Locked partitions and cable select IDE controller

[Pilt]

Warning: Long post!!!
Only for the truly "omni-interested".... :o)

I recently bought an old Compaq 6300 MMX from the company that I work for. It had been replaced a while back, and I got it very cheap, so I thought I could have some fun playing around with it.
It's got a 300 MHz Peintium II processor, a SCSI controller with a 4 GB disk and a CD-ROM player on the IDE controller.
Unfortunately, I did not get any documentation, and the disk was cleaned out completely for security reasons.

I booted up using a Win98 startup diskette. The first thing i noticed was that I could not access the bios setup during boot. I pressed F10, but was told that the SETUP program was not available. Later on I discovered (by snooping around at www.compaq.com) that there is supposed to be a separate Diagnostics partition on the hard-drive with this software installed. More about this further down...
The machine looked to be working well otherwise, so I installed Win98 just to check it out. It seemed to be working well. Then I formatted the hard-drive again and I installed Red Hat Linux. I have another machine that I had assembled myself a while back, and I wanted to have Linux on both, and play around with networking the two of them.
Linux worked also quite well. But then I got the idea that I wanted to move one of the two IDE hard-drives from my old computer to the Compaq one.
This was just too tough a task for me it seemed... :o/
The IDE hard-drive I wanted to move is a 8 GB Western Digital.
I assume that I have to tell the BIOS that a new hard-drive is installed, but I could not get the setup-program to run.
I downloaded the Setup application from the Compaq support pages, but when I tried to install this, the installation program reported that there was no space on the hard-drive (the SCSI one) for the Diagnostics partition it wanted to create.
Using the fdisk utility, I had a look at the partition table.
The drive is 4 GB, and around 3,8 GB was allocated the main partition, while around between 200-300 MB was allocated extended partition.
So I wanted to delete the partitions in order to make room for the installation program to create the needed diagnostics partition.
But no way... When I try to delete the main partition, I am not allowed because there are extended partitions defined. And if I try to delete the extended partition, I am not allowed because there are logical drives defined in the extended partition. And if I try to delete logical drives in the extended partition, guess what: there are no logical partitions defined. So basically I'm stuck there.

Q1:
Was it the installation of Red Hat Linux that made this peculiar partition setup that I seem to be unable to change with fdisk?
Q2:
Are there any programs, other than fdisk, that might be able to delete the partitions, or to correct the problem?

Now, I could run the setup from diskettes, but I was unable to get contact with the new IDE drive. From some of the documentation I got from the Compaq support pages, I understand that the computer uses something called "cable select" mechanism for accessing IDE units. The CD-ROM was jumper-set to CS. The original cable had only one connector, but I had a spare double connector cable, so I used that one, and I set jumper-set the IDE drive to CS too.
I did read somewhere in the documentation that I found, that CS needs a special cable, but if I only connected the CD-ROM, it did not matter which cable I used. If I also connected the IDE hard drive, it took much longer time before the setup disk booted up. However, the new drive did not show up in the setup program.
Come to think of it, I have yet to try connecting only the new drive with the original cable....

Q3:
Does cable select have a limit of just one connection per IDE controller?
Q4:
Does cable select really need a special cable. ...and can I still get such a cable for connecting two units?

Ok, this is probably not too interesting for most of you, but I'd appreciate anybody who could give me a few good ideas on what the problem might be and how I can fix it.

Greetings from Norway!

Thanx in advance!

-Rolf

[Xayd]

Q1--Yes, MS Fdisk can only work with MS partitions
Q2--Compaq BIOS setup util can be run from a boot disk
Q3--No
Q4--No reason to buy a cable just to use CS, if it doesn't like CS set it to master and be done with it.

http://www.compaq.com/support/files/...nload/722.html

Xayd

[alcelc]

Dear, why not consider the "Partition Magic" which is a very good software to manage hard disk partition & on a fly, U can easily move, re-size, delete .... your hard disk. On it, U can also install multi-OS on yr PC.

