I'm trying to squeeze the last drops of goodness out of my old "Dog Box" built by a friend for me back in 2008. Case: Gigabit Triton MB: ASUS P5Q3 Deluxe WiFi AP@n socket 775. CPU Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0GHz RAM: Corsair CMX6GX3M3A1333C9 - 4 x 2GB sticks. HDD: 500GB Samsung SATA. Opticals: 1 x DVD R/RW and 1 x DVD ROM sharing one IED Ribbon cable with two connectors and a power cable also with two Molex plugs. The HDD is currently home to my Vista Ultimate 32 bit OS and associated files. I want to install another HDD in order to play about with Linux Distro's for both amusement and to gain experience and a sense of achievement without risking damage to the Vista OS. In other words, an old git with no money and too much time on his hands! I have a 250GB IDE Hard drive and need confirmation whether I can just unhook one of the Optical drives and attach the HDD in it's place! If that is doable, I will somehow then have to get the BIOS to recognise it and add it to the Boot Order list. Not sure how to proceed with that either! Currently, I have the order set to:- 1st Boot USB Stick (Ventoy Stick with several Linux Distros) 2nd Boot SATA HDD (Vista) This arrangement currently works! Would it be possible, once the IDE drive is eventually accommodated, to organise the BIOS Boot order to try USB first and if not present, to present a menu for selection of one or other HDD? Hope my logic is understandable! For years, this machine has stood idle as it only had 2 x 1GB RAM, adequate for Vista 32bit which I used for my music until the Soundmax Blackhawk driver stopped working. I think it could fly with a modern 64bit Linux Distro as the Board and CPU are capable of so much more than 32bit Vista! Over the last 10 years, I have attempted to get advice from ASUS regarding the suitability of used RAM From eBay, but of course, they would not be drawn on that and pointed out all manner of obstacles which scared me off for a few years! I eventually took a chance as I don't have the skills to evaluate RAM myself, and purchased the now installed and running 4 x 2 GB sticks of DDR3 which is currently showing as 7.8GB available whilst running live sessions of various Linux Distros. Apologies for long post, but thought it better to give too much Info rather than too little! Thanks for reading.
Personally, I don't see any reason why these old boxes should stop being useful. I'm putting one back together myself as some of my music programs don't work outside of XP, believe it or not. Think it's a P5Q and some form of X6700 or something (been so long I can't even remember what's in there!). Which means I am more than likely going to call on the skills of at least @noizdaemon666 at some stage, because that green demon is the font of most of my solutions, including in this thread here, so there may be some info of use...? I'm pretty sure this is a straight swap, but as you say, the BIOS would need to be configured to look for the new drive. It's (I think) a Windows thing to present the boot choice, which is something done in msconfig if I'm remembering correctly. It is half five in the morning though and I've got stuff nagging the brain, so I'm sure I'll be wrong on at least some of that, but it should start you off .
As @ModSquid said, swapping ODD for HDD is pretty straight forward, however given it's IDE there's a couple of things to check. Do any other drives share the same ribbon cable? If so, what are their jumpers set to (master, slave, or cable select)? Assuming it's a single cable for a single drive, just swap them over and it'll work, though I would personally set the HDD to master. As for a menu on boot, this is trickier. This won't be handled by BIOS, but rather by the bootloader of one of your OSs. Given the Windows one used in the older versions is flaky, I'd suggest using the Linux one. Basically, you'd set your Linux hard drive as the only bootable hard drive in BIOS, then the Linux bootloader would present you a menu of which OS to choose from there. This is where my own knowledge isn't great as Linux isn't really my thing. @Gareth Halfacree would be a better shout on multi boot using the Linux bootloader. If you're going this route, unplug your Windows hard drive while you load Linux. There is an easier-to-set-up solution though. You could simply set your preferred boot order in BIOS (more below) and then tap F8 on booting up to be presented with the BIOS boot entry menu which will let you select a bootable drive from there. To set your preferred boot order in BIOS, largely you'll either just need to add a third option, or there'll be a HDD boot order list separately where you can set the order of HDDs to try on boot. I'll have a look at the manual for your board when I get time should no one else have a more specific idea.
