Promise Card Ultra100 TX2 necessary?

  • Thread starter Thread starter John Smith
  • Start date Start date
J

John Smith

I have a slot 900mhz p3 computer with about 258+ Memory. I don't know the
exact motherboard but it was built in 97.

I just bought a WD EIDE model I believe WD0800BB?.

The problem was that it wasn't reading the hard drive. I soon realized that
the mother board can't read anythign greater than a 30gb hard drive.

I'm trying to look around and finding a card that can support the
motherboard to read a larger hard drive i.e. the WD 80.

I've been looking at the Promis Card and was wondering would this card work
for me? If not what other cards are out there that would work?

Thanks.
 
Previously John Smith said:
I have a slot 900mhz p3 computer with about 258+ Memory. I don't know the
exact motherboard but it was built in 97.
Click to expand...
I just bought a WD EIDE model I believe WD0800BB?.
Click to expand...
The problem was that it wasn't reading the hard drive. I soon realized that
the mother board can't read anythign greater than a 30gb hard drive.
Click to expand...
I'm trying to look around and finding a card that can support the
motherboard to read a larger hard drive i.e. the WD 80.
Click to expand...
I've been looking at the Promis Card and was wondering would this card work
for me? If not what other cards are out there that would work?
Click to expand...

Depends. Some people here have made bad experiences under Windows
with it. I am using 4 of them in several software-RAID configurations
of up to 600GB size under Linux without problems so far.

Arno
 
Well the thing was, i'm not really using it for RAID, but although I can
config it for the future, will this work with a single hard drive. Giving
the circumstance that previous before the hard drive was only 35GB big and
was eide. And the new drive being a 80gb eide, i would expect it to read
it, but it isn't. So a friend recommended to get a pci card that would help
it read bigger hard drives.

Thanks
 
Well the thing was, i'm not really using it for RAID, but although I can
config it for the future, will this work with a single hard drive. Giving
the circumstance that previous before the hard drive was only 35GB big and
was eide. And the new drive being a 80gb eide, i would expect it to read
it, but it isn't. So a friend recommended to get a pci card that would help
it read bigger hard drives.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Since this post is about the 100TX2 I can speak to this. I have 5 of
these cards running in various machines, Win 2K and XP and have never
had any issue with them. Some people have problems but for me they
were cheap (less than $30) and work great. There was an issue with
some of the drivers which cause stuttering while playing a DVD off a
hard drive but with the later drivers (I am using 2.0.0.42) this has
gone away. I love these cards.
 
John Smith said:
I have a slot 900mhz p3 computer with about 258+ Memory. I don't know the
exact motherboard but it was built in 97.

I just bought a WD EIDE model I believe WD0800BB?.

The problem was that it wasn't reading the hard drive. I soon realized that
the mother board can't read anythign greater than a 30gb hard drive.

I'm trying to look around and finding a card that can support the
motherboard to read a larger hard drive i.e. the WD 80.

I've been looking at the Promis Card and was wondering would this card work
for me?
Click to expand...

It should work. I have two of them running under Win98SE and WinXP.
They're fine for hard drives, but you should probably keep any ATAPI
drives on the motherboard's controller because they don't always work
well with those cards.
 
John Smith said:
I've been looking at the Promis Card and was wondering would
this card work for me? If not what other cards are out there that
would work?
Click to expand...


I've got a PII 450MHz system (I know, I know), running WinXP Pro,
and I use the SIIG ATA/133 controller card with no problems. The
SIIG card has twice the onboard cache as the Promise card, but it
probably makes no practical difference. Here's the specs on it:
http://www.siig.com/product.asp?catid=4&pid=437

*TimDaniels*
 
It should work. I have two of them running under Win98SE and WinXP.
They're fine for hard drives, but you should probably keep any ATAPI
drives on the motherboard's controller because they don't always work
well with those cards.
Click to expand...

Exactly. In fact, Lite-On's online troubleshooting FAQ states specifically
that any of their optical drives should be connected directly to the
motherboard controller, not to a PCI card. OTOH, my hard disk is connected
to a Promise UATA133 card and it works great, although having the card in
the system slows down Windows XP's boot process a bit.
 
Previously John Smith said:
Well the thing was, i'm not really using it for RAID, but although I can
config it for the future, will this work with a single hard drive. Giving
the circumstance that previous before the hard drive was only 35GB big and
was eide. And the new drive being a 80gb eide, i would expect it to read
it, but it isn't. So a friend recommended to get a pci card that would help
it read bigger hard drives.
Click to expand...

No problems with that. As I said, I use software-RAID, i.e.
RAID by the OS. The controller is not RAID-capable by itself.

Arno
 
John said:
I have a slot 900mhz p3 computer with about 258+ Memory. I don't know the
exact motherboard but it was built in 97.

I just bought a WD EIDE model I believe WD0800BB?.

The problem was that it wasn't reading the hard drive. I soon realized that
the mother board can't read anythign greater than a 30gb hard drive.

I'm trying to look around and finding a card that can support the
motherboard to read a larger hard drive i.e. the WD 80.

I've been looking at the Promis Card and was wondering would this card work
for me? If not what other cards are out there that would work?

Thanks.
Click to expand...


Hello, John:

My home-built PIII 600MHz computer contains a generic, "Ultra ATA/133"
PCI card, that features a "Silicon Image" chipset and optional RAID
functions. I installed it (non-RAID), along with a pair of Samsung
SP1614N (160GB) hard disks, a couple of months ago. (My OS is Windows
Millennium, incidentally.)

It's been behaving nicely, thus far...with one exception, alas. When I
reboot the PC (i.e., with the reset button or keyboard), it doesn't
always find the drives, the first time (using the power switch is fine,
though). Several attempts are often necessary, which is a real drag!

Oh, well, for $18.95 (plus free shipping), I can't complain much; I
purchased it, from Buyaib.com <http://buyaib.com>, in February of 2003.

Also, I put the DVD-ROM (Panasonic SR-8583) and DVD-writer (Panasonic
SW-9571) on my AT mainboard's (Tyan Tsunami S1830S) ATA/33 controller.
Hence, each device is on its own channel, resulting in a somewhat faster
system. (Everything was connected directly to the Tsunami, before the
upgrade.)

Good Luck!


Cordially,
John Turco <[email protected]>
 
Well, according to Promise they *never* worked as Promise didn't support
the ATAPI protocol in their drivers. AFAICT they don't say that for the
Ultra100TX2 and the press release specifically says that the card is
compatible with ATAPI devices.
Exactly. In fact, Lite-On's online troubleshooting FAQ states specifically
that any of their optical drives should be connected directly to the
motherboard controller, not to a PCI card.
Click to expand...
OTOH, my hard disk is connected to a Promise UATA133 card and it works
Click to expand...

Wow, they actually sell stuff that works? Isn't it amazing!
 
Folkert Rienstra said:
Well, according to Promise they *never* worked as Promise didn't support
the ATAPI protocol in their drivers. AFAICT they don't say that for the
Ultra100TX2 and the press release specifically says that the card is
compatible with ATAPI devices.
Click to expand...

Mine are Ultra133TX2, and I have tried ATAPI drives with them. My
ATAPI Zip 100 drive worked OK - but at half of its normal speed. My
Pioneer DVD-RW drive worked fine for reading, but I was not able to
successfully burn a DVD while it was on the Promise controller.
 
That is the same card that ships with the retail packaged Western Digital
160GB harddrive.
I've used that card with the WD 160GB "JB" and WD 80GB "BB" hard drive.
 
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