Keep the SATA going

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mark G.
  • Start date Start date
M

Mark G.

How can I get my SATA drives to always be loaded when I restart my computer?
I am running an ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe and for some reasons, it does not always
load the drive. Even when I open Partition Magic 8, it doesn't even
recognize it. I did downloaded what I thought was the latest and greatest
from ASUS. Is there something I am missing? TIA.
 
"Mark G." said:
How can I get my SATA drives to always be loaded when I restart
my computer? I am running an ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe and for some
reasons, it does not always load the drive. Even when I open
Partition Magic 8, it doesn't even recognize it. I did downloaded
what I thought was the latest and greatest from ASUS. Is there
something I am missing? TIA.
Click to expand...

I know you are frustrated, but the symptoms you have described in
the past, aren't common ones.

Your symptoms:

1) System was working, and after a save and exit from the BIOS,
problems began.
2) Problem is intermittent. The system sometimes boots properly.
3) SATA drive and PCI IDE controller go missing at the same time.
SATA is Maxtor 250GB. PCI IDE has ZIP 100 connected to it.
PCI IDE card type and chip used are unstated. Slot used for
PCI card is also unstated.

You didn't mention what kind of PCI IDE card you have, or what
slots it has been tried in. If the PCI IDE card uses a
CMD 0648 chip, that chip seems to be a bit weird, in terms of
how it makes its appearance in Device Manager. For example,
when it works, you might find the Device Manager listing two
"Primary IDE" and two "Secondary IDE" entries. It seems with
the CMD 0648, both the Southbridge and the PCI IDE card, claim
to be motherboard chipsets some how. Now, maybe that even
means they fight over IRQ14 and IRQ15 ? Most IDE cards would use
SCSI emulation, and not make such a claim.

As for a slot for the PCI IDE card, try it in slot 1 or slot 5.
Those two slots share an interrupt line, so if you put a card in
one slot of that pair, leave the other slot blank. By doing this,
you are experimenting to see if the sharing of an IRQ has anything
to do with it. (Normally, if you had a third party sound card,
it would get the royal treatment of slot1 or slot5, but treat
the PCI IDE card like it doesn't share interrupts nicely.)

As for the symptoms themselves, when I first read your post, I
could not think of a mechanism where those two pieces of hardware
would suddenly refuse to enumerate.

Perhaps a little more detail would help -

a) When the board works, do you see the SIL3112 BIOS load
during POST ? And, perhaps it mentions detecting whatever
disk you have connected ? Does the PCI IDE card have a
BIOS that loads at POST time ? What does it say about the
ZIP drive ? Does it identify the ZIP drive properly ?
b) When the board fails, what goes missing from the BIOS
screen.

If you can paint a little more of the picture, maybe more
ideas will come to mind.

If the PCI IDE card does contain the CMD 0648, the first thing
I would do (personally), is replace that card. It is old
technology, that for some reason Silicon Image is still
selling into the market. (Silicon Image bought CMD, as near
as I can tell, and is flogging that old 0.35u part. They
use that chip for PCI IDE or as a RAID card, and it is a
software RAID, whereas most customers think they are buying
a hardware RAID chip. Apparently, it can also give low
benchmarks, which is something else you can test.)

HTH,
Paul
 
The IDE controller is a Promise Ultra 66. Connected to it is an Iomega Zip
100. When these both work, I can see it state something right after the ram
count finishes. This is for both the SATA drive and the IDE PCI controller.
Does this paint a better picture? So you see, it seems to me that it may be
somewhere with the BIOS or the liking. It is weird, but it seems simple, but
I just do not know the answer. If I understand correctly, the SATA itself
has it's own BIOS or something similar, is this correct? Please assist ASAP
as this is driving me nuts.
 
"Mark G." said:
The IDE controller is a Promise Ultra 66. Connected to it is an Iomega Zip
100. When these both work, I can see it state something right after the ram
count finishes. This is for both the SATA drive and the IDE PCI controller.
Does this paint a better picture? So you see, it seems to me that it may be
somewhere with the BIOS or the liking. It is weird, but it seems simple, but
I just do not know the answer. If I understand correctly, the SATA itself
has it's own BIOS or something similar, is this correct? Please assist ASAP
as this is driving me nuts.
Click to expand...

There is a RAID BIOS for the SIL3112. It is supposed to check
for drives, and if it doesn't find any drives connected, I think
the RAID BIOS unloads.

The Promise Ultra 66 probably has a BIOS as well. AFAIK, the BIOS
would provide INT13 services, so the OS can be booted from a disk
connected to the card. Without the BIOS on the Promise card working,
you could probably run a disk off it in data mode, but not boot
from it.

So, the common ingredient is they both have BIOS code associated with
them. And, a known shortcoming of devices like this, is they
won't always play nice with one another. About all I have read on
the subject, is these BIOS like to allocate memory for themselves,
and the memory has to come from the 640KB region. If two or more device
BIOS load at boot time, they can conflict in their use of memory.
But, there seems to be more to it than that - after reading the
same descriptions of problems from people, it almost seems as if
you cannot have multiple of devices like this available for booting
at the same time. I don't know if I'm reading too much into it or
not, but it seems like there is more to the issue than just a
fight over low memory.

Things that seem to work, are Adaptec cards, where when one Adaptec
BIOS loads, it can control multiple cards. That neatly side-steps
the "multiple BIOS" being active at one time.

So, the thing that is throwing me the most, is how your computer
boots properly sometimes and not others. Kinda shoots the above
theory all to hell, as a fundamental disagreement between devices
should be reproducible indefinitely. I've never heard of the BIOS
detecting hardware out of order - hardware should always be discovered
in the same order every time.

The best place for researching interactions like this, is the
forums on 2cpu.com -

http://forums.2cpu.com/showthread.php?threadid=20747&highlight=multiple+controller+cards
http://forums.2cpu.com/showthread.php?threadid=42798
http://forums.2cpu.com/showthread.php?threadid=39784

The first thread mentions IRQ routing, and your Promise should go
in slot 1 or slot 5. The thread also mentions juggling slot positions
for two PCI cards, which you cannot do with the SATA SIL3112 bolted
to the motherboard. A third thing they mention, is only enabling
the BIOS on the device you plan on booting from. I don't know which
of your controllers you boot from, but that is another option to
investigate.

The first thread implies more than one cause of problems, which
is not encouraging. Especially the email from Promise tech
support, using the "_should_ work" language.

Well, try messing around and tell us how it goes. I hope this
isn't some other kind of problem, because it will be impossible
to debug.

Paul
 
Well, I fixed it. Did I repair on windows and then of course I had to
reinstall a bunch of drivers and such and that seemed to do the trick and it
seems to be sticking. Still not sure why it was acting that way.
 
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