Dell Mini Tower System manual Eide Devices, Reserved Memory

EIDE Devices

For EIDE hard-disk drives, the system provides an automatic drive-type detect feature. To use this feature for Drive 0, highlight the Drive 0 category in the Primary drive section and type a (for automatic); to use it for Drive 1, highlight the Drive 1 category and type a. In each case, the category setting changes to Auto. After you reboot the system, the System Setup Program automatically sets the correct drive-type number and parameters for each drive.

Before installing a new EIDE hard-disk drive, also check the documentation that came with the drive to verify that all jumper settings on the drive are appropriate for your configuration.

If You Have a Problem

If the system generates a drive error message the first time you boot your system after installing an EIDE drive, it may mean that your particular drive does not work with the automatic drive-type detect feature. If you suspect that your problem is related to drive type, try entering your drive-type information in one of the following ways.

If You Know the Drive-Type Number

Use the drive-type number you found in the documenta- tion that came with the drive or, if the drive was installed by Dell when you purchased your system, access the Manufacturing Test Report from the Dell Accessories folder or program group.

To set the drive-type number in the System Setup program, highlight the appropriate drive category (Drive 0 or Drive 1 in the Primary drive section) and type the correct drive-type number. If you prefer, you can press the right- or left-arrow key to increase or decrease, respectively, the drive-type number until the correct one is displayed.

If You Do Not Know the Drive-Type Number

The Drive 0 and Drive 1 categories display the following seven parameters for each drive:

•Type is the drive-type number for the selected hard- disk drive.

•Cyls is the number of logical cylinders.

•Hds indicates the number of logical heads in the drive.

•Pre (precompensation cylinder) is the cylinder number at which the electrical current for the drive head changes to compensate for differences in data density across the disk surface (this parameter has no effect for EIDE drives).

•Lz is the cylinder number that is used as the drive’s landing zone for the heads when the drive is not in use.

•Sec is the number of logical sectors per track.

•Size (automatically calculated by the system) indicates the number of millions of bytes of storage provided by the drive.

If none of the supported drive types match the parameters of your new drive, you can enter your own parameters. To do so, highlight the Drive 0 category and type u to display USR1. You can then use the right- or left-arrow key to switch between the USR1 and USR2 settings (only two user-defined drive types are allowed). Then press the <Tab> key to highlight each of the parameter fields in succession, and enter the appropriate number for each field.

NOTE: The USR1 and USR2 drive types can be used for both the Drive 0 and Drive 1 categories in the Primary and Secondary drive sections. However, if you select the USR1 or USR2 drive type, you may not obtain optimum hard-disk drive performance. Also, the USR1 and USR2 drive types cannot be used for hard-disk drives greater than 528 megabytes (MB) in capacity.

Reserved Memory

Reserved Memory allows you to designate a region of system board memory that can be supplied by an expansion card. You should not enable the reserved memory feature unless you are using an expansion card that requires special addressing.

For example, you may have a memory expansion card that needs to be addressed starting at 15 MB. Selecting the 15M - 16M option in the Reserved Memory category specifies that the base memory from 15 to 16 MB come from the memory expansion card (the base memory below the 15-MB address comes from the dual in-line memory modules [DIMMs] on the system board).

Using the System Setup Program 2-5