Have U tried to sect yr CD_Rom as Slave and yr IDE hard Disk as Master? Normally each IDE channel can accommodate 2 drives.

[Alfie]

The secret to installing the Compaq bios on to the hard drive is as follows:
Format the drive.
Prior to running fdisk,insert the Compaq disk,the disk itself will create a non-dos partition and install the bios to hard drive.
After this is done,run fdisk.Fdisk will create dos partitions and leave the non dos partition alone.
Next format C and once again the non dos partition is left intact.
the only way to remove the non dos partion is to zero fill the drive.

[Carl Price]

Originally posted by Alfie the only way to remove the non dos partion is to zero fill the drive.

This is trivial and I only jumped in because I don't want anyone to get a false sense of security, but the above statement is definitely not true. Fdisk itself can delete a non-dos partition thereby ruining the bios setup so be careful what buttons you press.

[Alfie]

Carl,
You're right,Fdisked a drive today and there it was Delete non-dos partition!

[Pilt]

Thank you all for the response that I got.
I guess I at least owe you to conclude the story that I started.
And I'm pleased to announce that it has a happy ending :o)

I started up the Red Hat Linux setup program again, and there I could find see the partition that FDISK could not see. I deleted this partition and exited. Now FDISK worked again, and I was allowed to remove both extended DOS and primary DOS partitions from the hard-drive.
Once that was done, I could now boot up with the PC Diagnostics/F10 Setup diskettes. Now that the hard-drive was cleaned out and had no partitions defined, the setup utility was able to create the F10 Diagnostics partition that it wanted.
After that was done, I could define other partitions with FDISK and everything was allright.
But still I had come no way with the new hard-drive I wanted to install...
I just could not get it to work. I tried to connect just the hard-drive and both hard-drive and CD-ROM, with different jumper settings. As I had read that the IDE controller used cable select (and not master/slave) I was not really surprised that using M/S did not work. But setting both units to CS did not do any good either.
I must confess that I did not solve this problem. But, as luck struck me, I didn't have to either :o)
Sitting back in despair, I coinsidentally looked down on the inside of the box lid. There was a schematic of the computer layout. And there I found it: the thing I had thought (oddly enough) was missing: A second IDE controller :o)
It was the primary IDE controller actually, and it was hiding almost underneath the floppy-drive and SCSI hard-drive. It was not being used either.
So I hooked up the new hard-drive to this controller and the CD-ROM to the secondary (like before) and used CS on both units, and it worked!

Happy as I am that my journey is at an end (for this time), the qestion still bugs my mind: Why couldn't I hook up both units with CS on one IDE controller?

Well.... I guess I never need to find out...

Thanks again for the input!!

Best regards,
Rolf

[glc]

It's not the controller that determines whether to use M/S or CS - it's the cable. All 80 wire Ultra ATA cables are CS cables - most standard 40 wire cables are M/S - unless it's a CS type cable - of which there are some out there. Dell and Compaq have been known to use that type. If it's a CS cable, either the connectors will have a blue/gray/black color code or there will be tags on the cable indicating controller, master, and slave (or Drive 1, Drive 2).

[Pilt]

glc: Are you sure about this?
Because I have now both units set to CS mode, and I'm using one original compaq cable, and one of my own spare cables which I have only used for M/S setup.
So it seems it works ok with both cables, but only if I use CS. Seems to me like the controller does not like M/S.
Anyway, I'm not sure of what the wording was in the documentation I read, but I think it just said that Compaq uses CS. Maybe that only meant that the original cable was CS. I also recall reading that a special cable was needed for this... But as it seems right now, it works with the one that I had.

br
-Rolf

[Alfie]

Many of the computer manufacturers used CS,this was done to speed things up in production.(I do believe)
The original protocol dictated devices set to CS, the first device connected would be master(middle connector) and device at end of ribbon would be slave.
If the cable has only one connection at the end,the default is, the device is master.
With the newer 80 wire UDMA 66\100 cables the opposite is true,the device at the end of cable is master and the device in the middle is slave.

HTH