I am trying to set up an old system.
It has a new case, old Tekram P6BX-A(n) mainboard, p3 450mhz, dvd rom, and a Western Digital 40 gig eide hard drive.

At one time I did have Slack on this set up. The hard drive no longer was detected, and I pulled hard drive and used it in my new pc for some time. It currently has Mandrake 10.1 and WinXP installed on it.

This drive did have the ide cable with the blue connector on it but I thought I had used it in the past with the older ide cable with black connectors, as that is what fits the main board. The newer eide drives are compatible with the older ide cables are they not?

Anyway, it hangs trying to detect the hard drive. I know hard drive is good, had it in new system a couple days ago to retrieve files off of it.

Any thoughts on what is not working here would be appreciated.

Just a thought, does the BIOS see the drive? If so, you may need to check and make sure you have the right chipset enabled for the motherboard. If it doesn't see the drive then you may want to try a different cables, and make sure it has a power cable too. I did that once. No power, no workey. Embarassing really to tell that.

It's been a while and I am getting rusty on this stuff. Since I installed Gentoo, I don't seem to have any trouble. If I build a new rig, I'll need a oil bucket to get rid of the rust.

Just thoughts to check on till someone else comes along with better ideas.

Later

Nope, bios sees the dvd player but not the hard drive. Ide cable is tested and good, had power cable plugged in ( case is open, hard drive is spinning). Tha;nks for taking a shot at it though, Dalek.

If the BIOS doesn't see the hard drive then something is wrong with the drive or the mobo, if the cable is really good. Linux gets the drive info from the mobo during boot up. I would check the BIOS settings and see why it is not seeing that drive. You, or it, may have it disabled or it is not detecting it for some reason. Something fishy somewhere and my fishing pole has no hook.

Later

Are HD jumpers set? Will the BIOS pick it up as master/slave on IDE 2? Is IDE 1 disabled in BIOS?

RanDrake10 has a very good point. I had a drive once that had to have all the jumpers removed if another drive was on the same cable. It would not see it if the jumper was there even if set as master. It would if it was the only drive though.

If you don't have a lot of info about the drive, do a google image search, www.google.com/images , for the model and add "jumpers". You will usually get a picture with the jumper settings.

Gosh these things get complicated, especially when it is something simple.

Later

I have tried it with no jumpers, jumper diagram is on the drive. I am wondering if it has anything to do with this being an ata drive and using an old ide cable in place of an ata cable due to motherboard connection. Both primary and secondary ide connectors have been tried. This may not be the drive that had been in the pc previously, but it was definately an ata drive, possibly my maxtor. Suppose I shall try another drive in it tomorrow. The Western drive is good, I used it just a couple days ago on my new pc. Frustrating.

Ok, figured out what is going on. I had previously had my Maxtor ata 60 gig in this pc. Bios did not find the drive and had used their Maxblast utility to install it. Maxtor is currently in use and not available for this pc.

So not a problem. I can then install the Western Digital by using the Data Lifeguard Tools 11 dos boot. Or can I? Seems Western Digital only distributes this as a Windoze exe. file, or a zipped exe file to create the cd. Have they not heard of iso files so we can all use their hardware? Oh, apparently they have, their diagnostic utilities are distributed with a downloadable iso file. I'm impressed, if I have the drive installed I can download and use their diagnostic utility...........do they expect me to go buy a copy of windoze to be able to install the drive in this pc that is planned to be a linux box? Sorry I'm venting, but I'm really annoyed with hardware companies dictating to me what operating system I must fool with.

If anyone knows of where I can get a copy of "Data Lifeguard Tools 11 dos boot" as an iso file for a cd it would be greatly appreciated.

Ok, think my night might level out now. Sourcforge to the rescue.
Ultimate Boot CD project has installers for most of the hard drives, WD's installer is there just not listed under the installers, but is in the diagnostic utility list. Is also an iso image. All should be good now.

For cryin out loud, can't even find a copy of Ultimate boot cd in iso form, they are all exe's or exe's that are zipped.

Maxtor does have maxblast available as an iso download. I will not buy another Western Digital after this fiasco.

Edit: found a rar'd iso copy of Hiren's BootCD. Can you believe it was simply text instructions within the Western Digital tools. Anyway, turned out problem being Award bios v4.51PG and had to use cylinder reduction jumper which is not included on the diagram on the drive. Anyway, it is now detected on auto and all is good.