P4C800-E Deluxe: booting of an PCI card

  • Thread starter Thread starter Matthias Scheler
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M

Matthias Scheler

Hello,

I'm searching for i865PE or i875P based motherboard to replace my
Intel D865PERLK which is refusing to use a PCI card (in my case an
Intel SRCS14L) as boot device. Does anybody know if that works with
an ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe? Can it e.g. boot of a PCI SCSI hostadapter?

Kind regards
 
[email protected] (Matthias said:
Hello,

I'm searching for i865PE or i875P based motherboard to replace my
Intel D865PERLK which is refusing to use a PCI card (in my case an
Intel SRCS14L) as boot device. Does anybody know if that works with
an ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe? Can it e.g. boot of a PCI SCSI hostadapter?

Kind regards
Click to expand...

http://forums.2cpu.com/showthread.php?threadid=29994&highlight=raid+controller+boot+rom

"Why doesn't the BIOS (Option ROM ) for my PCI device show during
boot up?

The cause of the problem is that in order to be PC Compatible, the
Option Rom space is limited to 128K. this is true for any motherboard
with PC compatible BIOS'.

In the common configurations, a newer AGP card (such as any GeForce4)
will require 64K of Option Rom space, so you have only 64K of Option
Rom space left to work with for other devices. Many SCSI,
NIC (w/ PXE), IDE Raid and etc., can easily use another 40 to 64K of
Option Rom space for their needs.

By design the Option Rom should shrink down to a smaller run time
code after the initialization code has run. For example, some Adaptec
cards will require 32K to initialize. Then they shrink down to 12K
at run time; whereas some GeForce4 cards require 64K to initialize
and never release to a smaller amount. Please check with the device
manufacturer for the latest firmware upgrade or ask if they have a
smaller Option Rom available. Again this is a limitation of the PC
compatible specification and not a failure of the motherboard BIOS
itself. "

I would not change motherboards. Enter the Intel BIOS, and disable
as many options as possible, that consume Option ROM memory. While
I doubt Intel tech support would have detailed information about the
issue, you could always contact them and ask about the allocation
of the Option ROM space. Perhaps you could also experiment with a
different video card. (Disable the ICH5 RAID rom for example, assuming
you don't have RAID disks on the ICH5.)

I tried disassembling an Intel AMI BIOS file, but mmtool doesn't
seem to like the file. I have a feeling Intel tacked a header onto
the file, for the purposes of their flash tool. Otherwise, I'd
try and identify what Add-on ROM modules are in the BIOS. PXE for
whatever LAN is on there, might be another option ROM.

If you have multiple PCI controllers installed, place the
one you want to boot from, in slot 1, nearest the processor.
I believe Option ROMs are loaded in slot priority, where slot 1
is the highest priority.

HTH,
Paul
 
"Why doesn't the BIOS (Option ROM ) for my PCI device show during
boot up?

The cause of the problem is that in order to be PC Compatible, the
Option Rom space is limited to 128K. this is true for any motherboard
with PC compatible BIOS'.
Click to expand...

Interesting. But I'm not sure that is the case on my system. The BIOS
of the RAID hostadapter actually starts. I can see it initializing the
I/O processor, scanning for drives and RAID volumes and finally
registering the drive with the BIOS. But the board will nevertheless
not offer booting from it. IIRC my ASUS P4B 266 always listes "SCSI"
as an option even if no card is installed.
I would not change motherboards. Enter the Intel BIOS, and disable
as many options as possible, that consume Option ROM memory.
Click to expand...

The Intel Card has a compress BIOS option, not sure whether it was turned
on or off. I'll try that at the weekend.

Kind regards
 
[email protected] (Matthias said:
Interesting. But I'm not sure that is the case on my system. The BIOS
of the RAID hostadapter actually starts. I can see it initializing the
I/O processor, scanning for drives and RAID volumes and finally
registering the drive with the BIOS. But the board will nevertheless
not offer booting from it. IIRC my ASUS P4B 266 always listes "SCSI"
as an option even if no card is installed.


The Intel Card has a compress BIOS option, not sure whether it was turned
on or off. I'll try that at the weekend.

Kind regards
Click to expand...

That is a good sign. That means the Option ROM is loading.

The D865PERL manual mentions pressing <F10> to bring up
a boot device submenu when the BIOS is starting. For
example, if you enable PXE booting from LAN, on the next
POST, the BIOS is supposed to offer that option in the
<F10> function key based menu. Your RAID controller is
also offering an INT 0x13 service, and it should be
registered in the that boot menu as well. If it is not,
then perhaps the Intel SRCS14L doesn't think any of the
disks are bootable or something ?

The Asus P4C800-E Deluxe has an AMI BIOS. It has an option
called "Interrupt 19 Capture", where 19 decimal is the
same as 0x13 hexidecimal. Interrupt 19 Capture allows plug
in cards to offer themselves for booting the system. It
sounds like your Intel board has this setting enabled
all the time, as I cannot see this option in your BIOS.

It looks like pressing <F10> function key is your only
option.

Paul
 
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