A weeklong hardware (mis)adventure

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): For a long time I had wanted to replace the two MB Seagate Medalist on my Compaq Presario 4540. I had to erase files to make space quite a few times already, and that was a clear indication that a new, larger hard disk was needed. For the replacement, about two months ago I bought a fast 10 GB IBM hard disk running at 7200 revolutions per minute (rpm) for US$150 (a 16 GB would cost only US$165, but it ran at only 5400 rpm).

I planned to use an old two GB Micropolis SCSI hard disk or a one and a half GB SyJet hard disk cartridge from SyQuest. The latter was still in its box, because I haven't had the opportunity to really test it out and review it, and suddenly it was no longer on the market. To connect the SCSI storage device, I had an old AdvanSCSI PCI adaptor from AdvanSys. Everything was set. What I needed was just some spare time to back up my files and reinstall everything. Unfortunately, that long-awaited free time never came.

Two weeks ago, I got an even better reason to replace the hard disk on the Presario. Hewlett-Packard let me test-drive their new portable CD-Writer. What a great opportunity to back up all the files in my C:My Document. The CD-Writer came with a SCSI PC Card and its cable, but the SCSI cable to connect it to my AdvanSCSI card wasn't included. I happened to be at Mal Taman Anggrek on Saturday evening, so I dropped by at Precision, one of my favorite computer stores in Jakarta. They had the SCSI cable that I needed to connect the CD-Writer to the SCSI card. At Rp 250,000, the cable was very, very expensive. Still, I paid.

Back home, I spent the entire night playing around with the CD-Writer, and I'll report to you my wonderful experience with it in an upcoming article. I copied all my data on to a CD- Rewritable. But, when Sunday morning came, I had to do some other work that needed finishing by Monday morning, so there was still no time to replace the hard disk.

Monday morning turned out to be utterly disastrous. I got a worm from a trusted friend in Honolulu. A worm is like a computer virus, and it spread very quickly using the E-mail addresses in my Address Book. On a brighter side, that provided the impetus for me to stop delaying the hard disk project. I took the Medalist out and put in the new IBM hard disk. Still, it took me the whole day to install Windows 98, Microsoft Office 2000 standard version, as well as all the other programs that I need for my work.

At this stage, the moral of the story is never open an .EXE file attached to an E-mail, even though it has come from a trusted friend. Ask him first what it is before you double-click on it.

In the meantime, I made a fatal mistake by taking out the AdvanSCSI adaptor without first switching off the Presario's power supply. The adaptor was not damaged, but it fell on top of the internal modem that came with the Presario. The modem apparently short circuited and kicked the bucket. Windows 98 no longer recognized it, no matter how many times I ran Add New Hardware on the Control Panel.

The moral of the story here is that you must always unplug the power cord and wait a couple of seconds before you detach or attach sensitive components such as the internal modem, SCSI adaptor or sound card.

Luckily, I happened to have a brand new Logicode 33.6 Kbps internal modem buried somewhere in my study. A friend had given me three Logicode modems to test just before his company went bust. Two of them, both external modems, did not live long enough to deserve any serious attention.

Perhaps Logicode was not meant for use in Indonesia, where the condition of the phone lines is quite challenging for modems and phone devices. Anyway, I turned my study upside down until I found the third one, and I replaced the Compaq modem with it.

Installation went smoothly. However, when I first used it, the modem wailed and wailed but refused to shake hands. Worse, when it did connect the Presario to CBNNet, it disconnected as easily, as quickly and as frequently as our government officials tell lies. I suffered three days of frustration until I finally went to Subaru, another favorite computer store in Gajah Mada Plaza. I knew what I wanted: A new modem from Prolink.

Pora, a company in Taiwan, makes good modems called Prolink, and they are more affordable than the premium brands. In fact, I bought a Prolink modem a couple of months ago for my wife's nephew in Surakarta, and it was a great product. At that time the price was Rp 400,000. I was expecting to have to pay about the same amount for a similar product, but, to my surprise, the price was now Rp 300,000. They told me they were giving me a better version with a chip from Lucent. I thought I could trust them.

Back home, I replaced the Logicode modem with the 56 Kbps Prolink. It is a PCI modem card and it has protection against lightning. Not only did it work flawlessly, it was very fast. Certainly it was faster than the damaged Compaq modem, and it stayed connected as long as I needed. The moral of the story at this point is that for just Rp 300,000, you can replace a slow modem that disconnects quite often with a reliable modem. It will save you on-line charges and phone pulses.

By the way, a couple of years ago I bought three AdvanSCSI ABP542 SCSI adaptors from a store in Glodok Plaza. The store was going south at the time, and they were offering the ISA SCSI adaptors for Rp 150,000 each. It was a very good price for a fast SCSI adaptor. Unfortunately, I have not been able to use them, because the drivers they came with were for DOS; no Windows 95 drivers were included.

However, some months ago I E-mailed AdvanSys' technical support, and I was told that a software driver was available for download from their website. Now that I had a new hard disk and a faster modem, why not give it a try? So, I took out the PCI AdvanSCSI adaptor and inserted the ISA AdvanSCSI, after I had switched off the power supply this time. Then I switched it on again, connected to AdvanSys' website and downloaded the software driver. It turned out that only a couple of minutes were needed.

However, the SCSI adaptor is not a PnP (Plug and Play) one, and Windows 98 still did not recognize it. I went back to the website, fully enjoying the faster Internet connection. In a README file, I found out that there was a program that I should run to configure the ISA SCSI adaptor.

I was also told to write down the resources (IRQ, DMA and memory space) allocated by Windows 98 for the driver. I downloaded the CNF510.EXE, and ran it in DOS, but it came back to me saying it would not run in a multitasking environment, which DOS in Windows 9x basically is. What next?

I got my DOS boot diskette, created another DOS boot diskette and copied the CNF510.EXE onto it. Then I rebooted the Presario with DOS after setting the BIOS so that the system would read the floppy drive first. When I saw the A: prompt, I ran CNF510.EXE again. Bingo!

Once the adaptor was set to use the same resource addresses as the software driver, Windows 98 recognized the card. I connected the HP Portable CD Writer to test the card, and when the clock struck twelve midnight last night, it worked perfectly.

Thus, the last moral of the story is that you should take time reading README files. They can really save you a lot of frustration, as they may contain tips to solve the problems you have.

And, as you can see from the tone of this article, I'm once again a happy man because I have a more responsive PC thanks to the faster hard disk and faster modem. What's more, it has been proved that my investment in the AdvanSys AdvanSCSI ISA cards was not wasted after all.