I have this old HP Pavilion 3100. Last year, I put it to rest, and scabbed, the floppy, CD-ROM, and hard drive from it...(some "rest"). Well anyway, in the past year, all the hardware has trickled back down into retirement. So I saw this old computer sitting in my closet, and I thought, howabout a little reunion. Well I plugged back in all it's old hardware, and it looked snazzy. Booted it up, and went to BIOS. Primary, and Secondary; Masters, and Slaves, showed no drives being loaded. This was rather depressing. All this hardware worked in the machines they were previously in. So I know they are working. The lights glow on the floppy and CD-ROM. And the hard drive is powered up, and "thinking" away. So, I unplugged the CD-ROM IDE cable. Turned it on. Same. Reversed position of IDE. Same. My motherboard has a daughter card, that turns into 2 ISA slots, and 1 PCI slot. The PCI slot has been known to be finicky. So I ripped out the 10/100 PCI LAN card. Same. I am not positive on the battery of the motherboard. I've haven't been interested in computers long enough, to have a BIOS battery die on me.

I wish before I turned it off, and plugged back in my monitor and keyboard so I could use this rig, that I changed the time and date, and see if they stayed that way. But won't it still detect drives regardless if they battery is dead?

32MB of RAM does show up in BIOS. Hard drive came with it when purchased, 2GB Western Digital Caviar. I have a 10GB Quantum hard drive, that I tested after the 2GB didn't work. Same with the Quantum, so put the WD Caviar back.

I don't know what to do, I'd sure like to see that sweet pea run again, it was the family's first computer. I sure had some good times on it. I think it deserves to be alive again.

Thanks

Replace the battery.

Hi Bill:
As said before replace the bios battery, but before that know that as PCs & hardware change over the years, all PC have limits on HD size for bios depending upon age. Some older PC can only detect up to 710 mb, then 2 gb, & so on. If an smaller HD works then bios is too old to detect larger drive. When in bios look for auto detect section, it might find & install HD setup info, or try to find the setting for that HD & manually type them in.

Good luck.
Z

Hi again Bill:
Make sure you have ribbon cables connected correctly, the cable usually has a colored line on one side (this is #1 pin), make sure you hook wires up correct or won't work. Also be very careful you don't have a static discharge when you touch hardware or it can damage motherboard or other components.

Good luck.
Z

I replaced the battery, and entered the time and date. Turned it off, and it remembered the date. Yet the drives still don't show up.

As for the IDE cable. It will only let me plug it in one way. I have the red wire lined up on the pins correctly I believe. And what I mean by one way is, if I reverse the where the red wire goes, the monitor won't turn on. It's must be like a safety feature or something, because as I said no video when the IDE looks backwards.

Let say I did blow the chip that controls the IDE. If I bought an ISA, or PCI IDE controller card, would the onboard IDE controller need to be functional still? I've never used an auxillary IDE card, but I assume they are software based, and that would be an issue anyways.

So depressing. If this fails, I have an old 233mhz computer I could revive instead. Thanks for your posts Z, and ted, I hope you still have some ideas, lol.

As for a static discharge, if this is the case, it'd be my first incident. I have been to known to be rather careless when it comes to grounding myself, when handling computer hardware. What sort of component could be damaged? Like an IDE Controller Chip. I don't know what these look like, are there jumpers or anything on these I should look out for?

Hi Bill:
If your motherboard has IDE controller then you need to go into bios & look for IDE control & turn it off if you use a slot IDE card. I tried an off brand control card on a K6-2 motherboard, well it never worked so I just bought a Athlon barebones system. Again check the bios for devices, it needs to show what HD & floppy drive there for bios to work. Don't spend a lot of money on parts when you can probably buy a faster system to put in your hard drive & old OS. To get to bios (in most PCs, some use a F2 or other F-key) you need to hit the delete button right after memory check, once inside bios you need to set for HD & floppy device to work.

Good luck.
Z

Okay, Ill go look around in the BIOS again. I hit F1 to get into mine. And I notice that all the drives are set to Auto Detect. I really wouldn't know waht to specify for manual, or it's there's any use anyway. It's an HP PC, so there's a lot of good BIOS features that simply aren't available.

Also, I wouldn't be spending very much, perhaps $10 or so off of ebay to get me rolling. I understand I could use the hardware elsewhere, but this my first computer, so I have a thing for it. Right now as far as fast hardware goes, I all set with my Athlon 2100+ w00t! Well, that used to be fast, but hey, it's good enough.

Anyway, yea.

Hi Bill,
only a suggestion because you use a WD drive. They normally have two different settings for master. The first is for master without slave (only drive) and with slave.
Maybe there is the problem!
Also try only one drive on primary ide (check for correct jumper setting)!

Have you tried another ide cable ???
Your's may be bad!
About the manual setting, it won't work if there is a problem with the jumpers or the cable. But the correct data should be on the label of the drive or you can check it in the net!