Fasttrak/33 BIOS update

[DrMordrid]

Promise has put up a page for ordering a Fasttrak/33 BIOS upgrade chip, version-1.08. It's at;

http://www.promise.com/techsupport/T..._bios_info.htm

This upgrade brings the Fasttrak/33's BIOS into line with the recently released Fasttrak/66 1.08 flashBIOS update. This update eliminates the 64 gig limitataion on array sizes in Win95 OSR2 & Win98, allows the use of >32 gig drives in arrays and fixes some compatability problems with Seagate and Fujitsu MPD drives.

Dr. Mordrid



[This message has been edited by DrMordrid (edited 27 January 2000).]

[Brent]

Howdy Dr Mordrid,
Have you tried the 1.08 BIOS?
I did and found that attempting a fresh install of Win 98 SE, I could not format the last logical drive as it disappeared after fdisking and rebooting. Just a primary partition is OK, but the last logical drive, or the whole logical drive if only one, just disappears.
I have emailed Promise but 2 weeks later, still no reply.
I have done fdisking so many times that I am sure it is a BIOS problem. Never had a problem with 1.07 but I flashed as I want to get 2 new giant drives that will exceed the 64G problem with 1.07.
Cheers
Brent

[DrMordrid]

I haven't tried 1.08 on the FT33 yet as it hasn't arrived but I've used 1.08 on my FT66 since it was posted and no problems yet. The FT66 has two IBM 18g 7,200 rpm Deskstars in a RAID0. It shows in both Win98 and Win98SE.

What kind of drives are you using and how are they connected? What are their master/slave settings and how are you partitioning it? What driver version and, prehaps more important, what chipset is on yor mainboard?

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by DrMordrid (edited 28 January 2000).]

[Brent]

I'm using two Quantum KA 9.1G U66 7200 drives with 80 pin cables but also tried two Quantum EX 12.7G U33 5400 drives with 40 pin cables. I use MS fdisk after wiping the drives with Quantum's Zero Fill utility. I usually fdisk one large primary partition for vid capture and then create an extended partition with about two or three logical drives of 700M each. I have been doing this for a long time first with the FT33 and for about 6 months with the FT66 and never had a problem until the new bios. I have a feeling that after flashing, everything might have been OK until I did a new fdisk, but I can not be sure as I only had that existing array running with the new bios for a day or two before I fdisked again. Did you just do a bios flash with an existing array and do you have any logical drives in existence?
My board is an Asus P3Bf BX chipset with the latest bios.
I'm also using the latest Promise drivers but that is irrelevant as the drivers only come into play after the OS is installed, not at the fdisking stage.
The drives are connected as per spec with both set to master and if using four drives, then 3 and 4 are set to slave for the second array.
Merely moving the drives from the 1.08 FT66 to the 1.06 FT33, instantly solved the missing logical drive problem.
I have managed to acquire the FT66 1.07 bios from a friend as I did not save it and when I get the energy and my new Coppermine, I will flash it back and see what what happens.
Cheers and thanks for the interest as this problem is as close to a real bug as I have ever had, however until someone else duplicates it, I will never know for sure.

[DrMordrid]

That is an odd one.

I am also using an Asus P3B-F with the 1004 BIOS. No problems here though with the flashing procedure.

Reflashing with 1.07 would be a good experiment, but it's also possible the 1.08 flash didn't totally "take".

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by DrMordrid (edited 28 January 2000).]

[Brent]

Do you think a "bad" flash can cause this?
Should I just run the flashing again?

[DrMordrid]

Bad flashes can happen with mainboards so why not a Fasttrak? You really have nothing to lose so why not?

Dr. Mordrid

[Brent]

There is a bug in fdisk!!!!!!!!!!
Check out Norton/Symantec-I found reference to it in using Ghost as they are promoting their own utility called gdisk instead of fdisk.
I tried reflashing 1.08 and no luck.
I flashed back to 1.07 and no luck.
I then remembered that I had added an IDE DVD drive to my system straight after flashing to 1.08 and then done an fdisk, and this is the bug.
If you have a certain combination of IDE/Atapi devices and SCSI, fdisk conflicts with the last drive letter of an IDE device and the last logical drive letter. This only happens if you use the fdisk program on an MS Startup Disk, possibly because you are then loading CD device drivers and the MS RAM drive. (On my system, only the SCSI CD drives are available with the Startup Disk, but if I remove them, then the IDE DVD drive is available.)
I then copied the fdisk program onto an MS SYSTEM DISK and used it to restart the computer. Bingo! Mo more problems with the last logical drive being visible. From now on, I will never again use my Startup Disk to fdisk.
My configuration is as follows:
IDE hard drive on IDE channel 1 as master and set as second device to boot to and IDE DVD drive on channel 1 as slave and set as third device to boot to.
IDE tape drive on IDE channel 2 as master and IDE LS 120 drive on IDE channel 2 as slave and set as first device to boot to.
The fourth in order boot device is set as a network device, so therefore the Fasttrack does not feature at all in booting.
I also have a non bootable SCSI CD and CDR.
Somwhere amongst this config, I have fallen foul of the bug, as before the addition of the IDE DVD drive, I never had a problem.
Bugs are one thing, but when you have doubt in fdisk, it is like building a skyscraper on marshmallow foundations. I suppose when Bill wrote DOS and FDISK, he had no idea about the hardware combinations to come that would rely on it. Maybe thats why a whole new approach like NT or Win 2000 is overdue.

[DrMordrid]

I've always used a minimalist homebrewed boot floppy that has the CD drivers, fdisk, format and Ghost but NOT the ramdrive. Interesting....

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by DrMordrid (edited 30 January 2000).]

[Brent]

Hi DrMordrid,
I have been contemplating using both my FT66 and FT33 in the one system. I know Promise support this, but I wonder whether seperating the drives in this way will improve performance. Will it cure the IDE shortcomings of the master and slave sharing the same cable and having to wait for each other to finish doing one thing at a time. Instead of four drives on the FT66, with the two masters set as an array and the two slaves set as an array, have two FT's with each having two drives set as masters. Do you think I would get better multitasking out of Win 98SE like you have if you were running multiple SCSI drives? Will the boot device be a matter of trial and error as to which PCI slot which card is in?

[DrMordrid]

I don't think you'd gain anything.

The Fasttrak doesn't try to write to both the master and slave on a given channel at the same time so there is no master/slave contention to cure. It writes to the masters then to the slaves and then back to the masters again.

Also I don't believe Promise supports dual FT installations any more. I know some folks tried it, myself included, but some others had problems with that configuration so....

As far as booting from an SCSI device goes all you need do is make sure the Fasttrak is in a higher numbered PCI slot than the SCSI controller and configures last. That way the SCSI drives take boot priority.

As far as better filesystem multitasking goes the way to get that is to set up your filesystem as a "network server" in the system properties. Right-click on My Computer and select Filesystem for the settings.

Dr. Mordrid



[This message has been edited by DrMordrid (edited 04 February 2000).]