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Strange IDE issues on my Packard Bell 486 machine

lee4hmz

Experienced Member
Joined
Sep 28, 2013
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Woodbridge, VA
I've been tinkering with the Legend 125 I just got, and I've noticed that it just does not seem to like 2.5-inch IDE drives, whether on the motherboard IDE or through the included AWE64 PnP's IDE port. If I connect one, the system will refuse to boot (no POST, blank screen). On the other hand, I can attach any size 3.5-inch IDE drive to either port, 120 GB and beyond, and the system will boot up just fine. I've triple-checked the cabling and used two different adapters, and this still happens.

I've since settled on using a 3.5-inch drive (a Seagate 1.2GB), but I still wonder why this would be happening.
 
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I am pretty sure the sound card IDE port only will properly work with a CDROM drive. They usually are not designed to support HDDS
 
They work fine as secondary IDE hdd controllers. There was a discussion about it here a few years back.
 
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I am pretty sure the sound card IDE port only will properly work with a CDROM drive. They usually are not designed to support HDDS

It depends on the card. The really old SB16s supported only the proprietary pseudo-IDE interfaces that Panasonic, Sony and Mitsumi used; eventually, around 1995, ATAPI came out and Creative started putting real IDE ports on their sound cards. This is one of those later cards with real IDE.
 
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This. Electrically, there's no real difference between a 2.5 and 3.5" IDE drive.

2.5" drives don't use the 12V line so I wonder if it's a problem with the PSU not being able to provide enough power on the 5V line?
 
Possibly, but I've tried several different 3.5-inch drives (some of which require a lot more power on the 5V line than a 2.5-inch would) and have had no problems. I can try again tonight.
 
The one I've been particularly interested in getting working is a Hitachi 80 GB out of another machine. I was able to cable this one up to a spare Athlon XP machine I had and get it to work, so the drive and cable are OK.
 
I'll have to check again when I get home. It turns out I was wrong; the spec sheets for my 3.5-inch drives say none of them pull more than 500 mA on the +5 while running, but the Hitachi can pull up to 1 amp (5 watts) when spinning up. I wouldn't think that'd be enough to confuse the processor, but on these old machines, who knows...

It might be a good idea to get the meter out and see if the +5 dips below 4.75 while the motor is starting.
 
Okay, got out the meter and tested this. The 5 volts is rock-stable at around 5.01-5.02, and the motor starting up doesn't seem to affect it any. Still getting no POST even with the cable connected the right way, and even with the 2.5-inch drive's power disconnected. I wonder how it could keep the machine from booting even with its power unplugged...
 
Lessee, you're using the 2½" drive on the 486 with an adapter, aren't you? You'd have to since 2½" drives have a different connector than a normal IDE ribbon cable does. Are you using the same adapter when you get that drive working on another machine?
 
Yeah, the cable i'm using is cable select, so that shouldn't be an issue. This is a situation where it won't even POST (no beep, no video), not just the drive not being detected.

In the end, this is more out of my own curiosity than something that has to work; it's quite happy on the Seagate 1.2 GB I have in right now.
 
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