dkchen@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu (02/26/90)
Recently I bought a Gateway 386-20. It comes with 4 Meg 80ns RAM, 65 MB 28ms RLL HD divided into 3 logical drives DTC 7287 HD/FD controller w/ disk cache ATI 512KB controller + NEC 3D, Pheonix BIOS, Micronics 386/20 mother board w/ 64KB cache. My question is, what machine type should I choose when installing Windows/386. I tried "Intel InBoard/386" and "Zenith". They all worked fine, except with the following problem. From time to time, I'll get error messages such as "Drive Not Ready Error Reading Drive D:" or "Cannot Write Drive C:" while the HD led was on but the HD wasn't doing any work (I mean, it was very quiet).Then I can choose from "ABORT, RETRY, or IGNORE". And the problem always went away when I chose to RETRY. Sometimes I have to ERTRY more than once to get through. This happened even when only ONE program is active, but usually it happened when another background job was competing HD access with the forground job. This is not quite a severe problem, I just want to know if I missed anything? And this feature requires me to sit in front of my computer until the job(s) is/are done. I noticed the PS/2 model 70 doesn't have such problem (at least when I tried it). However, I also noticed that the HD access for PS/2 is way too slow compared with my 386. So, did the FAST access time of the HD and DTC controller cause the problem? The Gateway was not very helpful on this matter. They never call back as they promised more than 2 weeks ago (I just have this machine for about 3 weeks). The machine itself is fine. May be I should give them another call. But I am DISAPPOINTED. Dean
john@prcrs.UUCP (John C. Schettino Jr.) (02/27/90)
In article <42900062@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu>, dkchen@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu writes: > > Recently I bought a Gateway 386-20. It comes with > > 65 MB 28ms RLL HD divided into 3 logical drives > DTC 7287 HD/FD controller w/ disk cache > > My question is, what machine type should I choose when installing > Windows/386. I tried "Intel InBoard/386" and "Zenith". They all > worked fine, except with the following problem. From time to time, > I'll get error messages such as "Drive Not Ready Error Reading > Drive D:" or "Cannot Write Drive C:" while the HD led was on but > the HD wasn't doing any work (I mean, it was very quiet).Then I can > choose from "ABORT, RETRY, or IGNORE". And the problem always went away > when I chose to RETRY. Sometimes I have to ERTRY more than once to [deleted] I had a similar problem with a 286 clone from Tri-Star, with a DTC RLL controller, and when I called it in, they said that some users had problems w/the DTC and windows. It may be something to do with the on-board hard disk cache. Tri-Star swapped out the DTC for a western digital RLL controller (very promptly, and at no charge) and everything works fine now! I mailed out this behavior on some local bbs systems, including a mail-order house. The sysop from this place (who sells the DTC controller) said that he has several of these controllers in the field and that they work fine, so you may just have a leamon controller. Anyway, see if gateway will swap out the DTC for another brand or a another board, as that board is having "timeout" problems. (Another possibility is that the hard disk itself is not able to work as an RLL drive (I think that RLL requires or drives the low-level controller "harder/faster" than MFM, and that some MFM drive interface controller can't keep up.) This should be GATEWAY'S problem, not yours. Good Luck, John Schettino uunet!prcrs!john
pabres13@pc.usl.edu (Joubert John V.) (03/01/90)
I have a Gateway 386-20 that had the same problem. At times I would
get the abort, retry, fail error and had to tell it to retry often.
I called Gateway and told them about it, and they hm-hawed about it
just a little, and then I told them that I read on i-net news that someone
had this problem fixed with a new motherboard. The guy told me yes, he has
seen this before, and that he would send me a new motherboard.... but then,
oh no! my warranty ran out the week before. I asked him if he could help me
out with this, because if he counted all my downtime since I had his machine
(which he has on record) he could see that I really had a working machine for
less than 11 months. He checked with his boss, and they agreed with me!
Anyway... the company sent me a new "BT-3MM (SMT)" 80386 motherboard
(neat chip set), and everything works fine. I have never heard of this brand
of motherboard, but it is working fine. I also think that possibly you hit
a deadhead (rec.gdead ? :-) ) cin the tech support dept. Tell the secretry
that handles the routing of the calls your problem, and that want a new tech
support rep, or else you want to talk to the head tech. It worked for me
about a year ago. I think that they have pretty good tech support staff, but
once in a while, any company can have a brainless bum (for a while anyway).
--
John Joubert | /\ | /\ | _
Internet: pabres13@pc.usl.edu | \|<>|>|> \|<>|>|><`|`|
GENIE: J.JOUBERT |--/|-------/|------------
| \/ \/mms00786@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (03/03/90)
In your Win.ini file, under [win386], add the line virtualhdirq=off This I think should solve your problem. Also, in your setup procedure, I think you can get away with Compaq or 100% compatible, instead of Zenith and Intel Inboard. Hope this helps Milan.
dkchen@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu (03/05/90)
In previous response, mms00786@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu wrote >In your Win.ini file, under [win386], add the line >virtualhdirq=off >This I think should solve your problem. Also, in your setup procedure, I think >you can get away with Compaq or 100% compatible, instead of Zenith and Intel >Inboard. This seems to solve the problem. But now everything in Windows/386 is about 3 or 4 times slower than before. Could someone explain what the line added in Win.ini does? And why it slows the whole system? >Hope this helps > >Milan. Thanks a lot for your response. Dean
mms00786@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (03/06/90)
As far as I know, virtualhdirq=off tells windows/386 to use the rom bios
extension found on some hd controllers when accessing the hard disk. Normally,
windows/386 would use its own built in routines to access and manage the
hard disk in a multitasking environment; unfortunately, there seems to be
some problems with certain larger, and perhaps more exotic hard drives (I
count certain RLL and SCSI hard disks as exotic here), or perhaps the
problem lies with some controllers. In any case, the built in routines are
unable to correctly access the HD, giving you easily fixable messages like
"Error accessing your multimegabyte HD"; setting the flag tells windows/386 to
use the controller's routines, which, hopefully, know how to correctly access
the HD attached to it.
Hope this helps.
Milan
.
PS. It is the general consensus that I don't know what I am talking about, nor
do I claim that the above information has been signed by some notary
public in Seattle.