What sequence to install upgrades

Now that all the votes are in, looks like a step at a time is in order.
1. Abandon Primary Ide, and Install Promise card.
2. Hook existing drive to Promise primary as master. 3. If everything
still works, hook new drive to Promise as slave. If something is wrong
at this point, change all to CSEL. 4. If it is still running at that
point, copy old drive to new with Drive Image or software that may come
with the new Seagate drive. 5. Swap old and new on the Promise, hoping
to make the new the boot drive automatically as no information can be
entered in the bios manually. 6. If it runs then, have a glass of
Champagne. If not, swap them back and stay with the old as boot, but
move swap file to the new. 7. If that all works, have another Champagne.
8. Install the Pyro external box with cd-rw using firewire port. Put the
software for it on whatever turned out to be the boot drive in above
steps. Turn everything on and watch for signs of smoke rising. If none,
put the computer back in service and send a thank you note back to those
who have pitched in to help. If it fails, report back here with details.

Does anyone see a problem with that approach? If not, I will get my
screwdriver and let the games begin.

Sandy

Tom Scales wrote:

Why not leave the older hard drive as your boot drive. Put your swap file on
the faster drive. Simplest solution.

Tom
"Sandy" wrote in message
...
Thanks for your help. This 5635 Compaq has the latest bios dated 5/1999.
The computer was modern enough to come with firewire and dvd, but it
must be "old" as mentioned by Dale in his response. You enter set-up to
get minimal options such as setting a password, or enabling a few items
with yes/no selection. There is no way obvious to enter any information
on the hard drive or select a boot drive. No mention of SCSI. It is an
extremely simplistic display of minimal information. There is mention in
some old posts of this group now on Google that new hard drives are
detected automatically. I hope that is the case.
I did not know that it was necessary to keep the primary IDE free when
installing a Promise card. That means I will need to install the
Promise card, then put both the old and the new hard drives on the
Promise Primary. I will report results.

Sandy

The PC Guy wrote:

Hello:
If booting from SCSI is not an option, booting from the first IDE
may
work. If you have nothing on the motherboard's primary IDE controller,
the
system should find the drive on the Promise card.
--
regards,
bruce

The PC Guy
Bruce Von Deylen
Pierceton, Ind. USA
Serving the computer impaired in northern
Indiana and southwest lower Michigan

E-mail: brucevdatmichianadotorg
"DEJ57" wrote in message
...
The BIOS (even on a Compaq) should have a setting to change which
drive
to boot from.

Perhaps her Compaq does have this option, but it would not surprise me
if
it
does not. Many older Compaqs did not have this option in its BIOS--my
7240 and
my 4112 did not. But I don't know about the 5635.
It didn't seem an important option for Compaq to give to users....

Dale

I haven't seen this entire thread but, I'll just mention ... about the
promise card... you should be able to get into ITS BIOS by typing CTRL-H or
CTRL-A (it announces itself on screen). There you can change the boot drive,
backup one drive to the other etc.


"Sandy" wrote in message
...
Now that all the votes are in, looks like a step at a time is in order.
1. Abandon Primary Ide, and Install Promise card.
2. Hook existing drive to Promise primary as master.
3. If everything
still works, hook new drive to Promise as slave. If something is wrong
at this point, change all to CSEL.
4. If it is still running at that
point, copy old drive to new with Drive Image or software that may come
with the new Seagate drive.
5. Swap old and new on the Promise, hoping
to make the new the boot drive automatically as no information can be
entered in the bios manually.
6. If it runs then, have a glass of
Champagne. If not, swap them back and stay with the old as boot, but
move swap file to the new.
7. If that all works, have another Champagne.
8. Install the Pyro external box with cd-rw using firewire port. Put the
software for it on whatever turned out to be the boot drive in above
steps. Turn everything on and watch for signs of smoke rising. If none,
put the computer back in service and send a thank you note back to those
who have pitched in to help. If it fails, report back here with details.

Does anyone see a problem with that approach? If not, I will get my
screwdriver and let the games begin.

Sandy

Tom Scales wrote:

Why not leave the older hard drive as your boot drive. Put your swap
file on
the faster drive. Simplest solution.

Tom

Thanks for the tip. I had asked for help earlier and combined the
responses of several contributors. I summarized what I think they said
in the form of a recipe for upgrade. I hoped that if there was an error
someone would flag it. No one did, so I assume it was correct, or it was
too long to read g .

I will include your info in my notes and hope to do this project this
weekend. (Note:This may be a duplicate message. I sent it once, then
cancelled it to edit, but it probably go out anyway. Does cancelling
ever do any good?)

Sandy

- Bobb - wrote:

I haven't seen this entire thread but, I'll just mention ... about the
promise card... you should be able to get into ITS BIOS by typing CTRL-H or
CTRL-A (it announces itself on screen). There you can change the boot drive,
backup one drive to the other etc.

"Sandy" wrote in message
...
Now that all the votes are in, looks like a step at a time is in order.
1. Abandon Primary Ide, and Install Promise card.
2. Hook existing drive to Promise primary as master.
3. If everything
still works, hook new drive to Promise as slave. If something is wrong
at this point, change all to CSEL.
4. If it is still running at that
point, copy old drive to new with Drive Image or software that may come
with the new Seagate drive.
5. Swap old and new on the Promise, hoping
to make the new the boot drive automatically as no information can be
entered in the bios manually.
6. If it runs then, have a glass of
Champagne. If not, swap them back and stay with the old as boot, but
move swap file to the new.
7. If that all works, have another Champagne.
8. Install the Pyro external box with cd-rw using firewire port. Put the
software for it on whatever turned out to be the boot drive in above
steps. Turn everything on and watch for signs of smoke rising. If none,
put the computer back in service and send a thank you note back to those
who have pitched in to help. If it fails, report back here with details.

Does anyone see a problem with that approach? If not, I will get my
screwdriver and let the games begin.

Sandy

Tom Scales wrote:

Why not leave the older hard drive as your boot drive. Put your swap
file on
the faster drive. Simplest solution.

Tom