- US Utility Patent
- US Pre-Grant Publication
- US Design Patent
- US Plant Patent
- US Reissue
- US Statutory Invention Reg.
The site looks up your item, pulls it from the US Patent Office's website and assembles it into a single PDF for download. Sweet.
Showing posts with label DIY. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DIY. Show all posts
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Great Website for Printing Patents
It's been a busy day and I'm finishing it with some patent work. I wanted to share a really great discovery. PAT2PDF is a free site that seems to be somewhat supported by donations (I made one!). The site accepts a search phrase for the following types of items:
The site looks up your item, pulls it from the US Patent Office's website and assembles it into a single PDF for download. Sweet.
The site looks up your item, pulls it from the US Patent Office's website and assembles it into a single PDF for download. Sweet.
What I Learned About Garage Door Openers
A friend's garage door opener wasn't opening the door although the motor was running. I offered to try and repair it. After all, it already wasn't working; what was the harm?
After opening the cover the problem was obvious. The nylon gear which drove the shaft that drove the sprocket (which is a gear that is driven by or drives a chain), was split in half. I looked up the manufacturer on the 'Net, then the model number and ordered a replacement kit. I was so relieved that it came with a detailed instruction book!
Here's what I learned about this garage door opener:
Limit Switches
The limit switches are very simple. As the drive shaft turns, it drives a screw upon which is mounted a moving contact. As the screw turns, it moves the contact to one end or the other. One screw on each side of the moving contact has the other end of the contact. As soon as the moving contact meets the end contacts -- the door stops. Simple!
Rate Sensor
There is a rate sensor that measures the rate at which the motor is spinning. This was also simple. A cap on the motor shaft had a series of four slots and openings, which passed through a sensor with a tiny emitter and sensor. If the door gets blocked, the motor can't turn. If the motor can't turn and the unit has not hit one of the limit switches, and the door is moving down, the controller reverses direction. If the door is moving up, it stops. Simple!
Retaining Pins
There isn't any other way to get a retaining pin out other than with a hammer. The sprocket drive shaft holds the drive gear in place with two retaining pins. These fit tightly into place. I had to drive the lower pin out in order to slide the new drive gear into place and the only way to do that was with a hammer. As soon as the pin was flush with the shaft, I used a punch to continue driving the pin through the shaft. After the new drive gear was in place, it was hammering once again to get the pin back into position.
Disassembly & Reassembly
Check the orientation of things as you disassemble them. I made two good choice and missed one opportunity. Before unplugging drive motor power connectors, I confirmed that the diagram in the instruction booklet was accurate and took a picture of the setup with my phone. When re-assembling the unit, I had all the documentation that I needed. However, I didn't notice the tabs in the top plate that holds the drive shaft in position and ended up re-installing that plate rotated 1/3 around. I didn't notice the mistake until nearly the very last step of re-installing the protective plastic cap over the sprocket and drive chain. It didn't make sense to disassemble the entire unit at that point, so we're living with my error. Had I taken a picture of that unit before disassembling it, I would have had the necessary reference.
Clean Grease
Clean grease isn't so bad. Dirty grease is wicked icky, but the new clean grease was easy to put on and I didn't mind cleaning up afterwards.
End of the story: the garage door works perfectly now. And I had a lot of fun taking the durn thing apart and putting it together!
After opening the cover the problem was obvious. The nylon gear which drove the shaft that drove the sprocket (which is a gear that is driven by or drives a chain), was split in half. I looked up the manufacturer on the 'Net, then the model number and ordered a replacement kit. I was so relieved that it came with a detailed instruction book!
Here's what I learned about this garage door opener:
Limit Switches
The limit switches are very simple. As the drive shaft turns, it drives a screw upon which is mounted a moving contact. As the screw turns, it moves the contact to one end or the other. One screw on each side of the moving contact has the other end of the contact. As soon as the moving contact meets the end contacts -- the door stops. Simple!
Rate Sensor
There is a rate sensor that measures the rate at which the motor is spinning. This was also simple. A cap on the motor shaft had a series of four slots and openings, which passed through a sensor with a tiny emitter and sensor. If the door gets blocked, the motor can't turn. If the motor can't turn and the unit has not hit one of the limit switches, and the door is moving down, the controller reverses direction. If the door is moving up, it stops. Simple!
