Hello to All. I want to use a VIA PCI card to provide additional IDE
channels for hardware. The via card is installed without problems.
However, when I use the additional IDE channel to connect a DVD drive
this drive is recognized as a CD drive. The DVD drive itself has no
problems, because when it is linked to a normal IDE channel it works.
Has anyone else seen this problem. Help is needed. Thanks.
After having set up a DVD drive before Christmas (in an external enclosure),
I can say I found the whole software stack to be very confusing. An
answer to you problem might be explained here:
http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?threadid=65851
Some PCI IDE cards don't support any ATAPI devices, only ATA devices like
hard disks. It sounds like your card does support some ATAPI devices,
because your drive is recognized as a CD. As that thread above explains,
for the most part it is best to hang the DVD off a motherboard IDE
interface, and put your hard drives on the plug in PCI IDE card. This
is handy, for example, when you need to update the flash firmware on
the DVD drive - AFAIK that can only be done via the motherboard IDE
interface, due to the limitations of what the DVD firmware flashers
understands about the software stack.
I think a PCI IDE card shows up in Windows via SCSI emulation. In other
words, the software used to access the PCI IDE card uses the SCSI
command set. Many non-native interfaces in Windows use the same
method. (There are even some IDE drivers provided by chipset manufacturers
that show up using SCSI emulation.)
http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/su...sess=no&prodkey=ASPI-4.70&language=English+US
Adaptec wrote a driver package called ASPI (Advanced SCSI Programming
Interface) and right now, I cannot find a description of exactly what
it does. What I can tell you, is the Nero package (tools for burning
disks - nero.com - Ahead Software), didn't need any additional drivers.
The Retrospect backup software from Dantz, installed a version of ASPI,
which I presume came originally from Adaptec. So, in all my fumbling about
with the DVD drive, it is possible that the ASPI drivers will help.
Note that on
www.cdfreaks.com, they don't seem to like ASPI, as it
seems to have problems.
I hope your fumbling goes more smoothly than mine did
I got the
drive working, but don't know exactly what software makes it work.
Paul
