Can't Get My Computer to recognize the new harddrive!!!

[Ferrari692]

Hi,
I have an old IBM 300GL that I was just going to use for a server to host websites. I bought it online and it had everything but a hard drive. I had a couple spares so I just figured I would use one of those. Then I ran into the problem of the computer not recognizing the drives.
First of all I have tried about everything that I could think of. When I tried to use a boot disk to install windows 2000 it came up with the error that I had no hard disk installed. From there I went into the bios where I found out that it was true. My computer was not recognizing the drive. I swapped out 3 different hard drives and none of them fixed the problem. I looked all through the bios settings to see if I was missing something but I couldn't find anything. If there is anything else that you think I could do please let me know otherwise I think I got cheated by that guy who sold it to me.

Thank You,
Cody

 

[speed01]

Sounds like the IDE controllers are dead. Is there an option in the Bios to turn the IDE on and off? If there is then I assume you've made sure they are on. Make sure the primary and secondary IDE settings are set to auto as well (as opposed to "none"). If all else fails, you could try putting in an add-on IDE controller in it.

Speed

 

[Woody419]

Originally posted by: Ferrari692
I swapped out 3 different hard drives and none of them fixed the problem.

1.) Did you swap the cables too? Maybe you have a bad cable.
2.) How big are the drives you tried? Have they been formated? The BIOS has a hdd size limitation, find out what it is. You may have to set the parameters manually instead of using the auto function. You may eventually have to use a drive overlay so older BIOS can see larger dirves.
3.) Clear the CMOS and check the battery. This is probably not the problem but I am fresh out of ideas.