Retaining Pins
There isn't any other way to get a retaining pin out other than with a hammer. The sprocket drive shaft holds the drive gear in place with two retaining pins. These fit tightly into place. I had to drive the lower pin out in order to slide the new drive gear into place and the only way to do that was with a hammer. As soon as the pin was flush with the shaft, I used a punch to continue driving the pin through the shaft. After the new drive gear was in place, it was hammering once again to get the pin back into position.
Disassembly & Reassembly
Check the orientation of things as you disassemble them. I made two good choice and missed one opportunity. Before unplugging drive motor power connectors, I confirmed that the diagram in the instruction booklet was accurate and took a picture of the setup with my phone. When re-assembling the unit, I had all the documentation that I needed. However, I didn't notice the tabs in the top plate that holds the drive shaft in position and ended up re-installing that plate rotated 1/3 around. I didn't notice the mistake until nearly the very last step of re-installing the protective plastic cap over the sprocket and drive chain. It didn't make sense to disassemble the entire unit at that point, so we're living with my error. Had I taken a picture of that unit before disassembling it, I would have had the necessary reference.
Clean Grease
Clean grease isn't so bad. Dirty grease is wicked icky, but the new clean grease was easy to put on and I didn't mind cleaning up afterwards.
End of the story: the garage door works perfectly now. And I had a lot of fun taking the durn thing apart and putting it together!
Configuring Drupal for McNiff Plumbing & Heating
As mentioned in my last post on Selecting Drupal for McNiff Plumbing & Heating, I wanted to talk about configuring Drupal for a mostly static site.
The requirements are:
I then created the following pages: Home, Services & Comments and copied some of the content from the current site as a place holder. I also set the Menu Title Links in each of these pages to their base name, so that it could be referenced from a menu.
I used Administer >> Site Building >> Menus >> Primary Links to add a menu item for each page.
Next up was creating the Contact Us form. I enabled the Contact module in the Core - optional section, wen to "Administer By Module" and configured the permissions for the Contact Form and enabled "access site-wide contact form" for all users.
Back to the Menus to add a new Primary Link menu option for Contact by specifying the "contact" page as the target. After saving this new menu item, it was showing up as a new tab with the other menu pages. Great!
Let's check for an anonymous users. I opened up a different browser (I just hate logging out and in and out and in) and checked the development site. No joy in Mudville -- and no tab either.
Somewhere along the line, I was missing permissions. I checked and double checked that the menu was enabled and that anonymous users could access the contact form. I even typed the path into the other browser and the form displayed. Hmmm; not a permission problem because the anonymous user could see the form. The navigation link was simply not being displayed.
Back to Administer >> Site Building >> Contact Form >> Edit. There is a "Selected" option, which was set to "No". Changing that to "Yes" turned on the tab in the Anonymous User's view.
Yea!
Next up; clean up the pages to show only the pieces of information we want. This might require a custom View.
The requirements are:
- Anonymous Users can view all content
- The site is Page oriented; Home, Services, Comments, Contact Us
- No navigation menu
- No login options visible to anonymous users
- No content titles, author information or posting dates on pages
- No user comment links
I then created the following pages: Home, Services & Comments and copied some of the content from the current site as a place holder. I also set the Menu Title Links in each of these pages to their base name, so that it could be referenced from a menu.
I used Administer >> Site Building >> Menus >> Primary Links to add a menu item for each page.
Next up was creating the Contact Us form. I enabled the Contact module in the Core - optional section, wen to "Administer By Module" and configured the permissions for the Contact Form and enabled "access site-wide contact form" for all users.
Back to the Menus to add a new Primary Link menu option for Contact by specifying the "contact" page as the target. After saving this new menu item, it was showing up as a new tab with the other menu pages. Great!
Let's check for an anonymous users. I opened up a different browser (I just hate logging out and in and out and in) and checked the development site. No joy in Mudville -- and no tab either.
Somewhere along the line, I was missing permissions. I checked and double checked that the menu was enabled and that anonymous users could access the contact form. I even typed the path into the other browser and the form displayed. Hmmm; not a permission problem because the anonymous user could see the form. The navigation link was simply not being displayed.
Back to Administer >> Site Building >> Contact Form >> Edit. There is a "Selected" option, which was set to "No". Changing that to "Yes" turned on the tab in the Anonymous User's view.
Yea!
Next up; clean up the pages to show only the pieces of information we want. This might require a custom View.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Weebly does web sites wite! Uh, Right!
I came across Weebly while reading some blog posting and recalled a conversation that I had recently with Jennifer Lee, the owner of A Doggone Good Life. Jen was a great program manager with a client of mine years back and is now a very happy entrepreneur pursuing her dream.
