Topic: adding HD, lost, completely lost

[booch]

Greetings all,
new to forum, hope there is an answer out there and somebody willing to share it.
This is lengthy, but necessary I feel.
I have an older NEC(Packard Bell?)system, purchased new as PII 350 Mhz, 8.2Gb hard drive, 64Mb RAM, CD-ROM, Super Disk 120Mb Floppy drive, so-so 4Mb graphic card, on board sound, 56k modem, running Windows 98.
Upgraded RAM to 320Mb, added CD-RW drive, upgraded video to 32Mb card, not the best, but free, and better than what was there before.
Ethernet card was added by cable company a year ago or so when switched from dial-up.
Never any problems with pc, besides the occasional virus sneaking in through carelessness.
My problem, recently running out of hard disk space due to digital photos from camera, music, etc...
Purchased Maxtor Ultra ATA 80Gb hard drive, to serve as additional drive, boot or secondary.
Motherboard has two IDE slots.
Had to remove super disk drive, since it was occupying a connector on one IDE cable which I need for the new hard drive, and I have never utilized the 120Mb capacity of it's floppy disks since I never bought any.
I have always just used 1.4Mb floppies, or CD's.
Added standard 1.4 Mb floppy drive I had saved from scrapped system, via vacant floppy 33 pin connector on motherboard.
Installed and partitioned new Maxtor Hard drive to three chunks, 20Gb, 30Gb, and 30Gb roughly.
20Gb will serve as partition for OS which is now Windows 98SE. Other partitions will be whatever.
Loaded OS(98SE), no problem.
All devices on IDE's are recognized no problem, and appear correctly in BIOS.
IDE's are set up as follows. NOT CABLE SELECT
IDE 0-new ATA hard drive(master), old CD-ROM(slave)
IDE 1-Newer CD_RW drive(master), old hard drive(slave).
All drivers appear to be loaded correctly.
Using new Maxtor ATA hard drive as primary boot drive since it is faster and has a ton more space.
Tube boots up much faster, BUT, can't get to internet.
Checking device manager says Exclamation point next to system board extension for PNP bios(resource tab says this device is causing a resource conflict(code 15) but no device is shown in the list area below.
Checked all other devices listed in device manager for possible resource conflicts.
All say thay have no conflicts.
Pulled out ethernet card, removed device from manager list, re-booted, asks for drivers for PNP device, two seperate times, but does not state what those devices are.
If I change BIOS to allow booting from old hard drive(slave on IDE 1) it boots the same as always, and internet connection is flawless, and no exclamation point in device manager.
Boot from new hard drive, asks for drivers and can't find any for all disks i put in, and doesn't say what those devices are.
Just says drivers for PNP audio device not found.
End up with exclamation point in systemboard extension blah blah blah.

Can't figure it out.
I am a novice when it comes to pc's, but have learned a lot these past few days.
If anyone has any ideas, I would love to hear them.
  Thanks
    Booch

[Sandra]

Hi  Booch and

Is your modem a pci one or external ?
I would suggest that that is the device that is showing the conflict and isnt being installed properly.
Check it in control panel/modem and see if it says its working correctly or not or has the conflict in there  

[booch]

well, after several days of confusion and trying different things, turns out the ethernet adapter was trying to occupy the same irq as the on board sound.
apparently they aren't smart enough to find a vacant one, and go to a default.
also, the 56k modem drivers are not valid, but since i don't use dial up, and don't really need to fax, it does not matter for now.
i would like to clear that up at some point, but if the new hard drive works, don't fix it, right?

[Sandra]

Glad its kind of sorted for now  
Unfortunately there arent enought IRQs for everything and they have to be shared sometimes, this is what causes the conflicts as certain devices dont like sharing their IRQ with certain other devices.
I cant remember the exact number now but I think its either 15 or 16 available.
I believe scsi gets around this by allocating more somehow through the scsi controller card but I dont know anything about scsi but someone will hopefully clarify it or tell me I am wrong  

[Dack]

You can share interupts as long as the ACPI is working correctly - thats the PnP bit in your devices - if not it is limited to 15 (and most of those are already taken up). It also depends on whether the driver for the cards (sound, ethernet etc.) actually allow for interupt sharing - probably most under 98 don't.

A way of freeing up an interupt is usually to switch one (or both) of the serial ports off in the bios. This will free up interrupts 3 (and 4). Physicaly removing the modem will also free one and may allow your system to work.

Alternatively forcing the interupt on the modem to the same value as one of the serial ports should free up one allowing the ethernet card to install.