I have a possibly-stupid question:

I have an IBM Netvista 8310, and recently I decided to try to cannibalize a roughly-contemporaneous Compaq Presario for a few parts, pulling an IDE HD (Seagate), and an Nvidia RIVA TNT2 video card.

1) Is it at all possible to install the hard drive? I found the bay where it's intended to be put, but I can't find another plug for the ribbon-like-power cord (whatever it's called). Anyone know about this?

2) I found the appopriate slot for the video card, and set the BIOS video setting to AGP, but when I boot the system up, the monitor won't respond, acting like it's in sleep mode. Anyone have any ideas what this is?

I can't seem to find anything on IBM support about this. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks.

Here is IBM on the basics:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/si...cid=MIGR-43076

Bays
Bay 1: 5.25-inch, half-height 1.6-inch, access, standard CD-ROM
Bay 2: 5.25-inch, half-height 1.6-inch , access, open
Bay 3: 3.5-inch, slim-line 1-inch, external, floppy disk drive
Bay 4: 3.5-inch, slim-line 1-inch, external, access, open
Bay 5: 3.5-inch, slim-line 1-inch, internal, standard hard disk drive (no access)

Hard disk drive features ATA-100
Enhanced Local Bus IDE controller
Read/write cache
5400RPM or 7200RPM

IDE controller Integrated in ICH4
Single controller
2 separate channels, 4 drive support

This is what a basic ribbon cable looks like. Just make sure it has 2 connectors: Master/slave.
http://www.directron.com/ata100cable.html

Your Master hard drive appears to be a slim-line model on a controller with bay 4 slim-line. These cables will be different from the full size 5.25 drives.

If your second drive is full size then you could put it on the same cable as your CD drive.

You might also need to get a power Y if you have no available 4 line power line.

As to the graphics card: did you uninstall the old drivers & then install the new?

Also what is your Operating System?

Thanks for the reply. The HD is in bay 5 already, and I took the ribbon-cable that was attached to the hard drive during my scavenger hunt. One blue end and one black one. The trouble is I can't seem to find a free plug on the motherboard in which to put it. That's a really random question. But there's (from what I can see) three ports in which it would fit; IDE1 (current internal HD), IDE2 (CD-ROM), and the floppy disc, which has worked in years, and I've never used.

As for the video-card. Um. No. I haven't done that. That's probably what it is. I'll give it a shot in a little bit.

WinXP

Follow-up: The second IDE HD is connected, slaved to the original via a single IDE cable, but now my system won't recognize my CD-ROM drive, which is connected via a separate cable.

The video card is installed, BIOS set to AGP, and the system won't recognize it. Uninstalling the old drivers works fine, but installing new ones just ends with an error that it can't find a relevant device.

Check all connections; board end & drive end. Moving these things around can be very touchy at times.

Boot into Safe Mode & uninstall all Graphics drivers via the Device Manager as well as all Graphics related software from Add/Remove programs. Then reboot.

XP should recognise new hardware & ask for drivers.

Managed to get the video card working because I was stupider than I thought: Didn't realize I needed to plug the monitor into the back of the card. Yeah. Installing the drivers from the NVidia site gives me an error that says there are no drivers compatible with my setup, but the native XP drivers seem to be working fine.

I'll triple-check the connections later on, but they seemed to fine when I checked earlier today.

Ok, so I've checked the connections, and everything seems fine, but the CD-ROM still isn't being recognized. To reiterate: my new drive is slaved to the original one, and both are connected via the same IDE cable to the IDE1 slot on the motherboard. The CD-ROM is connected via a separate cable to the IDE2 slot on the motherboard. I've removed the video card, since there didn't seem to be much difference in quality, and it was pointless to keep it there.

Recently though, I've noticed that the cooling fan is blowing way more often than it was before. Is that just the second hard-drive? Is this normal?

As to the fan: if it is set to a thermostat then it would appear normal.

A second hard drive will add another significant heat source to the system.

As to the CD-ROM: is it recognised in the BIOS?

Also check the Device Manager: RT click My Computer then click Manage then Device Manager or go to start/run/ devmgmt.msc for any "!" especially next to:

IDE ATA/ATAPI Controller
|
|-Secondary IDE Channel

The CD drive isn't recognized in either BIOS or Device Manager.

You MUST get the BIOS to recognise the CD drive, otherwise no information about it will be passed to Windows so Windows will have no hope of seeing it. You've got a hardware issue here - nothing to do with drivers or Windows configuration.

As your CD drive is on a separate cable, I'm assuming that you didn't disconnect or alter anything to do with the CD drive and the cables going to it. So, in theory, there's no reason why it should have stopped working. Regardless of whether you unplugged it or not though, you do appear to have a problem so here's a checklist of what to do to get a CD drive on IDE2 working:

1. Go into the BIOS and make sure the Secondary Master and Secondary Slave are set to Auto. Also check that the Secondary IDE Channels for both Master and Slave are Enabled. Save the changes in the BIOS and reboot.

If this doesn't help, you'll need to get inside the case.

2. Check there's a 4-pin power connector fitted to the CD drive. Remove it, check for loose wires in the connector, correct if necessary (or use a different power connector) and reconnect it.
3. Check that there's a 40-pin IDE data ribbon cable fitted. This should have all black connectors on it, not a blue or red one.
4. Check that the red stripe down one edge of the IDE cable is pointing towards the power connector on the drive.
5. The IDE cable has a connector at each end and one roughly in the middle. However, one "half" is actually a little longer than the other half. Check that the longer "half" is at the motherboard end and that one of the two connectors on the shorter "half" is connected to the CD drive.

If that still doesn't work, then try this:

6. Check that the jumper setting (the very small plastic "plug" over the tiny pins" is set to the Master or Slave setting and not the Cable Select setting.
7. Try the other connector on the shorter "half" of the IDE cable.

If that still doesn't work, try a new IDE cable. And if all of that STILL doesn't work, try a new CD drive!

Hope that helps - let us know how you get on