Yeah, Noiz has it right: if you're dual-booting, let Linux (GRUB) handle the bootloader work. Should be as simple as having the Linux drive set as your boot device and running update-grub with the Windows drive attached - then "Windows 10" or whatever will appear in GRUB menu.
First off, my apologies for lateness of reply. I set this account up whilst running a live Linux distro on another machine, having only scribbled down my log in details for later use. For some reason I've received no email notification of any posts and having found my way back here on my "Daily Ride" an Intel NUC 6i5SYH, I'm gratified to have received such informed help. Regarding the "old dog box" I couldn't access the other components when I posted, and can list them now: Power Supply: OCZ600SXS (600W) Video Card: nVidia GeForce 9600GT 512MB. @ModSquid Thanks for starting the thread off, took a look at your linked one, though I' not a gamer, had to smile as I too have flights of fancy, usually as I'm trying to get to sleep! One such was concerning the "Old lady" Vista, who inhabits a 500GB drive which is now showing if I recall correctly about 35MB of free space! She , it would appear is suffering some lost/corrupted files which has meant that Soundmax Blackhawk driver crashes upon opening. Somewhere in the distant past, I hooked up with some guy who sent me a completely re-written driver which he had authored saying it's far better than the original but urged me to re-install SP2 despite it already being there, in the hope that it might repair/replace damaged/missing files which may be causing the current driver to crash. Since Microsoft issue dire warnings about possible losses, I chickened out of trying that! Added to which, who would install a driver form someone unknown called Vlad? I have a feeling though that he is a genuine and learned guy in the field of "Sound" so I might pursue that further despite the 18 year gap! My thought for "annexing" this drive was to use an old lockable slide out housing, sadly it is IDE and the Vista disk is SATA! @noizdaemon666 Sounding promising! Yes, for some reason, the guy who built this box for me incorporated two DVD's on the same ribbon cable. The "End one" being a DVD R/RW and the middle one a DVD ROM, then down to the board. They also share daisy chained Molex Power plugs. Since I know nothing I never thought that Optical devices had jumpers! I'm presuming that the "end" one will be designated Master and the other Slave? Not really a problem, since neither have worked for many years - Firmware problems; so just disconnecting them both and attaching the new 250GB drive, would that be OK as "Master"? Naughty really, but can't be arsed moving the box, disconnecting cables etc. and disturbing the dust! (I'm talking about outside the case!) so I'm intending just sliding the new drive loose into one of the bottom horizontal bays. Incidentally, the drive has on it a Bootable copy of Vista Cloned using Acronis 2009, ...I tried booting from it as an External drive on my old HP G56 100SA laptop, but it "Blue screened with every option Stop Code was:- 0x0000007B (0x80599BB0, 0xc0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000) It showed a tantalising few milliseconds of the Windows Vista Loading bar when selecting Boot normally, all other options were immediate BSOD. Not sure if that clone was before the Soundmax Blackhawk driver began crashing, but guess I'll never know! @Gareth Halfacree Sounds like a plan, would the fact that it has a seemingly crippled Vista clone on it mess that up? ie. make it unbootable or , if seen, I could then overwrite with Mint 21 Mate?
If there's a Windows install on the drive you're installing Linux on, and you don't want it any more - the installer will give you the option to nuke it and replace it outright. Or it'll ask if you want to shrink the Windows partition and install Linux side-by-side.
@Gareth Halfacree Hmm, I was hoping that maybe it could be repaired to see if it was made prior to what ever stopped the Soundmax driver working! If that is beyond my capabilities (most things are!) it'll have to go!
Either drive could be set as Master to be honest, but if you're unplugging both, it shouldn't matter so the new one being Master would be ideal but not necessarily essential. A 7B blue screen is an inaccessible boot device. Essentially, while the drive is bootable, it'll be missing a driver for the change in PC configuration. Going from one device to another generally doesn't play nice with the older Windows operating systems. You could more than likely get it working again, but it would be trial and error getting the BIOS settings correct. There's also a chance that it still wouldn't boot.
Hmm, That's interesting, does it mean that the clone on this drive might actually boot, since it is in fact a clone of the OS which is resident on the current primary disk? since this machine is it's spiritual home!
