Hi, I have a nine yr old Packard Bell P.O.S. I'm trying to repair while saving for a new PC. Anyway, I replaced the audio board and I'm not sure what the video card is supposed to look like or where it's supposed to be. I bought one just like it at a garage sale today for a dollar (the whole tower) and so I have spare parts...video card included, wherever it is.;-). I also got a CD ROM for a dollar. I know what the motherboard is, the memory chips and the audio board. There is a board screwed in on the side that somebody once told me was the hard drive itself? I dunno...any help would be appreciated.

Kevin

From what I can find the P.O.S. utilized an all-in-one Audio/Graphics/Modem card. This would have been a PCI card.

Unfortunately that machine is such an antique that finding anything on-line is difficult.

I did come up with this search result:

http://groups.google.com/groups?sour...S.&sa=N&tab=wg

Hope it helps in some way.

Thanks jephree...that actually makes a lot of sense, cuz there is only the 'one' card in there (yeah, that old it should be a PIC card), other than that thing screwed on the side which I was told was the actual hardrive. I did upgrade the memory yrs ago to 128 MB (the maximum) and that was even challenging. 72 pin SIMS sticks...try finding those just anywhere.;-) Yeah it's an antique, so I guess this wavy line thing going on is probably in my old monitor (not the original one, at least). Your link about Packard Bell was a real hoot too...

Kevin

In general hard drives look something like this:

http://www.nuggetlab.com/comptia_fil...rd%20drive.jpg

I must admit I didn't get my first computer untill 2002 so I don't have much personal knowledge prior to that.

That actually doesn't look anything like my 'supposed' hard drive. This thing looks like a circuit board with one of the ribbon connectors into it and a smaller cord that goes to the mutha' board. Besides that power supply, that's all there is to this P.O.S.-audio/video card, mutha' board and this thing screwed into the side that I assume is the hard drive. Of course there's the power supply with its own fan and the two CD drives I installed. Pretty basic antique, although I'd like to know what that thing is screwed into the side for sure....because the other PC I picked up has a larger one that will fit in the same spot. Larger means better, right?;-)

A ribbon IDE cable would be attached to the hard drive.

Where does the ribbon cable go to?

It sounds like an IDE controller card that you are describing.

But where does the other end of the cable go? Into the mysterious thing?

Originally Posted by jephree

A ribbon IDE cable would be attached to the hard drive.

Where does the ribbon cable go to?

It sounds like an IDE controller card that you are describing.

But where does the other end of the cable go? Into the mysterious thing?

It goes right down into the mutha' board from the mystery thing...right next to the memory sticks. And the ribbon from the two CD drives goes down from another ribbon side-by-side to the mysterious thing's ribbon termination on the mutha' board. Is it possible that the hard drive in combined into the mutha' board? And what if that mystery thing IS the IDE controller card...can it be swaped out without messing up my OS or memroy items stored?

It sounds like the mystery thing is the hard drive.

Motherboards (old ones: pre-SATA/RAID) have a Primary and Secondary IDE slot/port.

In most cases the Primary is for hard drives (Master/slave) and the Secondary is for DVD/CD drives (Master/slave).

Both these ports/slots are right next to each other on the motherboard.

All these connections are the ribbon IDE cable.

If the mystery thing is connected to the motherboard via an IDE (ribbon) cable then it is most likely the hard drive.


As to changing this (hard drive) you would need to reload your Operating System if you choose to do so.


On my way out for the night. Back tomorrow.

Thanx again Jephree-I'll assume it's the hard drive then. A few yrs ago a tech came to my house because I was at loggerheads with the P.O.S. trying to install Windows 98 on a clean hard drive. Anyway, he determined that my hard drive was slightly damaged and split it into two parts. The smaller part being the one I used daily. It worked great except that when I tired to burn CDs from my hard drive, there wasn't enough space. So I tried a zero-write on the hard drive again with the company that made my HD-Maxtor, I think. This time it worked fine and it guaranteed me that my HD was OK. So I reloaded my OS and all that sh*t. That was about six months ago and everything is fine except it's still a P.O.S. Finding that similar PC at a garage sale was pretty kewl, but I'm just buying time-got to get a modern PC....you wouldn't believe how this thing struggles online these days. If I retire this PC just to do office type stuff and not go online, I think it would do fine for that task and I can put this other HD in at that time.