Hello Jam&Badboy,
I started out asking for information about my 1998 acer, I have a couple of questions. I want to say in the meantime I ordered the video card and ddr memory for my other ailing computer and am waiting for delivery.

For my acer, I had replaced the 4g seagate that came with the computer with a 60g wd hd. The computer can only see 8gigs and reports a hardware error. Speaking about old timers, I found a controller card from a 1991 machine. the board is a winbond ac1-166734 with 2 chips, w83758p and w83757f. I have not tried the controller card, my question to you guys, is this card to old to function in the 98 acer?

hopfully the video card will repair my ecs mobo problem, another question the defective card (ati) has a removable chip, could I get that chip from ati (guessing that was the problem)or just chuck the board.

Lastly the 1991 machine has a vga wonder card p/n 1090012220. Board id exmvgadm1mv2, does this card have any value or this another item to be chucked out.

Thanks guys for your input,

frank

"For my acer, I had replaced the 4g seagate that came with the computer with a 60g wd hd. The computer can only see 8gigs and reports a hardware error. "

Make sure the drive position the drive is connected to is set to be detected Auto, by the method Auto or LBA in the bios Setup - if it is set to the wrong settings the bios can be limited to seeing only 8.4gb.

If that doesn't help...

The safest thing to do is to get a modern hard drive controller card.
If you have a spare PCI slot, you can get a modern hard drive controller that supports any size of hard drive, regardless of your bios version limitations, for as little as $30, or less.

Or you could do the usual thing and flash your bios with a free update, if you can find a new enough version.
However - you are taking a big risk when you flash your bios - if the flash fails, and/or the flash chip physically fails while flashing (this is COMMON - these cheap flash chips can only be flashed an unpredictable small number of times), you will have a mboard that will not boot.
Some mboards have a jumper that must be in the right position when you flash your bios.
If you flash with it in the wrong position, your flash will fail, and in some cases you can end up with an empty bios.
Check your mboard manual to see if you have such a jumper!! If you don't have a manual, get one!
With some bioses, if you are using bios passwords, you should REMOVE them before you flash or the flash may fail. Because of that, it is a good idea to always do this BEFORE you flash.

If your bios version is really old, Award bioses have a bug that prevents recognizing hard drives larger than 8.4gb.
If you can tell us the model you have, we may be able to point you to a newer bios update that will support the size of your drive - however it has to be new enough - there are also 32gb and 64gb Award bios bugs - many older mboards do not have a manufacturer's update that will support drives larger than 32gb.
Or if you're really lucky there may be a patched version that supports drives to 128gb.

Also, if you are using the original version of Win95 that is the one most people have, Win95 can't recognize a hard drive larger than 8.4gb.

"....I found a controller card from a 1991 machine.....is this card to old to function in the 98 acer?"

It will function in the '98 Acer, but there is no point in using it. You would have to disable the IDE controller(s) in your bios Setup (at least the Primary one; those old cards often have only one IDE header) in order for it to work, but it would be much slower than the one(s) built into the mboard. The IDE controller has little or nothing to do with what size of hard drive the computer will recognize in any case.
If the card is an IDE and floppy controller card, or a multi I/O card, you would also have to disable the other functions on the card if you can by setting jumpers on it - if any of those those functions can't be turned off, you would have to turn the mboard functions for those things in the bios Setup as well, and connect everything applicable to the card in the slot.

"....the defective card (ati) has a removable chip, could I get that chip from ati (guessing that was the problem)or just chuck the board."

Usually the only chip you can remove is it's bios. Not likely you can get it from ATI unless they still make the card, and even then they may not make it available. If you're certain the card is defective - e.g. it produces random pixels, scrambled video - chuck it. If you want another just like it you can probably get a used one by searching on the web. Or you can still get many older ATI cards cheaply new that would work fine in your mboard, made by ATI or a clone maker that uses ATI chips.

"Lastly the 1991 machine has a vga wonder card........does this card have any value or this another item to be chucked out"

That was a good card at that time.
If you have a mboard with ISA slots, it can still be used, if for nothing else but for emergencies or if you have nothing else. However it has a very small amount of video memory and the number of colors will be limited, and is capable of lesser max resolutions, and will be inadequate for many programs.

Tubesandwires,
I thank you very much for going thru my post and answering my questions in detail.

