Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums Branches Southwest Computer help please

My computer isn't seeing the A: drive which is my 3 1/2 floppy drive. I double checked the connections and everything is hooked up as it should be. When the computer boots it checks the a: drive but once Windows opens it is no longer seen. What is going on? I have XP btw.

does your floppy light stay on constantly?

is it set up for read/write access to the floppy in the bios?

is it set to the correct density 1.44mb 3.5" in the bios?

can you boot a dos or win98 boot disk on it?

have you tried a diffrent floppy interface cable or switched the cable around the other way?

just the 1st few things i would ask ya if i was trouble shooting....

and now as for upgrading, you wanna keep the same box, cdroms, modem, sound card, and such and upgrade the mobo, chip, and ram for under 500$?? thats easy...i can hook you up with some screaming deals on a board/ram/chip combo, and i can even set it up so you can pick them up in slc or i can bring them next time i come....

personally, knowing you have an AMD 450 K6/2 now, i would make the jump to a celeron or a duron processor, maybe an athlon, depending on if your AMD brand loyal (i am not, but some people are) 1.1 GHz or faster definately (AMD=$130 or so for 1.1-1.3GHz, Intel=$120 or so for 1.0-1.1GHz)

next as for motherboards plan to spend at least 80$ for a nice one, and more like 110$ for a top of the line with DDR memory support for your hot new chip....i recomment Tyan, Asus, Abit, or EpoX.

and to round out the combo, you'll need RAM, at least 256Mb in my opinion, as you run XP, and it will take all you can throw at it...so thats about 65-70$ there...

the last thing i would recommend would be a new video card, im sure your computer now has an old PCI card in it, and new systems demand AGP, so tack on another $100 for the a nice GeForce 2 MX 32Mb video accellerator (i promise you wont be sorry in the least)

lets see, total that up:

CPU $130.00
Motherboard $110.00
256Mb RAM $ 70.00
GeForce2 MX $100.00
12pack of Bud$ 11.99 (for set up fees of course)
-------
421.99

looky looky thats under your 500$ limit and would rock your current setup! regardless to say i do this all day everyday.....im a computer dOrk..and you knew that...lol

Thanks for the tips. I am going to try these out. I don't know if it is worth it though. I may just get a new drive when I upgrade.

Question for you, will my old ram work with a new motherboard? I just recently upgraded to 256.

Edit--
What about the power supply? I checked and the one in my tower now is 90 watts.

Adam what do you think about what is being said here? web page

you will DEFINATELY need a new power supply, 90 watts is nothin, you need at leat 235, 260+ would be even better...

as for a case, you have a gateway, you'll probably need a new case too....most are proprietary

i dont think you'd need a new sound card unless you want a new one

as for ram, if you use SDRam (DIMMS) it will work fine in a new box if you go with a celeron/intel system. it will not work with an AMD system, as all the new AMD systems use DDR ram.

theres some good deals there on barebones systems, i might be able to do better...decide how fast you want to go, and make a list of exactly what you have in your old computer (part names and such, available from the device manager) and ill see what i can put together for ya

I am printing off everything in the Device Manager and I will type it up once I get to work and post it for you.

Well I forgot to bring it to work so I will try to type it up tomorrow.

right on, you can email it to me, or hit me on AIM