(written after the deeds were done, like yesterday...)
I got up at 06:00, having slept only fitfully for three hours. Back to the damned computers...
Progress was made. Windows was welded to the Western Digital 8.4 Gig drive, finally. Major problems with that drive... it would run as a slave, but not as a primary. I finally set it as a single system drive and got it to work. And it still had some stuff on it, but not much, and a lot of what was there was corrupted.
The next job was getting the Quantex 10.1GIG drive going as a primary on the second wire. I gave up on that, and made it the second drive on the second wire, with the CD Writer as #1.
And, Lo! and Behold! There was data on that drive!
It had been massaged several times by partitioning and formatting, and the directories were numbered instead of named... but there was stuff there!
I renamed the directories (folders, for you Winders folks..) and copied the stuff to the WD C: drive. It copied OK, and the files loaded OK, too. I was happy with that, but pretty damned surprised, I must admit. Those files should have not been there at all.
Unfortunately, they weren't really Important files... I still lost all of my Keirsey stuff that I'd put in recently, and all of my recent e-mail.
And I still don't have the network running.
The other machine, the 300, has problems too. Some way or another, it lost the ability to contact the serial ports... which means no mice. Because there is no PS-1 mouse port to plug one into... it's on the board, but I don't have the part to hook up to it. No big deal, I think that I can buy one, but it's a real hassle running WIN98 without it.
Eventually, I'll get this all worked out, I think, with no real blood being spilt. Lots of virtual blood and gore, however...