Problems setting up Precision 650

Question

Dear All,   I've just inherited a friend's Precision 650 whilst he's on his 'rite of passage' backpacking trip in the US/Europe over the next couple of years. It has 1 x Xeon 2.8Mhz CPU, 1GB DDR2100 ram, embedded LSI 1020/1030 Scsi controller and a single 146MB Seagate Cheetah 10K HDD.   It was loaned to me but with the HDD formatted of course, and I was wanting to load it up with software from my current ailing HP Workstation.   The problem I am having is when I try loading a clean install of XP Professional, it doesn't recognise any present HDD's and stops. I have low level formatted the HDD via the LSI Configuration menu and verified the existence with an ID of 0.   I have booted to a floppy and used FDISK to format the drive with the /S option to load a system file. When the system boots up, it goes straight to root drive and stops, expectedly. But alas, the windows setup won't register the drive.   I have loaded Dell Diagnostics with the GUI interface and the system shows no errors on all areas including the intergrity of the HDD nor the SCSI controller.   Can anyone offer any assistance?, I've tried searching this board re: the Controller and windows XP, but to no avail. I notice that the SCSI controller has an option to activate an array but the system has only a single HDD. I was planning on installing a spare 300GB IDE drive as a slave for automated backups, so the need for any Raid options and the fact that I don't have another 146GB SCSI HDD is irrelevant.   Regards and thanks,   Paul

Sqwarky · Answer

Tphillips, Thanks for the prompt reply.

No I didn't create a floppy with the controller drivers. I'm also not familiar with the F6 option either, could you please elaborate.

I do not have access to the Original Dell discs or software and my mate's stuff is in storage, so access is not forthcoming at the moment. There is no utilities partition to boot to, just a clean install of the HDD.

Can you please tell me which drivers you are referring to on this list:
http://support.ap.dell.com/support/downloads/devices.aspx?c=au&l=en&s=gen&SystemID=WRK_PNT_P4_650&os=WW1&osl=EN#

Regards and thanks,

Paul

tphillips63 · Answer

You did not mention if you created a floppy with the drivers for the controller for the F6 portion of setup so if not that is what you need to do.

tphillips63 · Answer

the SCSI non-RAID Controllers or SCSI RAID Controllers
What you do is extract them and put each set on the root of a floppy, no subdirectories.
During the very first part of install when its still DOS like screens watch for a message at the bottom left to press F6 to add additional drivers. After you press F6 the installation will pause and allow you to insert the floppy with the drivers.
It might not work the first time you should need the non-RAID driver for your installation and you can use any XP install disks. The drivers for the drive access are all that matters.

Sqwarky · Answer

Sorry about that, thought you were referring to an F6 option in the BIOS or Scsi Configuration setup programs.   Thanks for the info, I'll give it a go when I get home tonight.   Regards,   Paul.

Storage, Drives & Media

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