel the major and minor device numbers where you would like VFS to mount its root). As for Windoze NT/2000 goes, the BOOT.INI uses ARC paths (hmmm... ARC == Advanced RISC Computer == Alpha.... I like.... :-) but of course the NT bootloader needs to be able to read BOOT.INI and the kernel... so it will only load from BIOS supported media (although drive 0x83 would be fine). [Same is true for current LILO implementations, but IIRC there is a new LILO that can read the kernel from soft RAID sets :-)]

If you're running Linux on an Alpha all you need is MILO on a BIOS supported disk. After that you can actually boot and mount your root on a drive which the BIOS does not understand (quite cute; basically MILO is built from the kernel source tree, so if the kernel undertands the drive, so will MILO, even if ARCSBIOS/AlphaBIOS/SRM doesn't).

Cheers,

Pat.

Lee

Someone on i-chat was having a 'mare with win2k and cd-writers so i told 'em to download aspi32 from adaptec.

worked a treat.

Ian Cook

Pat, Its always worked for me ?

Mark Pitchford

Lee,

that was me and yes, it did work a treat!!

Cheers mate!

sickboy

Pat, thanks for your explanation. It makes perfect sense (now I know!).


Lee, I've got Easy SCSI 5 from Adaptec. I would have thought the latest Win ASPI 32 drivers would be on it? I'll have a rummage on the Adaptec site.

Windows does see the CDR in the device list- just calls it a WORM drive (this happened in Win95 'till I patched it- years ago.)

Hopefully they may release a newer driver.

MY CDR software can see the CDR 100 "in places" but can't seem to communicate (no record button).

Thanks for all the advice everyone- off to wash the Scoob now (my day off!)

[This message has been edited by sickboy (edited 20-01-2000).]

sickboy

Chaps,

I finally Sorted the CD R business out!

I downloaded the latest ASPI32 drivers but that didn't fix things (good to be at the very latest version though).

Then I got a mail from Yamaha saying I should install the CD R as a generic CD ROM drive.

W2K was very reluctant but I forced it's hand and it works now!

So now Easy CD Ceator and W2K can see the drive and read from it. Hoorah!

Stephen Cole

I'm going to stay well out of this discussion

(see my email address for why !)

Stephen