Hi,
I recently installed an ASUS A7V600-X MB along with a Maxtor
DiamondMax 9 SATA 200 Gig HDD. I installed Windows Xp Professional and
there was no problem getting the HDD recognized by the OS, after
downloading VIA chipset drivers. The machine works fine, but I am
curious as to why the BIOS does not recognize the HDD. I have set the
Boot portion of the BIOS to (SCSI/Onboard ATA boot). What haven't I
done/need to do in order to get the BIOS to recognize the HDD.
Thanks,
David
I doubt I could give you all the technical details, but there
are subtle differences between how chipsets treat their storage
interfaces.
The Intel ICH5/ICH6/ICH7 have SATA and PATA interfaces. In
Enhanced mode, both the PATA and SATA interfaces are treated
as just disks. The BIOS shows them as
P4C800-E (ICH5) Two PATA cables, two SATA cables
Primary IDE Master
Primary IDE Slave
Secondary IDE Master
Secondary IDE Slave
Third IDE Master (actually a SATA drive)
Fourth IDE Master (actually a SATA drive)
P5WD2 (ICH7) One PATA cable, four SATA cables
Primary IDE Master
Primary IDE Slave
Third IDE Master (actually a SATA drive)
Third IDE Slave (actually a SATA drive)
Fourth IDE Master (actually a SATA drive)
Fourth IDE Slave (actually a SATA drive)
These are examples of where some "non-standard" ports have
been made to look like standard ports.
There are also peripherals that can be placed inside a
Southbridge, that are not integrated. Examples of this would
be, say, an Ethernet MAC/PHY circuit. It is as if they took a
separate external chip, and just glued it onto the side of the
Southbridge. In the case of the Via Southbridge, I get the
impression VIA have taken this course when incorporating
the SATA interfaces.
I think most of the time, your SATA drives use a SCSI emulation
interface, and that tends to hide the details (like IDE drive
geometry CHS) from the BIOS and the OS.
I don't know all the technical reasons for these nuances. I
have noticed the A8N-SLI (a Nvidia chipset), also shows the
drives in an integrated fashion for the SATA interfaces.
Primary IDE Master
Primary IDE Slave
Secondary IDE Master
Secondary IDE Slave
First SATA Master
Second SATA Slave
Third SATA Master
Fourth SATA Slave
For not fully integrated SATA interfaces, as long as the
RAID BIOS sees the drives, I suppose that would prove
they are there. Some RAID BIOS insist on a minimum of two
SATA drives being present, before the RAID BIOS will show
its interface.
I think the non-integrated approach is less work for a chip
designer.
Paul
