I need a PCI slot fan, any suggestions?

Diosoth · 24 Jun 2013

I'm not looking to build a new rig now. This Dell was bought used to run Windows XP on and it needed some work to get it up to working condition. My main PC is a Gateway running Windows 7 but if I need a new PC I will go with a custom build. It will run W8 IF I HAVE TO BUT NOT UNLESS and hopefully I can set it up for multi-booting with W7 but that will be at least 2 more years before I do anything like that.

I am curious why this Dell has a floppy drive. The inside QC check stamp says it was made in 2007 but that had to have been a dead format by then. even if I could still buy floppy discs they'd be useless with flash drives so common.

linnemeyerhere · 24 Jun 2013

Glad you got the cooling fan going and it's working.

bobafetthotmail · 25 Jun 2013

Diosoth said:

I am curious why this Dell has a floppy drive. The inside QC check stamp says it was made in 2007 but that had to have been a dead format by then. even if I could still buy floppy discs they'd be useless with flash drives so common.

The main reasons to keep floppies around was BIOS mainteneance (upgrading and fixing) at the time, and loading drivers (usually SATA) during XP install. Once most of the world's board manufacturers made the switch to usb flash drives (or simply non-upgradeable bios for some OEMs) the floppy headers and holes in the front of the case started disappearing for good.
It was done kinda late though, so you still had floppies in the XP age where they were largely useless (as anyone serious about it simply slipstreamed drivers in a modded XP installation disk).

If the bios of that machine still asks for a floppy to do BIOS recovery or whatnot, keep the hardware around somewhere.

Btw, Sony stopped making floppies in 2011, and was the last still manufacturing them at the times. So they are officially dead since 2011.

Diosoth · 25 Jun 2013

That makes sense, though the BIOS of this machine already seemed to have SATA support so it was likely done at the factory- there's 1 IDE port for the floppy drive and 2 SATA ports for HDD and DVD. There are solder points for up to 5 SATA ports but since the case can't hold more than 2 devices, they didn't bother.

I was halfway afraid the PC wouldn't work with this WD drive I had but it had zero issues detecting it or installing XP.

bobafetthotmail · 26 Jun 2013

The SATA issue is a Windows XP issue, not a BIOS issue. Original XP installation disks don't contain sata drivers, so at installation it won't see the hard drives even if the BIOS does.

Some BIOSes allow that to work by switching SATA to "IDE mode" which runs them slower as an IDE (half SATA II speed) but allows them to install and work until you install the sata drivers and then you can switch back to normal in the Bios options. In theory anyway. Never managed to make the switch afterwards. Always made the installation on SATA with drivers on disk or on an external device.

Or your installation CD was not original and someone slipstreamed (added) the drivers to it. Most professionals did it because floppies were annoying.

Btw, the "floppy port" is a floppy-only port. Not an IDE port.

Diosoth · 29 Jun 2013

That's likely the case- my old Windows XP disc is SP2 from 2006, and I got a more recent version disc from someone local I know who does PC repair because I didn't want to have to manually download and install 7 years worth of Windows Updates. It's probably good I did because I had no clue of the SATA drivers.

Just got the PC online this morning- had to buy another Ethernet cable, then reinstall the broadband drivers. Dell lists 2 different Gigabit controller drivers and doesn't specify which is which and I apparently installed the wrong set prior. Finally got my updates installed after verifying with a WGA check, Microsoft Security Essentials(while I can use Malwarebytes and SAS, MSE is the only one that provides active live protection for free) and all that. Not sure about Firefox since it's become such a RAM hog these days and this PC only has 2 GB RAM, but I'm not going to be using that PC online much to begin with.