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The Answer Guy


By James T. Dennis, answerguy@ssc.com
Starshine Technical Services, http://www.starshine.org/

This refers to an issue raised in August (Issue 31) about a second drive with linux slowing down a Windows boot sequence.

(?)More 'Win '95 Hesitates After Box Has Run Linux?'

From Zdenek Kabelac on 07 Aug 1998

Hi

As I read your answer book for this question in LG Issue 31 "Win '95 Hesitates After Box Has Run Linux?"

I have to say I had (and still have) similar problem - I have one HARD HD (6.5MB hda) and 1 mobile (1.5MB hdb) HD and 16xWearnesCDROM (hdd)

(!)It is odd that your Wearnes/ATAPI CDROM is accessed as /dev/hdd --- if it was the "master" or "standalone" on the second IDE channel I'd expect to see it as /dev/hdc
Perhaps it would work better if you reconfiged the CDROM (changed to to "master" or "standalone" mode).

(?)When my computer goes up and I run WIN95 from the begining I can access CDROM normaly, but when I run Linux before windows and don't push RESET button W95 can't locate CDROM and it also takes some time for W95 to figure this out (about 10-15sec) but linux can access CDROM always. I have tryied all combination of reboot=cold,bios ... as kernel boot parameters, but it was no good. (I'm quite experienced linux user, but this is probably some HW magic)

But I can easily live with this problem as I run W95 rarelly and pressing the reset button is not that big problem.

I suppose the problem will be with the combination: board & W95 & CDROM - something in HW setup - for a few days I had connected 32xSamsung CDROM to the same computer and there were NO such problems - the only problem was toooo big noice from my computer and I hate this - so I rather bought the 16x - anyway I don't have UltraDMA board so the reading speed on my computer is the same (~2.4MB/s)

(!)It is an interesting anomaly. As you say there is an easy workaround. I'd recommend that.

(?)Small advice which might be interested to other users (those who likes silent):

If they don't want to hear such a big noice from their computers, they should switch power suply from 12V to 5V to the computer funs. (its cheap and about an 1/2 hour of work) - don't know how this works in 44C :) but in my country with temperatures around ~30C everythings run quite well and when HD spin down my computer is completely silent.

Zdenek Kabelac

(!)While I don't like the excess noise I haven't have much incentive to play with the fans and power supplies in my machines.
I've seen some people who swear that they've just disconnected their power supply fan and left it that way for years. However, I'm too much of a wimp to do that --- I just don't want to have to replace those parts if this does cause them to fail.

Copyright © 1998, James T. Dennis
Published in Linux Gazette Issue 32 September 1998

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