[Discussion] eCS with Dell XPS 210

Mon Dec 22 22:36:23 PST 2008

Dear Ira et Al.:

I /HOPE/ Ira Saxe can find some useful info in these last two [URLs]. Whether or not, he can disable that feature, so as to ENable the installation of eCS.
(This section was SUPPOSED TO BE left with the previous letter :-(  )

Now that I've gone OFF-tangent and found out "What IS AHCI?" 
(see previous letter), it is time to return to Ira's question / WARNING! .

[Personal Reminisce]
It would seem to me that something similar happened with SCSI.

I,  personally, always DISabled "DOS support for over 1GB drives" in the SCSI card's BIOS at one time. That ENabled me to see the (exact?, real?) number of cylinders, heads and sectors for such a drive AND to have the First cylinder be exactly equal to 1MB for /Boot Manager/ - instead of, say, 8MB.
Well, once I got a 4GB - or was it an 8GB - and did the usual DISabling, I lost volume capacity (or something went wrong as I recall).  I then had to switch BACK to ENabling "DOS Support" (which made the drive look like an enormous number of heads (two per "fictional" platter?) and sectors), gave /Boot Manager/ partitions of  4, or more, MB
  ... AND one other nasty problem. Previously prepared drives (with "DOS Support": Off) couldn't be seen correctly (reliably) while connected to 
the same controller as the newly prepared drives (with "DOS Support": On - in the SCSI card's BIOS). I could /not/, for example, use /Partition Magic 4/ to copy partitions from the older drives to the newer. I /had to/ put the SCSI BIOS back to "DOS Support" :Off, connect an IDE drive (of the same capacity as the old SCSI), copy the partitions to the IDE drive and shut down. Then connect the /new/ SCSI HDD, set the "DOS Support" to 'On',  and was, finally, able to get the partitions copied to the /new/ SCSI HDD. 

((((That is, BTW, where things stood when last I had made an attempt to run Warp 4 - just before I moved, which was, just over, a year ago. Since, then, I've acquired yet larger (4 x 9 GBers, this past spring) SCSI HDDs that require an entirely different controller (U160, replacing a WUF(U20?)) and, just two weeks ago, even larger (5 x 18 GBers, still U160es) HDD.s Myabe, before Obama is sworn in, I'll be "Warped" again.))))

Whoops. I was here to help Ira!

[End Personal Reminisce]

So what does this ALL have to do with him and AHCI????

IF Ira has his WinXP RO-DADs to re-install that
 AND 
IF he hasn't YET got a LOT of data to back up
***(Otherwise, BACK it up BEFORE taking my suggestion!!!)***

THEN

I'd suggest turning OFF AHCI support (choosing, instead, IDE compatibility mode) in his BIOS.

See IF you can STILL see your WinXP partition(S) (NTFS, I presume) - purely for experimental reasons.

I doubt if you'll be able to, but I don't know, in either case ("you can" or "you can't"). Even IF you CAN still see that / those partition(s), it, and the programs on it (them), may be UNreliable to use.

So, with the "AHCI: Off" set or, equivalently, "traditional IDE: On";
you RE-partition your HDD for Win XP  /AND/ eCS  as you see fit; re-install Win XP, then(?) install eCS (vn. whatever).
(Question mark on the "then" because I don't know which should be installed first.)

Note: I don't say "TRY installing eCS". If I recall, that 
***wonderful Daniela E.***
/HAD/ written her IDE / ATAPI drivers to support SATA already, so it SHOULD BE just a matter of "doing it". ;-)

More than enough for now,

Thomas Clayton

--- On Sat, 12/20/08, Ira N. Saxe <isaxe at verizon.net> wrote:

> From: Ira N. Saxe <isaxe at verizon.net>
> Subject: [Discussion] eCS with Dell XPS 210
> To: discussion at lists.possi.org
> Cc: support at dell.com
> Date: Saturday, December 20, 2008, 2:32 PM
> <div id=yiv346480875><html><head>
> </head> 
>  
> <div>Neither eCS 1.2 or 2.0 RC5 will load from CD on
> my Dell.  The problem seems to be that
> the PC's BIOS is configured in AHCI mode, which is
> not supported by eCS.  The AHCI is required by Vista,
> not by Wincows XP, which I'm using. But, Dell is
> unwilling to change it.  I've asked eCS to support
> AHCI but am not optimistic that they will.</div>
> <div>I'm posting this warning so others who
> plan to use eCS will check for this before buying a new
> Dell.  Regards, Ira Saxe</div></html> 
> </div>_______________________________________________
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