The video card is actually 4 years old on an ecs k7s5a mobo. Jam had corrected some information I got off the net, which said 8 beeps indicated the cpu, mob or keyboard was defective, he informed me, ami listed 8 beeps as a faulty video card. A new one is on it's way. I thought I would take a shot at the removable chip on my old board since every other component was anchored to the board, this will be added to the trash bin.

Acer is very poor with either updates or information, though I think they make a good product. I do have a little work ahead of me to add this hd to the system. I am going to stay with the ME os, I had an idea of moving it up to XP but the cpu is at the lower limits of acceptable speed for that os.

I wanted to use it as a backup as with anything electronic you don't know when it will fail on you. I was on the net when the blue screen popped up and said it was looking for the win32k.sys file, it went on to say if this is the first time this message appeared to reboot the computer, on reboot, i got and still have the black screen. At that time, I thought it was a software problem the way it appeared, but I was wrong, have ordered a replacement video board and possibly will be getting it today.

Hopefully the new video card will repair my 02 comp and then I will tackle the acer. The acer uses a homemade bios, now they are using ami and award. This is the acer aspire 1830 using acer version 3.0 bios. The have one upgrade but I have no information as to what it is upgrading, if it was one of the know companies such as ami or award, information would be readily available. They nickel and dimed it to save a few bucks with their own primitive bios. At least they learned to go out there and get something good rather them the own mickey mouse one.

I assume you have an Acer Aspire 1830 desktop computer, not a notebook.

Acer uses/used a flash utility called Aflash to flash in Dos - it is based on the Award flash utility. The bios updates are in the Award format - *.bin, and they can also be flashed with an Award flash utility, but you must use an old version of the Award flash utility of about the same vintage that will recognize the flash chip used on the mboard. The Aflash utility works fine if everything goes as it should, but if it doesn't, you have to use an Award flash utility to recover from the situation, providing the flash chip has not physically failed, because the Aflash utility does not have all the capabilities of the Award utility.

If you have an Award format - *.bin - bios update and you have no idea if it will help your situation, you can get a rough idea of whether it will support larger hard drives by it's original date. In order for it to have it's original date it must be within a download that is a .zip or a self executing zip or other type of compressed file (usually ending with .exe).

This is what Gigabyte says, for it's mboards with an Award bios:
It can be used as a rough guide for the Award bioses on any computer.

Mainboard supports up to 32GB harddisk, BIOS version publish at date after(included) Jul, 1997

Mainboard supports up to 64GB harddisk, BIOS version publish at date after(included) Dec, 1999

Mainboard supports up to 137GB harddisk, BIOS version publish at date after(included) Nov, 2000

Many sources I have come across say if the date of the bios update - *.bin file - is mid 1999 or earlier it cannot support recognizing a drive larger than 32gb.

What the above doesn't say is if the bios date is before about July 97, it will only support recognizing up to an 8.4gb drive, max.

So far I have found no bios updates at all for your 1830, and I have found no source of free patched updates for any Acer model.
If the model you have is a USA or Canada model, I found this, but it appears the site hasn't been touched since 1999:
ftp://ftp.acer.com/
There is no 1830 listed - but if you have a serial number that is listed, in the index file in the bios directory, there may be a newer update there.

If you think the bios update you have is new enough, you could flash the bios, but as I said above, there is a risk to that.

If you don't want to use Aflash if that is included with your download, the Award flash utility to use is difficult to determine.
An very good alternative is Uniflash.

Uniflash has all the selections visible on two screens, and you use your cursor keys to move to another selection on the screen.

Standard way to use it is:
- extract files from Uniflash download
- See Uniflash.doc (in Wordpad).
- copy uniflash.exe to a bootable flash floppy along with your extracted bios update file.
- Boot with the floppy type uniflash (Enter) at the Dos prompt
- back up your present bios to the flash floppy!
I recommend this:
- Advanced - flash WITHOUT flashing boot block - if you get an error message, go back to main page and choose flash WITH flashing boot block.
NOTE that bios updates usually do not change the boot block part of the bios, so this error can be an important warning to you and you are wise to NOT go any further, QUIT Uniflash, and MAKE SURE you have the right bios update before you resort to flashing WITH flashing the boot block! Flashing the boot block is okay if your bios was somehow corrupted (which is rare), or in the rare case the boot block part was changed by the manufacturer, or if you are SURE it will work because it is for exactly the same combination of all the major chips you have on your mboard or is an alternate brand's bios for the same mboard, and you are SURE you have the right bios update.
http://www.uniflash.org/
........