Jen and I were talking about some web-business ideas things, so when I read about Weebly and the professed ease with which one is able to create new websites, I had to give it a shot. After all, I've used web-site builders over the years. My general take-away is that they all sucked, sucked, sucked.
I tried Word to HTML generation (puke). I tried PDF to web-site generators (retch). I tried WYSIWYG generators (pain). I tried 1and1.com website builder (oh, boring ick). I tried NetObjects (workable, but still a PITA) and ColdFusion (there's a tool, but you need to be a serious web-head to make something worth while). The best was still coding a site by hand (slow and painful to revise) until one added some code generation (PHP, which apparently means "Powerful; Help Please") and Ruby on Rails (rocks).
The technically-light web entreprenuer does not want to learn coding paradigms, so out go PHP, ROR, ColdFusion, etc. What's left is for them to hire a company ($$) and pay them to maintain the site ($$$) or hire some full time staff ($$$$).
Nope, no more. Weebly makes very attractive and highly functional websites. SEO goodness, tags, sub-pages, custom HTML (for your easy shopping-cart functionality with PayPal). Also available are two-column layouts, YouTube, Flickr, Google Maps, forums, audio, a scheduler for your service-based organization, Google Adsense and Analytics, and an API to build custom widgets which your users can use on their Weebly sites.
There's enough serious good stuff that doesn't require a deep engineering background to grock to make me say, "Weebly is a great start".
Plus, Weebly will give you a FREE subdomain, or let you purchase a domain from them, or even let you use your existing domain (They even have instructions to point your domain from GoDaddy or 1and1 to their servers).
Oh, and let's mention that you can get started with a real website, e-commerce capable, with a blog and everything for FREE. Yes. Free. As in "you do not have to pay anything ever". They make their money on the premium services. And, the upgrade to Pro wasn't expensive. Something like $5 per month. Seriously, that's way cheep.
Check it out. I fast forwarded myself many years into the future and built a fantasy website called "Doggie Heaven" that I may actually do some day in the far, far future. I added some e-commerce functionality (don't actually buy anything, OK?) and a blog in only a few minutes.
There are a bunch of very servicable templates and I love the way elements are dragged and dropped onto the page for layout.
Very impressive, congratulations Weebly.
Jen and I were talking about some web-business ideas things, so when I read about Weebly and the professed ease with which one is able to create new websites, I had to give it a shot. After all, I've used web-site builders over the years. My general take-away is that they all sucked, sucked, sucked.
I tried Word to HTML generation (puke). I tried PDF to web-site generators (retch). I tried WYSIWYG generators (pain). I tried 1and1.com website builder (oh, boring ick). I tried NetObjects (workable, but still a PITA) and ColdFusion (there's a tool, but you need to be a serious web-head to make something worth while). The best was still coding a site by hand (slow and painful to revise) until one added some code generation (PHP, which apparently means "Powerful; Help Please") and Ruby on Rails (rocks).
The technically-light web entreprenuer does not want to learn coding paradigms, so out go PHP, ROR, ColdFusion, etc. What's left is for them to hire a company ($$) and pay them to maintain the site ($$$) or hire some full time staff ($$$$).
Nope, no more. Weebly makes very attractive and highly functional websites. SEO goodness, tags, sub-pages, custom HTML (for your easy shopping-cart functionality with PayPal). Also available are two-column layouts, YouTube, Flickr, Google Maps, forums, audio, a scheduler for your service-based organization, Google Adsense and Analytics, and an API to build custom widgets which your users can use on their Weebly sites.
There's enough serious good stuff that doesn't require a deep engineering background to grock to make me say, "Weebly is a great start".
Plus, Weebly will give you a FREE subdomain, or let you purchase a domain from them, or even let you use your existing domain (They even have instructions to point your domain from GoDaddy or 1and1 to their servers).
Oh, and let's mention that you can get started with a real website, e-commerce capable, with a blog and everything for FREE. Yes. Free. As in "you do not have to pay anything ever". They make their money on the premium services. And, the upgrade to Pro wasn't expensive. Something like $5 per month. Seriously, that's way cheep.
Check it out. I fast forwarded myself many years into the future and built a fantasy website called "Doggie Heaven" that I may actually do some day in the far, far future. I added some e-commerce functionality (don't actually buy anything, OK?) and a blog in only a few minutes.
There are a bunch of very servicable templates and I love the way elements are dragged and dropped onto the page for layout.
Very impressive, congratulations Weebly.
