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reByte Documentation (Quick Start Guide) |
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Page 1 of 17 1.1 Introduction
This guide is designed to be a short guide for quickly setting up your reByte. If you are fairly computer savvy and feel comfortable changing a hard disk on your computer, you are the perfect candidate for the quick start.
Here are the things you’ll need before you start
Your reByte kit, which includes the reByte operating system and applications on compact flash disk and the compact flash to IDE (CF-IDE) adapter card.
- A Pentium-1, 2, 3 or 4 class computer that will become a reByte. The computer must have two IDE busses built onto the motherboard. This is standard on nearly (99.99%) every desktop and “tower” computer. AMD & Cyrix (“Intel Compatible”) computers should work equally well.
- Identical hard drives, which are the storage devices. Two or more are required for full data redundancy (protection against loss due to hard drive failure). We’ve tested on Western Digital, Seagate and Quantum with sizes ranging from 20GB to 200GB.
- Good ATA 66/100/133 IDE cables. Don’t go cheap here. A good set costs less than $10 and is worth every penny. Good cables helps to ensure solid reByte operation and performance.
- A monitor to plug into the computer during setup. You should be able to unplug the monitor after setup.
- A keyboard (generally only needed during setup).
- A supported PCI network card. See the Appendix for supported cards.
(Optional)
- A PCI controller card (we support the Promise Ultra100 & 133 PCI controller pictured to the right). This is only required if you are upgrading an older computer that is not able to recognize large (typically over 32GB) disks. If you don’t have one, don’t worry, they cost under $25 and also let your computer run faster as well.
IMPORTANT NOTICE #1
Please be aware that the reByte compact flash and adapter are electronic components. As such, they are subject to damage from electrical sources, static electricity, etc. Always try to handle these components with care. Before mounting your reByte compact flash to IDE adapter into your reByte-designated computer, make sure the adapter card’s exposed metal surfaces, pins, etc., are insulated from all other metal surfaces. The Velcro provided for mounting will help with this, but still take care to not allow the adapter card to touch a metal surface directly. If you do, unreliable operation and even damage of the reByte card may occur, which is not covered by the warranty. However, in the event that your compact flash card does become inoperable, reByte has a low-cost “Fix Me” option whereby we will “re-burn” your flash card to its former (factory) self.
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