[Techtalk] Simply Hardware 3

[Jenn Vesperman]

On Sun, 2002-08-18 at 13:23, Andrew wrote:
> 	Hi again,
> 
> 	My almost no experience hurts us here, as I am not really 
> sure what it or I am/is doing.

I'm ccing techtalk, because I'm sure someone else knows more about this.
I don't know anything about actually using RAID, for instance.

> 	At power up the screen checks the bios for the vid card, 
> memory the says press F8 or Del. for set up. I do and it seems to 
> continue on and go to raid set-up on its own.

As far as I know, this is not what it should be doing. When I press Del
for set up, my machines take me into a sort of BIOS screen, where I can
configure things like the boot sequence.


> ..lists the four drives 
> and "says SiI striped set ### and lists the correct combined drive 
> size, then and thenn... stops with a square flashing prompt------

This doesn't feel right to me.

> 	If I had to guess, it is trying to boot off the 4-striped 
> drives (single raid) which are/is blank. (I took them out of sealed 
> bags yesterday.)

It shouldn't be trying to boot at all at this point, not if you've
pressed the button for setup.

> 	I wonder if it is a matter of pressing F8 fast enough? I am 
> going to try that one more time tonight.

It pauses to allow you to go into the BIOS. It then continues, if it
doesn't get the keypress. Try Del, it's possible that your F8 key isn't
working.

Hell, try doublechecking that the keyboard is plugged in to the right
socket. :)

> 	Thank You, it is encouraging to have help, and it would be 
> very nice if I did not need to take this to the computer shop to 
> figure it out. This could be especially true if they install a 
> floppy, which I might try on tomorrow(Sunday) if we run out of ideas 
> here.

It seems to me that you're not getting to the BIOS configuration screen.
(the screen you should reach when you obey 'press blah to enter setup'.)
If you have to take it back to the shop, show them what happens when you
try to get there.



Jenn V.
-- 
    "Do you ever wonder if there's a whole section of geek culture 
        	you miss out on by being a geek?" - Dancer.

jenn at anthill.echidna.id.au     http://anthill.echidna.id.au/~jenn/