600E still refuses to boot from CD ++

[gµlp]

Hi folks!

I feel very happy because I got a tp600e 2645-550 (PII@300, 164MB, 6.4GB hdd w/ xubuntu6, and cdrom) for free, and I'm about to fall in love with it.
However, there's still some trouble, and I wonder if this could be solved.

(1) HDD stuff:

E.g. the machine won't start other hdds: after replacing other small hdds in the range from 1.3 to 8gb with win98 or DeLi (kernel 2.2) on them for testing, it shows the "F1"/"i9990305"-screen (= not boot device found) or even plays an acoustic alarm like a 'police car'. -- Why don't the other hdds work, does the tp like only ibm-harddrives?

In addition, if I get the 600e to work (and upgradred sooner or later), I'd like to put also a bigger hdd into it, like a 160gb samsung.---Yes, I read about that 48bit/128gb-boundary-something. My question now is: does a hdd simply not work with the 600e, or would it work with just the space >128gb ignored? (Rem.: This very hdd with win98 on it actually does boot on my i486-toshiba laptop properly [though P'magic on the same machine shows an error because of the disk size]) But:when there was win98 on it, the 600e couldn't find a booting os, while booting with a copy of xubuntu6 on it later on, it wouldn't find a boot device (i9990305).
If a big enough hdd will work some day, I plan to install an arch linux/xp-dual boot system.

(2) CD stuff:

But the strangest thing so far is, the box permanently won't boot from cd! This is bad of course, because neither i can install a OS nor make bios-updates...
I don't know, if the cdrom is defective or there's something wrong with the BIOS or my inputs in Easy-Setup. -- Usually at switching the machine on, the yellow cd-lamp is blinking and, the diagnostic tool in ES shows no errors for the cd. In xubuntu, there's a /dev/hdc (but I can't mount it because I don't know the root-pw).

I seem to have some difficulties with the "Easy-Setup"---it is probably too easy for me... So maybe when I tried to change the boot sequence to CD first (or even delete that to get the default one) I made mistakes and the changes didn't take effect. So far, I set the boot sequence to cd like this:

<F1> --> Easy Setup
Config | Quick Boot | "Disable" <SPACE> <ENTER> | Initialize <ENTER> "OK?" <ENTER> | Exit <left button> | Start up | Power-on | ((evtl. Reset <SPACE>)) CDROM <SPACE> ((to 1)) HDD-1 <SPACE> ((to 2)) OK <ENTER> | Exit <ENTER> | <ESC> | Restart | OK? <ENTER>
--> reboot eg with win98-boot-cd ==> no effect!

Anybody like to check this and show me how to do it right? Yes, I hardly found information about what keys have which function within ES, and I wonder why I could leave sometimes a section with pressing <ENTER>, the left button or even <ESCAPE>... And I also tried it with disabling "quick boot", but to no avail.

(3) RAM stuff:
Somewhere here in the forum there is a thread that 600e can use (some) 256MB-CL3-dimms. Well, I got two such dimms and put them in. The BIOS counts them correctly but booting hangs then. Does that mean, there's a chance that the machine under some circumstances (eg BIOS-updates) will accept them?


Some many questions...
Anyway, the impossibility to boot from CD is most notorious. If this can be repaired, I'd give the 600e another chance... So if anyone can help, this would be great.

Thanks in advance
(°g°)

[gµlp]

(1) HDD stuff:
...
In addition, if I get the 600e to work (and upgradred sooner or later), I'd like to put also a bigger hdd into it, like a 160gb samsung.---Yes, I read about that 48bit/128gb-boundary-something. My question now is: does a hdd simply not work with the 600e, or would it work with just the space >128gb ignored? (Rem.: This very hdd with win98 on it actually does boot on my i486-toshiba laptop properly [though P'magic on the same machine shows an error because of the disk size]) But:when there was win98 on it, the 600e couldn't find a booting os, while booting with a copy of xubuntu6 on it later on, it wouldn't find a boot device (i9990305).
If a big enough hdd will work some day, I plan to install an arch linux/xp-dual boot system.

Hey, >>this<< is good news!
So probably I'll just have to re-partition my hdd (the mentioned samsung really without any noise at all ).
Will check this out later.

[pkiff]

Regarding booting from CD, it sounds like you are setting things up correctly in EasySetup. Here are a couple additional thoughts.

Some CD-ROM drives have difficulty reading/booting from CD-R/RW disks, and indeed, some really old CD drives actually have problems booting from CDs at all. So be sure you are using an original Windows disk if possible, and you might double-check that your specific CD drive doesn't have a firmware update available (though I don't recall seeing this latter issue with 600 series drives, only wth a specific Sanyo 770 drive).

Make sure you are using a bootable Win 98 CD. Perhaps I am mis-remembering, but there may have been one particular kind of Win98 CD that weren't actually bootable (!!).

All my installations of Win98 on my 600/770 and earlier machines were done by copying the Win98 install files over to the hard drive, rather than by booting from a Win98 disk itself. You will eventually want the Win98 CABS to be stored on your drive anyways, since various install/update functions will look for them over the life of the computer. But I always had access to floppy drives when doing these installations...

Phil.

[gµlp]

All my installations of Win98 on my 600/770 and earlier machines were done by copying the Win98 install files over to the hard drive, rather than by booting from a Win98 disk itself. You will eventually want the Win98 CABS to be stored on your drive anyways, since various install/update functions will look for them over the life of the computer. But I always had access to floppy drives when doing these installations...

Yep, that's exactly the same way how I e.g. usually install win98 on my i486 toshiba laptop with no CDROM.

Of course I use only original and bootable CDs. None them work when booting directly. However, there are some (slight) differences when booting with plop. Booting with this (from HD), you can also choose to boot from usb or CDROM, even if the BIOS wouldn't originally support it. The results so far are (nb: 600E with 6.4GB HD and win98 on it):
* win98se boot cd: "no media in drive"
* win xp boot cd: "no media in drive"
* win xp sp2 (slipstream) boot cd: CD found, with "press key to boot from CD"-message, but hangs then, and the CDROM makes funny chirping noises, seems to be slow
* actual Arch Linux core-i686 boot cd: seems to boot without problems, CDROM makes no noise at all
* paragon partition manager 7 boot cd: "no media in drive"
---What does that mean, defective CDROM?

Some CD-ROM drives have difficulty reading/booting from CD-R/RW disks, and indeed, some really old CD drives actually have problems booting from CDs at all. So be sure you are using an original Windows disk if possible, and you might double-check that your specific CD drive doesn't have a firmware update available (though I don't recall seeing this latter issue with 600 series drives, only wth a specific Sanyo 770 drive).

Since the BIOS is from 1998 (ihet33ew), the firmware hasn't been updated.

Unfortunately plop can't boot a floppy put into a USB-FD...

Hm, what I could do next, is to check
* if plop would work when installed onto the (empty) 160GB HD, that is put into the 600E (means if no BIOS errors occur)
* ...and later on, to find out if there's a way to create a bootable USB stick with the xpsp2 install files on it...

thanks
gµlp

Edit:

* if plop would work when installed onto the 160GB HD, that is put into the 600E (means if no BIOS errors occur)

==> checked this out, but "i9990305"