Hi everyone,
I fall in a very big problem. I live in a remote village of Bangladesh. there are no any hardware expart so there are nobody who can help me. so i came here to disturb you. pls dont mind. i am realy in problem. i want to set a new 40 gb harddisk on my old soltek motherboard. my old 8gb harddisk has dameged so i want to replace it with a new hd. but mother board did not read it on booting.

my pc configuration is:-
processor:AMD K6-2 3D processor (model 8).CPU Clock Speed 400.9 MHz.
Mainboard and chipset:-
Chipset- VIA Apollo VP3 rev. 04
Southbridge- VIA VT82C586 rev. 47
Cache Memory- 2048 KB
Graphic Interface- AGP
AGP Status- enabled, rev. 15.15
AGP Data Transfer Rate- 3x
AGP Max Rate- 2x
AGP Side Band Addressing- supported, enabled
AGP Aperture Size- 1 MBytes
i have got these info by CPU-Z v1.30 software.

On booting, screen shows that:-
Award Modular Bios. Bios v.4.51PG, REV MVP3-A7
Bios Extension V1.0A
ROM PCI/ISA BIOS(2ASLESNC) Award Software inc.

if someone tell me- how can i use a new 40 GB harddisk on this motherboard. please tell me what should i do?

Thank you
isusanta@gmail.com

thank u

One thing we need is the brand and model of the new hard drive. Try to go to the hard drive manufacturer's website and find support/ utility files

Here's the website for Soltek--at this time it is very slow

http://www.soltek.com.tw/soltek/download/index.php?catid=1

Is your CPU a socket 7?

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/K6-2/AMD-K6-2%20300%20-%20AMD-K6%203D-300AFR.html

This page:

http://www.soltek.com.tw/soltek/download/cpusearch.php

shows several Soltek boards with VIA chipsets, but the page is so darn slow, I did'nt wait to look at every page.

You might determine your motherboard model no. and look for a "bios update"

Make sure you have a new IDE cable for the hard drive. The old one could have been the older, slower type, with the 40 conductor cable.

The new one should use the newer 80 conductor cable. You can identify these just by looking. The connectors on the cable fit the same, but the cable conductors form ridges, and are more fine than the older cable.

You can further identify the newer ATA66 cable by noting that the connector for the mother board end OF THE CABLE is blue. Black (other end) to master drive, gray (middle) to slave drive IF USED.

One solution, if the drive cannot be supported by the motherboard, would be to partition the drive up to the limits the board will support.

Damn that site is slow...lol

Make sure the jumper is set correctly on the back of the HDD...set it to master, do not use cable select. When you boot, go directly into the BIOS & there should be a menu choice about "Detect IDE HDD" (or something like that). If the full 40GB isn't recognized, a BIOS update *may* help...if not, you can always use overlay software that should have come with the new HDD. If you don't have it, you can download it for free from the manufacturer's website.

Hellz Yea!

Award Modular Bios. Bios v.4.51PG prior to June 1998 does not support greater than 32GB drives and Maxtor overlays will not work on it.

Can you find a date on the BIOS?

Bryan

thank u all. i found a program named bios agent. it make a bios report about my computer.

BIOS Date: 04/16/99
BIOS Type: Award Modular BIOS v4.51PG
BIOS ID: 04/16/1999-VP3-586B-W877-2A5LESNCC
OEM Sign-On: REV MVP3-A7
Chipset: VIA 82C597 rev 4
Superio: Winbond 877AF (use 87h) rev 0 found at port 3F0h
OS: Win98
CPU: AMD-K6(tm) 3D processor 400 MHz
BIOS ROM In Socket: Unknown
BIOS ROM Size: Unknown
Memory Installed: 95 MB
Memory Maximum: Unknown

pls help me. i didn't understand what should i do?

susanta

thank u all. i found a program named bios agent. it make a bios report about my computer.

BIOS Date: 04/16/99
BIOS Type: Award Modular BIOS v4.51PG
BIOS ID: 04/16/1999-VP3-586B-W877-2A5LESNCC
OEM Sign-On: REV MVP3-A7
Chipset: VIA 82C597 rev 4
Superio: Winbond 877AF (use 87h) rev 0 found at port 3F0h
OS: Win98
CPU: AMD-K6(tm) 3D processor 400 MHz
BIOS ROM In Socket: Unknown
BIOS ROM Size: Unknown
Memory Installed: 95 MB
Memory Maximum: Unknown

yes my cpu is socket 7.
pls help me. i didn't understand what should i do?

susanta

In Standard CMOS Setup goto the IDE connector/master/slave that the HDD is connected to and see if you can set it to 'User Defined' rather than Auto, or whatever it's currently set to.

If you can set it to user defined it will enable you to enter the hard drive's parameters in manually to the BIOS (cylinders, sectors, heads, etc) Google for these.

Ive had this work on a board that supported less than 32GB and got a 60GB working fine so it's worth a shot.

Abit NF7-S 2.0
XP2500-M @ 11.5 x 204=2353MHz
Tt Volcano 7+
512MB DDR 1x2700, 1x3200
120GB Maxtor D9 8mb cache
GeForce4 Ti4200 @ 300/600

thank u jam, bryco and ben.
please tell me details if i want to use a 40 gb harddisk on my old motherboard.

thank u for ur kind idea.

susanta

Dear Friends Please tell me what should I do if I want to use a 40 gb hard disk on my old soltek motherboard. Please tell.