New Motherboard Woes and the Fix

[Scytale]

Geez that's a big swamp of trouble you waded through just to get the IDE equivalent of AGP2X working... sorta disproportional really.

[Gurm]

New Motherboard Woes and the Fix

Folks,

Just thought you'd all like to hear my tale of woe - maybe it will help some of you.

Well, I was running just fine on an ABIT BX6v2 board. Lots o' fun. But then I got a couple of Ultra66 hard drives. So I just HAD to get the faster controller, right?

Well, I tried a Promise controller. But the durn thing had LOUSY bus mastering. So I upgraded the motherboard to an ABIT BE6. Much better Ultra66 performance.

But... now I only have 4 IRQ's to share between all the PCI slots and all the integrated peripherals...

AGP + PCI1 + ACPI = IRQA
PCI2 = IRQB
PCI3 + Ultra66 = IRQC
PCI4 + PCI5 + USB = IRQD

Which of course meant woe to me with the G400!

My final solution, which isn't perfect, at least allows me to boot into Win98 (NONE of this is a problem with NT or Win2k, since they use polling...):

AGP = G400
PCI1 = Empty
PCI2 = Sound (MX300)
PCI3 = NIC (3com 3c905b)
PCI4 = Empty
PCI5 = Ultra SCSI

I anticipate even more of a problem when I add the video capture card for videoconferencing to the office...

Anyway, I also had to remove my Diamond Fireport Ultra SCSI card, since the Symbios Logic chipset is incompatible with the Highpoint 66 chipset. I replaced it with an Adaptec card, and all is well.

- Ash

[Gurm]

Yeh I probably should just wait until Intel comes out with an Ultra66 chipset, that's usually the best policy.

- Ash

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

This signature is not Copyright by anyone. Especially not some guy named Steve. Yeah. That's it. Please don't kill me, Holly.

[Bixler]

Your first post mentioned trouble with a Promise Ultra 66 controller.

They have a bug...and a fix. I don't believe your problem was purely busmastering although that is a part of the problem. Check this out:

"The problem you are experiencing may be related to a bug which was discovered in the v1.42 Ultra66 S.M.A.R.T. driver. The latest driver can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.promise.com/Controllers/IDE/Ultra66/U66_0628.zip. A temporarily solution, however, is to rename the Ultra66 S.M.A.R.T. driver.
S.M.A.R.T. is used for problem notification of HDDs which, although unlikely, could occur at some point in the HDD's life span; it is not performance related. The Ultra66 S.M.A.R.T. driver should be located in the C:\Windows\System\Iosubsys" directory. Rename the "PU66VSD.VXD" file to "PU66VSD.PTI" and reboot the system

[Snake-Eyes]

Gurm, while your on the topic of DMA66/BE6/busmastering:

Does DMA show up as a checkbox for your hard drives under the device manager?

My HPT66 BIOS shows DMA66 for my drive at boot time (DOS mode screen, before windows), but I don't get any options to enable DMA in Win98 for the drive (double-clicking the hard drive to see it's properties). Prior to the BE6 (BH6), this drive had a DMA box (using the standard BX controller, of course).

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Ace

[IceStorm]

Pros of ABIT/Soyo/anyone-else-here's HighPoint controller onboard: You get 4 IDE channels, that's _8_ IDE DEVICES IN ONE BOX!

Cons: You're screwed on IRQs.

I actually got it all working on my PIII. No one fought with anyone about IRQs, and things didn't crash.

Anywho, you don't have to wait for Intel - get an Athlon board. The current AMD chipset has support for ATA-66, and the MSI board came with the cable necessary. I think the VIA Apollo-blah chipsets support ATA-66, too.



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Primary System: Athlon 550, MSI 6167 mb w/BIOS 1.3, 3x128MB PC100 ECC SDRAM CAS2, G400 MAX in multi-monitor mode, Two Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 900u monitors, Intel Pro/100+ Management Adapter, SoundBlaster Live!, DeskTop Theater DTT2500 DIGITAL Speaker System (Sweeeeeet!), WDC WD20 5AA 20GB HD, WD AC310100 10GB HD, Toshiba SD-M1212 6x DVD-ROM, HP 8100i CD-RW, Epson Stylus Pro, OptiUPS PowerES 650, MS SideWinder Precision Pro USB joystick, Gravis Xterminator gamepad (no DX7 drivers yet), Logitech 3-button mouse, Mitsumi keyboard, Win98 SE, Belkin OmniCube 4-port KVM, 10/100 5-port Linksys Ethernet switch, Epson 1200u scanner, Epson Stylus Pro printer, Logitech QuickCam Pro with the little stand and the lense kit (cool).

Secondary System: PIII-450, Soyo 6BA+ IV, 1x128MB PC100 ECC SDRAM CAS2, Millennium G200 AGP, V2 SLI rig, Intel Pro/100+ Management Adapter, SoundBlaster 32, WD AC41800 18GB HD, Creative Dxr3 DVD decoder card, Hitachi GD-2500 6x DVD-ROM, Win98 SE

Tertiary System: PII-266, Asus P2B BIOS 1008, 1x128MB PC100 ECC SDRAM CAS2, Millennium II, 3Com 3C905, 3Com 3C509, ADSL Modem 640kbit down/90kbit up, Mylex BT-930 SCSI card, Seagate 2GB Hawk, Seagate 1GB Hawk, Quantum DLT 4000 tape drive, NEC 6x CD-ROM, Linux distro S.u.S.E. 6.1 (IP Masquerade works!)

Quaternary System: Ocean Rhino 9 motherboard w/Intel 430HX chipset, P200MMX, 4x64MB EDO Parity RAM, Millennium II, 3Com 3C590, SoundBlaster 16 MCD, Fujitsu 3.5GB HD, WD 1.2GB HD, Haven't chosen an OS yet.

And a JetDirect EX print server that bootp's its address from the Tertiary System.

All specs subject to change.

[RichieJarvis]

Yep, you are right, the VIA Apollo support UDMA66 as well. You just download the drivers from VIA, fire them up, and off you go.

Cheers,

Richie

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Systems:

Mine :
AMD K6-2 400
FIC VA-503+
64MB PC-100
Matrox G400
17GB HD
36x CD-ROM
Logictec Trackman Marble +

Hers:
AMD K6-2 450
FIC VA-503+
64MB
Matrox Mystique 220
Voodoo 2
2GB HD
6.4GB HD
6x CD-ROM

Spare:
Intel P200 MMX
TX M/B
32MB
Cirrus Logic 5446 (2MB)
Voodoo 1
2GB HD
24x SCSI CD-ROM
2x2x6 SCSI RICOH MP6200S CD-ReWriter