If the update you have is too old, or if you don't want to take the risk of flashing....

If you have any free PCI slots I recommend you get yourself a modern hard drive controller card, and connect your 60gb drive to that - it's risk free. However, you must be able to select to boot from a SCSI controller, or a hard drive controller card, or similar, in your bios Setup.

If you would rather not spend even $30 or so for that, you can go to the maker of your hard drive's web site and get a free utility that is generically called a "dynamic overlay" - it is software that interfaces between your inadequate bios and your operating system, and allows you to use the full size of your drive (if it's 137gb or less in your case).
I don't recommend that because you will have to be very alert as to how you use bootable floppies and CD's, or you can lose everything on the drive - you must not have bootable floppies in a drive while you boot, or boot with bootable CD's, in some circumstances - you must wait to be prompted to boot with them while booting.

Hello Tubesandwires,
It is a desktop the aspire 1830 with an mboard #V58LA. The computer is identified as VKP23V E1830, though all they list is 1830 or the 1800 series. The further description is DS AB574.002, P/N 91.AB575.M01 and S/N RN005202. I will look for the bootlet that came with my comp and see if they give this type of information in it. This seems to be to technical to be included in the booklet. I am leaning toward the controller card because there seems to be many questions and possible problems flashing this unit. The only information I was able to find was from their European website and this only showed a bios update and flash file. No information was given as to what was being updated. They are now using ami and award, possibly their initial bios was developed by one of these companies, but that is only a guess.

I again thank you for the thorough information you have followed-up with and makes me shaky about flashing this unit.

As you can see with the unit hd, it really is to small for anything, just loading programs in it will render it useless for the net. I have a 40 and 60 gig hd that I was going to use for this computer, the bios is preventing me from moving this unit forward. I like the ME os though much hated by many, I have had very few problems with it as I can say I have had just as many problems with XP.

All in all if I could get the bios to integrate the hd's I would be a happy camper.

Thanking you again for your help,

frank

According to the benchmarks you listed, this unit was made 12/17/97- bought 3/98, the highest it can see is 32 gigs. Will one of these controller cards expand its range:
1 SYBA serial ata/150 (sata) raid pci controller card chipset model#sd-sata150 -$22
2 SYBA ultra ata/133 (uata133) raid oci controller card model sd-ata133r -$18.

The uniflash only goes back to 2001, I don't know if it could help my acer. Using acers aflash routine sounds very risky and a poster said in the period this unit was made, it would be very easy to damage the chip. I left 2 emails with their tech support, they never answered either one, I then left one with the webmaster to relay my email, again no reply. Not a good way to treat your past customer and would omit this company from future purchases. Another problem that a poster posed, if the bios could see and would boot up from the controller card, another mystery.

1. If I were you I would get a hard drive controller card - the safest option. However, you must be able to select to boot from a SCSI controller, or a hard drive controller card, or similar, in your bios Setup.

The first one you list is for serial ATA drives - SATA drives - it is for serial ATA drives and has at a minimum a different data cable reqirement - you have an IDE, a. k. a. in this case an EIDE, or or UATA drive.

The second one you list is probably fine - you don't need RAID support unless you want to use that option and have at least two hard drives, but it can probably be used without using that.
Most new hard drive controller cards support hard drives of any size - including those larger than 137gb - the descriptions say they support hard drives larger than 137gb and/or they have 48 bit LBA support - but there are still some being sold that support only up to 137gb. If there is not enough description in the ads, look up the model on the maker's web site. While you're there, you can often download the manual and look at it. If the Web site is poor, find another make/model to investigate.
e.g. I recently bought an ST Labs "PCI ATA 133 IDE Card" for $30 locally - it has a Silicon Image chipset - many cards have Silicon Image chipsets. It supports hard drives of any size. It supports RAID but you don't have to use that support. Good directions come with the card. The ST Labs web site is reasonable. There is more info on the Silicon Image web site about the chipset - SiL 0680 - tshooting, more RAID setup info, etc.

