SCSI Harddrive replaced with an IDE???

[lookatme]

I have an old 80386 DX 25/33 (also referred to as the dinosaur).  It has been sitting in a corner for a long time. Recentlly, I decided to use it for some of my old programs that will not work on my newer, faster, computers.  It had MS-DOS and WIN 3.1 installed and contained a word processor and only a couple of programs and very little unused or free space.  

I decided to try to upgrade the HDD and add a soundcard. I was sure that I could use a disk manager to get by the 528 MB HDD limit.  I took off the case and looked inside.  The HDD was a monster--Huge.  Three inches tall, five & three quarters wide, and eight inches long.  I removed the retaining screws and slid it out of its slot. and installed a one gig IDE HDD and powered up.  

On boot up, it told me about a Control Concepts Inc. SCSI Host Adapter, Bios 16 Ver 3.07   ID:7 and that it was seaching for SCSI Drives.  

Also, for this computer, the CMOS setup limits the harddrives to 74 different capacities from 10 MB to 502 MB--each capacity linked to specific numbers for cylinder, heads, etc.

My question is -- Is it possible to replace a SCSI drive with an IDE driver by adding an IDE controller card?

[chade]

Wow.  You're talking about some MAJORLY old stuff here.  But why would you want to ruin a perfectly good door stop?

Things _may_ work, but I'd imagine you are going to have problems installing modern computer equipment into this machine.  It most certainly won't have PCI slots - I imagine it has ISA slots for expansion cards - you may be able to pick up an old SB or other card from 'back in the day' at a swap meet, or on ebay or something.  This will probably be the least of your problems.  Drivers may add to the difficulty however - but you can probably find something on driverguide.com or similar.

Now, for the HDD - if you can find an add-in card that will fit the slots on your motherboard with the right drivers for it, you may be able to add in a second hard drive.  I wouldn't be throwing the old one out however - most old motherboards didn't support booting from an add-in card - they want something on the end of that motherboard controller instead.

If you can get more specific with the exact model of motherboard and HDD and any other useful information, perhaps I can help more.

[lookatme]

The date printed on this computer is July 1992.  Most machines of that era had proprietary parts.  The MB has no identifying labels except for a "D-01" which is near the top and not associated with any pin, chip, slot, or switch.  You are right about the PCI slots. there aren't any.  I don't think they existed then.  I hope that I will not need one.  My intent is to replace the HDD, add a sound card and a CD Rom.  

There are 7 ISA slots:
1 -  with card that has 15 pin female port
1 -  video card with port for monitor
1 - controller called "CONTROL CONCEPTS" which
     contains a chip labeled "CONTROL CONCEPTS"
     Version 3.07
  - Various chips, switches, fuses, jumpers and pins,
     i.e., J3 40 pin IDE
            J2 50 pin SCSI
            J9 34 pin Floppy Port A
            J10 34 pin Floppy Port B
  - pins for jumpers
            J6 - FLPY - DIS
            J5 - IDE - DIS (has a jumper on it)

The other ISA lots are empty.

The SCSI HDD is by Magnetic Peripherals, Inc., Oklahoma City, OK.  This HDD alone weigh about 10 pounds or close to it.  I am not looking for another one like it.  I really want to replace it with an IDE HDD.

From the above, this computer did operate from an add-in card.  

I usually buy parts for my old computers from MarketPro Computer shows.  The next one for my area is July 17-18.  I can usually find what I am looking for there or at the Terps Trade-in on Maryland U campus.

I guess the next thing to try is the removal of the jumper from J5 to see if the IDE HDD will be recognized.

What do you think?    

[lookatme]

I didn't get to the computer show this weekend at New Carrollton to look for the parts that I need. [Yesterday, I drove over 600 miles roundtrip through the mountains of West Virginia. On the way to the computer show today, the transmission gave out.]

The next computer show near me will be the July 31 weekend at the Show Place Arena.   I will try to find the needed parts then.

[lookatme]

I went to the computer show on July 31, bought used replacement parts and cards to try to get this 80386 25/33 dinosaur up and running.  I changed out the scsi controller card, replaced it with an ide card, replaced the scsi hd with the ide hd. Powered up went into setup drivectrl to match cylinders, head, sector, etc. for hd recognition. Disabled onboard hd controller. Saved, exited, rebooted. Okay, it seems the ide hd was accepted.  "Insert boot diskette in drive A".  After inserting a MS-DOS boot diskette first in the 3 1/2 then in the 5 1/4 drive, it was still asking, "insert boot diskette in drive A". On reboot, the floppy controller failed. I alternated the hook-up first to the mb then to the card, enabling and disabling the onboard floppy controller. I  took out the 3 1/2 floppy and the 5 1/4 floppy drives, replaced them with a combination drive.  Still floppy drives did not work.  I just decided that I had invested enough time and money in this project.  So I will put it aside.
I also bought a mb for $5. The cpu and simms were included, but I decided I did not want to invest the time to find the drivers necessary to make it work. I have already tried a lot of stuff I won't even try to describe.
Well, I gave it the college try... I think. For now I am calling it quits.

[johnwill]

I throw away better computers, it astounds me that someone would pay good money to attempt to get one running!  

[lookatme]

I bought the first computer for my kids in 1978 -- a Commodore Pet, 8k, when you had to do your own programming in 'basic' on an audio cassette. Then in 1980 I got the Atari 400 with 48k (a different version of 'basic'). The Pet and the Atari were still in working order when I gave them and all the software to the Goodwill in 1991... that's when I bought IBM 386 PS1. It had a 40MB HDD, 4MB memory and a modem. IBM and Sears owned Prodigy at the time and I got 3 months of use free. I still has and use this computer.  I think its 8-12MHz. Oh, I have other computers also 4 that are less than 3 yrs and 1 less than 1.  
I homeschool and I tutor the kids on my block.  I have accumulated a lot of educational software for my computers over the years... core curriculum software as opposed to edutainment software.  I hold on to the mediums to run these programs for as long as I can.  These programs were vintage for their day and is competitive with anything on the market today.  The cutting edge educational software was very expensive. When I needed a particular software I paid the price to accomplish an educational objective.  Today's computers are just too fast to allow the child to interact with those programs or the programs will not work at all.  
I try to keep the old computers working for as long as possible.  To achieve that goal, I will try until I am made to "cry 'uncle'". Uncle...  Uncle... Uncle...

[johnwill]

Well, whatever floats your boat.