Saturday, February 25, 2006
Hallelujah
Finally, finally, finally.
I got the new system up and running. It took only about two dozen installs, an hour or so of phone calls with Asus, an RMA with NewEgg (they really are wonderful!), slipstreaming SP2 into my SP1a installer, a new case with a larger power supply and nearly three weeks of elapsed time.
As I give the final answer, there will be sage nodding from those in the know. However, I hasten to point out (in my own defense) that the Asus people, both Level 1 and Level 2 tech support didn't help me to the final answer.
The final answer was.... (drum roll, please):
Use the latest drivers!
What do you mean, anti-climatic? Everyone knows that? Who? Tech support didn't. The folks on the forum didn't.
OK, I'll be less obtuse.
Asus tech support got me to the point of installing the latest BIOS and chipset drivers. The process is this: Update the BIOS at POST. Install the OS, then run the executable to update the chipset drivers. Every time, except the last, the PC would hang upon next boot. I had tapped out Asus. They really couldn't do more. I was using the latest BIOS and chipset drivers. However, the chipset is made by nVidia, so I went to their website.
Asus had version 6.65 for the Force4 chipset. nVidia had version 6.70. That seemed better so i downloaded it and used it. And it worked!
Yea! I don't have to RMA all the hardware and ship it back to NewEgg!
Yea! I finally built a machine after all these years.
Yea! I can once again say "I am geek"
Thanks for reading
I got the new system up and running. It took only about two dozen installs, an hour or so of phone calls with Asus, an RMA with NewEgg (they really are wonderful!), slipstreaming SP2 into my SP1a installer, a new case with a larger power supply and nearly three weeks of elapsed time.
As I give the final answer, there will be sage nodding from those in the know. However, I hasten to point out (in my own defense) that the Asus people, both Level 1 and Level 2 tech support didn't help me to the final answer.
The final answer was.... (drum roll, please):
Use the latest drivers!
What do you mean, anti-climatic? Everyone knows that? Who? Tech support didn't. The folks on the forum didn't.
OK, I'll be less obtuse.
Asus tech support got me to the point of installing the latest BIOS and chipset drivers. The process is this: Update the BIOS at POST. Install the OS, then run the executable to update the chipset drivers. Every time, except the last, the PC would hang upon next boot. I had tapped out Asus. They really couldn't do more. I was using the latest BIOS and chipset drivers. However, the chipset is made by nVidia, so I went to their website.
Asus had version 6.65 for the Force4 chipset. nVidia had version 6.70. That seemed better so i downloaded it and used it. And it worked!
Yea! I don't have to RMA all the hardware and ship it back to NewEgg!
Yea! I finally built a machine after all these years.
Yea! I can once again say "I am geek"
Thanks for reading
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Agony of DIY
Actually, I should call it "Agony of Duh"
It has to do with building a new computer. The foundation (the loss of the original machine and some of the difficulties) is described in another post, which I started to keep, ah, pleasure separate from business. However, since I had a good amount of business data on the lost machine, and I am considering merging blogs, I thought I would continue the tale here.
Briefly:
The motherboard support CD-ROM was bootable. Who knew? It certainly wasn't documented anywhere, not in any manual, not in a FAQ, not in a forum. The bootable motherboard CD can make the driver disk needed to install XP
Asus wins awards for a reliable motherboard, and for reasonably fast phone support, but looses big time on the whole "self-service" concept for the internet. The forums are really the worst I've ever experienced. First, they work only in Internet Exploder. Every time you click on a link for another area (Support, Download, Forum), a new browser window opens. The search in the forum will show you the question with the subject that matches your query, but none of the threaded answers to the question. Oh, and it seems like all the data is coming from Asia b e c a u s e i t i s s o s l o w.
Here's the real beef. After going through the pain of making a RAID driver disk (see the other story for that fire drill!), the system boots up (YEA!!). Time to update Windows (I have XP-Pro SP1a). Need a network controller device driver. Pop in the support CD. Install the drivers.
There are three checkboxes (nVidia SMBus Driver, nVidia Ethernet Driver, and nVidia IDE Driver). The IDE Driver install gives me severe warnings and then says that I probably don't need to install it after all, 'cause the Microsoft one works just as well. That's OK, I'm in for a penny, in for a pound, so I say "Yes" to everything.
Heck, I even install the built-in Firewall and one other do-hickey when the prompt comes up. Reboot. Hang.
Yup, something broke the install.
