Gigabyte Goodies
In late 1995, 250 megabytes of hard disk space was very
inadequate. A quest to achieve at least 1000MB
was set in place. First off was a quick e-mail
to PB Support, for I had heard about the
528MB limit. Had no idea what caused the limit, only
knew of a friend that had put a 850MB drive in his PB, and he had to use
what he called 'Disk Manager', a software overlay
that allowed him to use the big drive.
PB Tech support replied the next day with
bad news/good news that I needed a
new BIOS, and it could then take the big drive.
Date: 23 Sep 95 10:26:37 EDT From: Packard Bell <76711.503@compuserve.com> Subject: Re: Internet Mail. You have the PB430, so an updated Bios would help. You can obtain the Bios upgrade, Reference ID21, part number P342, from: Packard Bell Customer Service Department: 1-801-579-0160, Mon.-Fri. 7:00 A.M.- 6:00 P.M. Or (801)-579-0093 24 hour Fax Feel free to respond if you have further questions. We will answer through this forum, or you can contact Packard Bell Hardware Support.
Still, I had my reservations. I thought about buying two 450MB drives, but then
went looking at the case design I had. There was no space for
a second drive unless I removed the 5.25 floppy, or
somehow use the empty space just behind the front panel.
This bit of nonsense kept me from deciding. I finally
took a plunge and bought a 1.6 gigabyte Maxtor at Fry's
for a sum of $250. Now, I had seen these Maxtor kits
at Costco and Office Depot, they were geared
toward the advanced user, much like multimedia kits. They
included rails, ribbon cables, a VHS tape, and installation
disks. This is NOTHING like what I bought.
I got a raw hard disk drive, wrapped in a static-proof
bag, with a folded up single sheet documentation. Sheeshe,
what have I gotten myself into?
The documentation was short and sweet. It listed the proper setup
figures for cylinders, heads, etc., plus informed me on how to extract
the Disk Manger setup software (that was on the hard drive) by using
a different set of parameters to allow all BIOS' to view them.
Being without that magic BIOS, I elected to go ahead with it.
Shut down, pop open the case. Two screws on the bracket held
the Seagate 250MB in place, the bracket came out with the old drive.
I moved the bracket to the new drive-it was the same
physical size as the old one-and installed the Maxtor
into the case. Plugged in it's power cable and ribbon cable
(remember: PIN 1 = RED STRIPE). Yelled "Smoke
Test" and powered up, hitting [Ctrl][Alt][S] to
go to the BIOS setup. I changed the Fixed Disk settings to
'Type 9' ,what the instructions said to, and rebooted. This allowed
me to copy the Disk Manager software to a
floppy. Followed those instructions, and after a DOS format /s
was looking at an enormous amount of space to fill.
Those were tough days, so I installed DOS 6.22, Windows
3.1, then the Windows 95 upgrade, followed by all
the applications I owned. Still left with over 800MB.
All was not that great though. There were noticeable speed
differences, and odd hangups now and then. Since I had
the thing working, I thought that I had nothing
to lose but the $25 that PB wanted for a new BIOS chip.
Credit card in hand and lots of time on hold, the chip
was ordered. I had plunged into 'full geek overload'.
BIOS Ballyhoo
Waiting for the new BIOS chip gave me time
to plan on a more managed way of hard disk
housekeeping. More PB BBS and CompuServe PB forum
reading filled my mind with ideas.
Finally the package came. Hardly any instructions, just
warnings on pin orientation. Off with the cover, and seeked
out the old chip. It was not in the easiest of places to work on.
Finger pressure could not extract it, there were no
places to wedge a small screwdriver under the old socketed
chip. Last ditch effort with an inverted expansion port cover pried
it out. (Really, don't try this. Go to Radio Shack and buy a tool
made specifically to extract IC chips)
I test fitted the new chip into the socket. Now is when
the ESD warnings play in my head. The pins on a new chip
are splayed out more than the socket's holes, it takes a few test fits
before it can go in. Being more careful with the new BIOS than I was
when extracting the old one, I must have done about 11 test tries. Finally
satisfied that the pins all lined up in the socket, a shove with my thumb
seated the chip. Yell 'Smoke Test' and power up. The first
thing to change was that the startup logo changed from an italic
"PACKARD BELL" and two orange stripes to the new
"Face to the Future" logo with the Arial font.
That's all I seen, because the system halted, demanding a power up
password. Hmm. I never seen this happen before. Tried a few
passwords. 'PACKARD BELL' PASSWORD' 'NEW' 'SETUP'
nothing worked. A phone call to PB Support (can't email now) only
gave me options to return the chip for an exchange. So
I went and replaced the old BIOS chip, and everything was back
to normal. I posted 'Help' notices in the usual PB support forum, and
went on to seek out any other help regarding new BIOS chips
demanding passwords. A particular PS/2 user found that
he could kill the POP (and all BIOS settings) by disconnecting the battery.
Huh! So once more I am replacing the so-called defective chip and I power up
once for good measure. Yep, it wants a password. Power down, yank out
jumper J24 (Battery enable/disable), go have a cup of coffee.
Replaced the jumper and fired up. SUCCESS! The warnings about
going to SETUP appear, and away I go. I had saved the old bios settings
by hitting 'Print Screen' while in setup mode. I recommend this highly, it
helps to have it hand when setting up a new BIOS. The only changes
were to enter the hard disk parameter (that's what we are here for, remember?)
numbers straight from the Maxtor documentation. Once again
with the format/s and everything is working as it should.
Now, I had toyed with the idea of partitions, first as a
housekeeping measure, and later as an efficiency measure. Keep the cluster
size low, maximize the disk space. I went and divided the disk into
three drives, using DOS' fdisk. I am certainly no expert on DOS, but
I can follow instructions. A short reading of the 'Ultimate DOS Book' gave
me the courage, and I cannot recall the steps to
tell you here, but it all worked.
Little Hints
Now, I still for the life of me could not get a boot disk
to work that will enable the CDROM. I did at least install DOS 6.22, then
the DOS drivers for the CDROM, then Windows 95 upgrade via the CD, by
showing the Win95 setup program my old Windows setup disk. Windows 95 installed
flawlessly, found all of my hardware, and everything worked.
Having all of this space and becoming a tinkerer, I copied the Windows95
setup and .CAB files to disk E:. This allows me to reference stuff without
ever inserting the CD. I also keep backups of important stuff, documents, etc
on disk E: Disk E: has become an archive space. Disk D is where the games
are. Disk C: is the O/S, MS Office, and Internet place.
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