A8N SLI conflicting with USB

  • Thread starter Thread starter Defecario
  • Start date Start date
D

Defecario

This is weird. If I try to use the onboard SI3114 controller
whether it has any drives attached or not, my Standard Enhanced PCI top
USB Host Contoller gets the yellow exclamation mark and won't work.
Why would 2 onboard items be conflicting, I have no other PCI devices
and only one PCI eXpress video card.
I have 1003 BIOS also but tried 1002 & 1004 beta with no change.

Ha, how can the USB controller be 'Standard' and 'Enhanced' at the same
time anyway? Which is it?

I guess I'll have to wipe my old SI array out and use nVidia Raid only.
Too much work by time I back everything up. :-(
 
This is weird. If I try to use the onboard SI3114 controller
whether it has any drives attached or not, my Standard Enhanced PCI top
USB Host Contoller gets the yellow exclamation mark and won't work.
Why would 2 onboard items be conflicting, I have no other PCI devices
and only one PCI eXpress video card.
I have 1003 BIOS also but tried 1002 & 1004 beta with no change.

Ha, how can the USB controller be 'Standard' and 'Enhanced' at the same
time anyway? Which is it?

I guess I'll have to wipe my old SI array out and use nVidia Raid only.
Too much work by time I back everything up. :-(
Click to expand...
BTW, this is with 32 bit XP, I have not tried the 64 bit betas yet.
 
Defecario said:
This is weird. If I try to use the onboard SI3114 controller
whether it has any drives attached or not, my Standard Enhanced PCI top
USB Host Contoller gets the yellow exclamation mark and won't work.
Why would 2 onboard items be conflicting, I have no other PCI devices
and only one PCI eXpress video card.
I have 1003 BIOS also but tried 1002 & 1004 beta with no change.

Ha, how can the USB controller be 'Standard' and 'Enhanced' at the same
time anyway? Which is it?

I guess I'll have to wipe my old SI array out and use nVidia Raid only.
Too much work by time I back everything up. :-(
Click to expand...

What is the error message reported under the USB controller entry?

Both Standard and Enhanced USB controllers show up since the Standard is
for USB 1.1 devices and the Enhanced is for 2.0..
 
What is the error message reported under the USB controller entry?

Both Standard and Enhanced USB controllers show up since the Standard is
for USB 1.1 devices and the Enhanced is for 2.0..
Click to expand...

Yeah, but what does this mean? Are they one in the same. Or are there a
USB 1.1 physical controller, as well as a USB 2.0 physical controller?
I.e. are some of the motherboard USB connectors only supporting USB 1.1???
 
fsda said:
$8l.170473@pd7tw1no:




Yeah, but what does this mean? Are they one in the same. Or are there a
USB 1.1 physical controller, as well as a USB 2.0 physical controller?
I.e. are some of the motherboard USB connectors only supporting USB 1.1???
Click to expand...

No, there is one physical controller that shows up as two different
devices. Which one the USB device is seen as being connected to depends
on whether it's USB 1.1 or 2.0.
 
No, there is one physical controller that shows up as two different
devices. Which one the USB device is seen as being connected to
depends on whether it's USB 1.1 or 2.0.
Click to expand...

I believe, though, that the standard controller is designed to handle
4 ports, while the enhanced can handle 8. I imagine this is due to
the fact that the bus is shared, and 4 1.1 devices is probably a
reasonable limit.

scott s.
..
 
scott said:
I believe, though, that the standard controller is designed to handle
4 ports, while the enhanced can handle 8. I imagine this is due to
the fact that the bus is shared, and 4 1.1 devices is probably a
reasonable limit.

scott s.
Click to expand...

No, you can connect as many devices as you want of either type. Some
boards do this differently than others, however - USB 2.0 has the
concept of "companion controllers" which are UHCI or OHCI (i.e. USB 1.1)
controllers which share the physical hardware with the USB 2.0
controller. For example, a lot of boards with 6 USB ports have 3
companion controllers with 2 ports on each, and a board with 8 ports
could have 2 companion controllers with 4 ports on each. The A8N-SLI has
only one OHCI companion controller which can run up to all 10 ports..
 
No, you can connect as many devices as you want of either type.
Click to expand...

Technically, you can connect up to 127 individual USB peripherals at one
time. This is including all hubs. I don't know of anyone getting near
that number, but there is a limit.
 
This is weird. If I try to use the onboard SI3114 controller
whether it has any drives attached or not, my Standard Enhanced PCI top
USB Host Contoller gets the yellow exclamation mark and won't work.
Why would 2 onboard items be conflicting, I have no other PCI devices
and only one PCI eXpress video card.
I have 1003 BIOS also but tried 1002 & 1004 beta with no change.

Ha, how can the USB controller be 'Standard' and 'Enhanced' at the same
time anyway? Which is it?

I guess I'll have to wipe my old SI array out and use nVidia Raid only.
Too much work by time I back everything up. :-(
Click to expand...

You might look in your bios to make sure you've got all the right
things checked for USB. Some "enhanced" stuff in mine didn't come
enabled out of the box.
 
On my board, an A7N8X-E I had a similar problem.
With three memory modules, my Wireless G- PCI add-on card woult not
be recognized. Yellow exclamation mark.