2.You don't need all that large a hard drive for Win ME and below, unless you store huge amounts of music, or video, or have a huge number of programs. Bare minimum - those operating systems will work okay on a 1.2gb drive if you are frugal. 4gb ain't that bad.

e.g. I have 98SE on the computer I am typing this on, and Windows is on a 13.66gb drive divided into three partitions - the Windows partition is only 6.64gb, and it has never been anywhere near full - I have a fair number of large programs, and zillions of text files, mostly about computers and computer pieces.
As a side note one of the partitions on the 13.66 is a small one for the Windows swap file only - when you designate a partition for the swap file in Win ME and below, it greatly reduces the fragmentaion on your hard drive Windows partition, and that designated swap partition never needs to be de-fragged. I made it 200mb - the only time I ever get complaints from Windows that that partition is too full (when the variable size of the swap file is occupying the entire partition) is when I load a huge pdf with lots of colors and detailed diagrams in it, or if I have a whole bunch of large digital pictures from my camera open at the same time - so it could be made larger than that, say 300mb, or 500mb.
You can do that for 2000 and XP as well using a larger partition, but it's not very effective - XP and 2000 has a swap file on every partition on the computer, not just the one Windows is on.

3. I don't have enough info to be able to tell you if the bios update for an 1800 will work - if I were you I wouldn't use one unless it is lsted for 1830.

4. Uniflash is probably the best universal flash utility ever, especially for older mboards - you can always start it up and see if it recognizes your flash chip (and then quit the utility if you want to chicken out) - if it does, there's a very good chance it will work fine, if you follow my cautions, but you could look on the Uniflash site or in the docs that come with the Uniflash download to see if your model or chipset or flash chip are as listed as problematic.

The present Uniflash has been updated several times from an earlier version that was developed by the original authour and was working well with mboards he tried it on until he decided to stop updating it. The present developers started updating that in 2001 or so, but Uniflash had been out and working fine for a long time before that, so it will probably work with your mboard fine.

5. "According to the benchmarks you listed, this unit was made 12/17/97- bought 3/98, the highest it can see is 32 gigs. "

Those dates don't necessarily count specifically, except in a general way. If there is a date on the bios chip, it may or may not be valid - it might be if the bios was never updated. The present bios date is often at the beginning of the bios string you see at the bottom of the first screen as you boot, or it may be farther up the screen beside the model number, or the bios version munber or code, or there may be no apparent date. If there is a bios version number or code displayed on that first page, which date that corresponds to may be found on the web site for the mboard or the system, but sometimes the manufacturers eliminate listing and making available older updates, or not all the possible older updates are listed.

If you have a original date of a bios update, however, you can make some pretty good assumptions about what max hard drive size that will recognizes.

6. "The only information I was able to find was from their European website and this only showed a bios update and flash file."

It is dangerous to use a bios update from another Acer region unless you are absolutely certain it is using the same mboard. Even if it looks the same it could very well have a different flash chip (might not be a problem), or a different I/O chip (usually a very big problem).

"They are now using ami and award..."

Many older and newer mboard models had/have some mboard versions/revisions with AMI bios versions, some with Award bios versions. If both types are listed for a particular model, you've got to be very careful you use the right one, and make sure you pay attention to the version or revision of the mboard you have. Sometimes you can use an AMI version on a mboard that originally had an Award version, or visa versa, sometimes doing that will result in a mboard that will not boot after you flash. It is advisable not to switch from AMI to Award versions or visa versa unless you find specific notes saying that is safe.

"...possibly their initial bios was developed by one of these companies..."

The "overall" bios version, whether it is made by Award or AMI or Phoenix, is a software framework that has to be modified by the manufacturer, or by somone for the manufacturer, to suit the particular combinations of chips on the specific mboard - the chipset, but more importantly the I/O chips and other chips used that the bios needs to know about, such as hardware monitoring chips that aren't in the main chipset. Some simple chips such as those for sound or networking the bios may not need to know about - they are merely powered by and wired to the mboard, and the same drivers that are used for a card in a slot will work for those on the mboard.

The bios version used on the mboard is a specifically modified version of the "overall" brand version, identified by the bios string and/or bios code version for that mboard, all the bios updates are upgrades of that specific version, and the newest version of the updates includes all previous improvements unless previous fixes were found to be buggy and those features were removed.