Thanks Frank for the last message. Half of it sounded Greek, but I'll go home
open the machine, and read it loud to it...Maybe it will let me understand how
its inner parts works. I hope that seeing and touching will make things easier.


Emil


"The future will be better tomorrow"
Dan Quayle


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: (5) TAN operating system (worry no more)
Author:  SciArt-L Discussion List-for Natural Science Illustration-
<[log in to unmask]> at Internet
Date:    22-12-97 14:59


Hey Emil,

Congrats on the healthy child.

    << I got a couple of XR-SIMM4MX32/6 32Mb memory Ram chips, and free
     sockets for them. What is the procedure? After putting them in place,
     how/where do I tell DOS that I have them?<<

Well, assuming they are the right pin configuration and such, the process
is easy. Remember they should be a set of two identical chips, and should
be inserted into a pair of twin slots. If there are only two slots left,
the guess work is a no-brainer <g>. If not, try the next two available
after the existing ones. Turn off the machine, snap them in place ( be sure
they are seated firmly with a snap- you may have to do this once or twice
if they don't take), and boot up the computer. Presto! While the machine is
firing up, you should see the RAM amount scroll up to the new setting.

The new number will look large for about a week. Then you start thinking
about adding more <g>. It never stops.

     >>And another one: My motherboard can read only about 500 Mb of
     harddrive, but my disk actually is about 720. I know that you can
     cheat the machine and partition the disk in a way that DOS actually
     sees the remaining of that space as a second hard drive. Procedure
     please!<<

Not sure about this one, Emil. DOS 6.2 can read up to a gig I recall. There
might just be a simple change to be made to the BIOS> But I'd be careful
with changing any setting in the CMOS. There's a chance you might lose
data. If you know the manufacturer of the motherboard, it's possible that
you can track down an upgraded BIOS for your system. That might do the
trick. Otherwise, I think your only safe option is in a commercial program
called Partition Magic. It supposedly can repartition the drive into
different variations without the need to reformat (ie. lose data). I've
never tried it. But folks who have say its worth the $49. It should do what
you want, but with an old BIOS, there's no insurance.

     >>And another one: How easy/complicated is to install a SCSI card? What
     I mean by this is again where/how do I have to instruct the DOS to see
     it? or is the Win 95' plug and play ability to pick it up on the fly,
     and read it next time you turn the machine on?<<

I've avoided Plug N Play, but have been around while it does its thing.
Pretty straight forward. I'd recommend an Adaptec 2940 model or a BusLogic
445 SCSI card. Its rock solid and pretty much industry standard. It should
have no problems with PNP unless you have some rogue hardware hiding
inside. In Win 3.1 you would just insert it into the slot, turn on the
machine and have a copy of the install disk on hand to install the driver.
There's usually a little installation guide that comes with the card. I
suspect that Win 95 would only vary in that it would first ID the hardware
and then ask you for the appropriate disk.

BTW be sure to get a SCSI card that fits your style buss slots (ie. IDE,
VESA LOCAL, or PCI) Many 486 systems came with combos of IDE and VESA. If
you can use the local bus, it will be much quicker than using the older IDE
architecture.

PS If you have a VESA system, I might have a card to sell.

Frank




Frank Ippolito    [log in to unmask]
American Museum of Natural History

"Wherever you go..., there you are."
                                                -Buckaroo Banzai