If I removed the card, it would work.

Or the third memory module would not be recognized, under
conditions that I cannot recall.

I checked the voltages and found that my Power Supply was defective.
 
On my board, an A7N8X-E I had a similar problem.
With three memory modules, my Wireless G- PCI add-on card woult not
be recognized. Yellow exclamation mark.

If I removed the card, it would work.

Or the third memory module would not be recognized, under
conditions that I cannot recall.

I checked the voltages and found that my Power Supply was defective.
Click to expand...
Pretty unusual but I had to install the SI3114 drivers AGAIN while in
Windows. That cleared up the problems and USB and Power Managament came
online. I have used Raid 0 for years and driver installation at F6 was
always good enuf til now.
All is well.
 
Pretty unusual but I had to install the SI3114 drivers AGAIN while in
Windows. That cleared up the problems and USB and Power Managament
came online. I have used Raid 0 for years and driver installation at
F6 was always good enuf til now.
All is well.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the SI3114 clearly does all of it's "RAID" in the software driver.
It's even called "soft RAID" in the device manager. Not working until
this driver is installed in Windows (i.e. F6 isn't good enough) is by
design. Frankly, I'm not impressed with this "feature"..
 
fsda said:
Yeah, the SI3114 clearly does all of it's "RAID" in the software driver.
It's even called "soft RAID" in the device manager. Not working until
this driver is installed in Windows (i.e. F6 isn't good enough) is by
design. Frankly, I'm not impressed with this "feature"..
Click to expand...

It even says in the manual that RAID arrays on the SI controller can be
created and managed from within windows. I was thinking of building a
RAID5 array on it, but I doubt this will do me much good, as it probably
uses the CPU as a RAID controller, so little good will that do me.
 
It even says in the manual that RAID arrays on the SI controller can be
created and managed from within windows. I was thinking of building a
RAID5 array on it, but I doubt this will do me much good, as it probably
uses the CPU as a RAID controller, so little good will that do me.
Click to expand...
Isn't the onchip NVidia Raid also "soft Raid"?
 
Defecario said:
Isn't the onchip NVidia Raid also "soft Raid"?
Click to expand...

Not to my knowledge. You can only manage the nVidia RAID in the nVidia
RAID bios, not from within Windows.
 
RJT said:
Not to my knowledge. You can only manage the nVidia RAID in the nVidia
RAID bios, not from within Windows.
Click to expand...

Not entirely.

I just had to rebuild a NVidia Raid Mirror set. Told it to do so in the
BIOS, and nothing happened (i.e. it rebuilt the set instantly). I loaded
WinXP, and checked in the NVidia NVRaid Manager to find that the Mirror set
is actually rebuilding in the background. Pretty impressive - it happens
in the background, and if I hadn't checked, I wouldn't have known it was
even happening. I even shutdown and rebooted the machine, and it continued
rebuilding from where it left off.

Anyway, my point was that the rebuild _only_ happens from within Windows,
which indicates to me that NVRaid is "soft Raid".

Hopefully it does have some form of hardware acceleration to go along with
the software drivers...
 
Not entirely.

I just had to rebuild a NVidia Raid Mirror set. Told it to do so in the
BIOS, and nothing happened (i.e. it rebuilt the set instantly). I loaded
WinXP, and checked in the NVidia NVRaid Manager to find that the Mirror set
is actually rebuilding in the background. Pretty impressive - it happens
in the background, and if I hadn't checked, I wouldn't have known it was
even happening. I even shutdown and rebooted the machine, and it continued
rebuilding from where it left off.

Anyway, my point was that the rebuild _only_ happens from within Windows,
which indicates to me that NVRaid is "soft Raid".

Hopefully it does have some form of hardware acceleration to go along with
the software drivers...
Click to expand...

Aren't almost all motherboard RAID controllers basically "soft RAID"
-- i.e., using the CPU rather than their own built-in logic? This is
not a rhetorical question; I'm asking because I really don't know the
answer. I thought you had to get into relatively expensive 3Ware
cards, for example, to get true hardware RAID. I hope someone can
educate me on this.
Ron
 
fsda said:
Not entirely.

I just had to rebuild a NVidia Raid Mirror set. Told it to do so in the
BIOS, and nothing happened (i.e. it rebuilt the set instantly).
Click to expand...
Anyway, my point was that the rebuild _only_ happens from within Windows,
which indicates to me that NVRaid is "soft Raid".
Click to expand...

The point being that rebuilding a RAID 1 mirror will mean all data on
the mirror will be copied to the data drive. This offcourse cannot be
done in BIOS in an instant, but the system will boot from the mirror
drive and rebuild the data drive. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but
this is what I believe is happening in your system.

The point of RAID controllers is making the mirror drive (RAID 1),
spanning the information on different discs (RAID 0), or doing both in
combination with some neat calculations (RAID 5/10). Doing this needs a
little horsepower. You can have a controller doing this, or the CPU. I
haven't yet seen a non-SCSI controller that does RAID5/10 on the
controller itself.
Hopefully it does have some form of hardware acceleration to go along with
the software drivers...
Click to expand...

See the above.
 
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