Re-install, quick-format, boot, install only the Ethernet driver (cause I've done this before and know that one builds a Windows system one piece at a time, if it don't work out of the box). Reboot. Hang.
Much searching, time on the phone with Asus. Mobo (that's the cool term) is defective. RMA, new board, repeat one mo' time. Reboot. Hang.
More phone time with Asus. Slipstream SP2 into my 1a installation CD, burn a new CD, do the whole thing again. Reboot. Hang.
Pull the mobo out of the case to elminate electromagnetic interference (EMI). Re-install, reboot, hang. This will be funny one day.
Meanwhile, days are slipping by, bills are starting to pile up, yada yada.
On the phone with Asus, my case get elevated to Level 2. In a single two minute phone call, the technician says that I need to have -- get this -- all three check boxes checked. Yup, the drivers are a set and must always get installed together. I mean, doesn't this beg the obvious question of why, oh why, are there checkboxes? DUH!!
At this point (ATP, for you old time coders), system is SP2 with a network. I'm going to put the the whole kit and kaboodle back into the case and see if it will still work.
Wish me luck.
It has to do with building a new computer. The foundation (the loss of the original machine and some of the difficulties) is described in another post, which I started to keep, ah, pleasure separate from business. However, since I had a good amount of business data on the lost machine, and I am considering merging blogs, I thought I would continue the tale here.
Briefly:
The motherboard support CD-ROM was bootable. Who knew? It certainly wasn't documented anywhere, not in any manual, not in a FAQ, not in a forum. The bootable motherboard CD can make the driver disk needed to install XP
Asus wins awards for a reliable motherboard, and for reasonably fast phone support, but looses big time on the whole "self-service" concept for the internet. The forums are really the worst I've ever experienced. First, they work only in Internet Exploder. Every time you click on a link for another area (Support, Download, Forum), a new browser window opens. The search in the forum will show you the question with the subject that matches your query, but none of the threaded answers to the question. Oh, and it seems like all the data is coming from Asia b e c a u s e i t i s s o s l o w.
Here's the real beef. After going through the pain of making a RAID driver disk (see the other story for that fire drill!), the system boots up (YEA!!). Time to update Windows (I have XP-Pro SP1a). Need a network controller device driver. Pop in the support CD. Install the drivers.
There are three checkboxes (nVidia SMBus Driver, nVidia Ethernet Driver, and nVidia IDE Driver). The IDE Driver install gives me severe warnings and then says that I probably don't need to install it after all, 'cause the Microsoft one works just as well. That's OK, I'm in for a penny, in for a pound, so I say "Yes" to everything.
Heck, I even install the built-in Firewall and one other do-hickey when the prompt comes up. Reboot. Hang.
Yup, something broke the install.
Re-install, quick-format, boot, install only the Ethernet driver (cause I've done this before and know that one builds a Windows system one piece at a time, if it don't work out of the box). Reboot. Hang.
Much searching, time on the phone with Asus. Mobo (that's the cool term) is defective. RMA, new board, repeat one mo' time. Reboot. Hang.
More phone time with Asus. Slipstream SP2 into my 1a installation CD, burn a new CD, do the whole thing again. Reboot. Hang.
Pull the mobo out of the case to elminate electromagnetic interference (EMI). Re-install, reboot, hang. This will be funny one day.
Meanwhile, days are slipping by, bills are starting to pile up, yada yada.
On the phone with Asus, my case get elevated to Level 2. In a single two minute phone call, the technician says that I need to have -- get this -- all three check boxes checked. Yup, the drivers are a set and must always get installed together. I mean, doesn't this beg the obvious question of why, oh why, are there checkboxes? DUH!!
At this point (ATP, for you old time coders), system is SP2 with a network. I'm going to put the the whole kit and kaboodle back into the case and see if it will still work.
Wish me luck.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
And Computers, too -- Installing XP on ASUS A8N
Our computer died last Sunday. I'll tell that story another time. Right now, I want to crow about the new computer.
For context, I'll mention that the old computer was about six years old, a Dell 700 MHz. Rather pokey by today's standards. I missed building my own machine, and since things are tight, but I run my company from that machine, so I decided to build my own. When I priced it out, I realized that I could build, for under $900 shipped, what would cost $1600 assembled.
To keep this to a reasonable length, here are the key facts: The motherboard is an ASUS A8N-E. The motherboard has a built in RAID controller that supports RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 1+0.
The challenge -- and the point of this post -- was getting the Windows XP install started.
Naturally, the XP installer needed the driver for the new RAID controller. The motherboard came with a CD-ROM with drivers (many drivers). After realizing that none of the three laptops in the house have a floppy drive and running over to Staples to get a USB floppy, I put the CD-ROM into the drive and was horrified to see that it wouldn't run. It reported "Can't load ASCDDMI.DLL" So I put it into my wife's laptop, which has a optical drive in a drive bay, compared to my laptop, which has a USB CD-ROM. In my wife's laptop, the CD-ROM loaded the ASUSACPI.exe, but it reported "Detect no proper item" and didn't give me the option of creating a driver disk.
So, I had to find which of the drivers I should use from the CD-ROM. As we all know, using the wrong driver can have consequences ranging from the innocuous (it didn't work) to the terrible (ruins the hardware). I didn't want to risk the latter.
I searched the ASUS technical forums, which I found really quite bad, for help. There were a few postings on which files to use, or the contents of which directory to use. However, the directory structure of the CD-ROM didn't match the directory structure listed in the technical articles and postings, and the suggestions didn't work. The XP installer kept prompting for the hardware drivers.
Oh, and when I did find a list of detailed instructions for installing a RAID driver, it was too much information -- there were 10 different RAID controllers listed, and no way to determine which RAID controller is on my motherboard! Oy Vey!
So I guessed. I guessed that since I was using SATA hard drives, that I would want the SATA RAID drivers from the Windows XP directory.
Here's the summary:
Asus A8N-E Motherboard, revision 2.00, BIOS 4.84
Support CD-ROM "NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Serices support CD Rev.99.06"
2 Maxtor DiamondMax SATA 100 MB hard drive
I used the drivers from the following directory:
[CD-ROM]:\Drivers\Chipset\WINXP\IDE\WinXP\sataraid
I copied all the files from this directory onto a formatted floppy and the XP installer found the two drivers necessary -- just as the instructions said it would. We are 95% done formatting the RAID array and I am happy.
Or at least, I will be happy until the next problem.
Thanks for reading!
For context, I'll mention that the old computer was about six years old, a Dell 700 MHz. Rather pokey by today's standards. I missed building my own machine, and since things are tight, but I run my company from that machine, so I decided to build my own. When I priced it out, I realized that I could build, for under $900 shipped, what would cost $1600 assembled.
To keep this to a reasonable length, here are the key facts: The motherboard is an ASUS A8N-E. The motherboard has a built in RAID controller that supports RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 1+0.
The challenge -- and the point of this post -- was getting the Windows XP install started.
Naturally, the XP installer needed the driver for the new RAID controller. The motherboard came with a CD-ROM with drivers (many drivers). After realizing that none of the three laptops in the house have a floppy drive and running over to Staples to get a USB floppy, I put the CD-ROM into the drive and was horrified to see that it wouldn't run. It reported "Can't load ASCDDMI.DLL" So I put it into my wife's laptop, which has a optical drive in a drive bay, compared to my laptop, which has a USB CD-ROM. In my wife's laptop, the CD-ROM loaded the ASUSACPI.exe, but it reported "Detect no proper item" and didn't give me the option of creating a driver disk.
So, I had to find which of the drivers I should use from the CD-ROM. As we all know, using the wrong driver can have consequences ranging from the innocuous (it didn't work) to the terrible (ruins the hardware). I didn't want to risk the latter.
I searched the ASUS technical forums, which I found really quite bad, for help. There were a few postings on which files to use, or the contents of which directory to use. However, the directory structure of the CD-ROM didn't match the directory structure listed in the technical articles and postings, and the suggestions didn't work. The XP installer kept prompting for the hardware drivers.
Oh, and when I did find a list of detailed instructions for installing a RAID driver, it was too much information -- there were 10 different RAID controllers listed, and no way to determine which RAID controller is on my motherboard! Oy Vey!
So I guessed. I guessed that since I was using SATA hard drives, that I would want the SATA RAID drivers from the Windows XP directory.
Here's the summary:
Asus A8N-E Motherboard, revision 2.00, BIOS 4.84
Support CD-ROM "NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Serices support CD Rev.99.06"
2 Maxtor DiamondMax SATA 100 MB hard drive
I used the drivers from the following directory:
[CD-ROM]:\Drivers\Chipset\WINXP\IDE\WinXP\sataraid
I copied all the files from this directory onto a formatted floppy and the XP installer found the two drivers necessary -- just as the instructions said it would. We are 95% done formatting the RAID array and I am happy.
Or at least, I will be happy until the next problem.
Thanks for reading!
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