Windows 2000 ATAPI.SYS on Windows NT?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Paul D.Smith
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Paul D.Smith

Anyone know if the Windows 2000 ATAPI.SYS will work on Windows NT? I need
an ATAPI.SYS that can select DMA per-device instead of per channel.

Thanks,
Paul DS.
 
Paul said:
Anyone know if the Windows 2000 ATAPI.SYS will work on Windows NT? I need
an ATAPI.SYS that can select DMA per-device instead of per channel.

Thanks,
Paul DS.
Click to expand...

It will not work.
 
Sounds like you speak from experience. I'm trying to find a way or using a
non-DMA capable and DMA capable device on the same IDE channel. Any ideas
as to how I might achieve this? What seems to happen at the moment is that
(I suspect) the driver tries to use DMA with everything.

Paul DS.
 
Well, the obvious solution (if upgrading from NT isn't an option)
would be to install a separate inexpensive IDE controller. Just
make sure the manufacturer still has available NT drivers.

Rick
 
I did consider that but Windows NT ATAPI.SYS only supports 2 IDE channels.
I already have 4 devices on 2 channels i.e. fully populated.

Paul DS.
 
Paul said:
Sounds like you speak from experience. I'm trying to find a way or using a
non-DMA capable and DMA capable device on the same IDE channel. Any ideas
as to how I might achieve this? What seems to happen at the moment is that
(I suspect) the driver tries to use DMA with everything.

Paul DS.
Click to expand...

Take a look at
http://nt4ref.zcm.com.au/dmahdd.htm

If that helps you out, go to m.p.windowsnt.misc
and say thank you to Calvin.
 
Paul said:
I did consider that but Windows NT ATAPI.SYS only supports 2 IDE channels.
I already have 4 devices on 2 channels i.e. fully populated.

Paul DS.
Click to expand...

I have had no problems using either 4-port PCI-IDE cards from Promise
or an 8 port card from 3Ware with NT4 to create things like CD towers
or storage towers with IDE drives for on-line backup of other machines.

The Promise cards needed no drivers unless you wanted RAID, but
the 3Ware one needed drivers even without RAID.

And if, for example, you install a 2 port PCI-IDE card, you can also
simply connect everything to that card and disable the motherboard's
IDE ports. I have done that with a lot of older systems where the
motherboard BIOS did not support large hard drives.
 
Rob,

Thanks for this link but unfortunately there is nothing there that I hadn't
already found. I think the issue is purely with the ATAPI.SYS driver for NT
where the DMA-capability is per-channel and the driver does not cope with
one device DMA capable and another not on a single channel.

BTW, I've replied to your other suggestion separately.

Paul DS
 
Rob,

Just to check, does the Promise card have 2 cables or 4? I'm not clear what
you mean by a "port" here. To clarify, the options are:

2 cables, Primary and Secondary channel, each channel has master and slave
=> 4 devices
i.e. port == device

....or...

4 cables, Primary and Secondary channel, each channel has master and slave
=> 8 devices
i.e. port == channel.

If the former, then this won't help. It's ATAPI.SYS, the driver, that is at
fault, not the motherboard and swapping 2 IDE channels (promise) for 2
others (motherboard) would make no difference. If the latter, this would
help, apart form the small issue that my PCI slots are fully populated
already (never said this was going to be easy did I!).

FYI, I've tried using Knoppix (http://www.knoppix.org) with no hardware or
BIOS changes and the Linux drivers (Knoppix is Debian Linux) handle my
set-up fine. I can read all devices and Linux reports UDMA for my
hard-drive and PIO for the CF reader, which are both on the same IDE
channel.

So bottom line, ATAPI.SYS seems to be crap and since I can't get the source
code, I'm pretty much up a creek...

My only out seems to be to upgrade to Win2K but this is a high "cost to
benefit" option. Alternatively, CF cards have just finalized DMA-capable
specs. so soon, CF cards will use DMA. I just have to wait...

Thanks for all your suggestions,
Paul DS.
 
So bottom line, ATAPI.SYS seems to be crap and since I can't get the source
code, I'm pretty much up a creek...

My only out seems to be to upgrade to Win2K but this is a high "cost to
benefit" option. Alternatively, CF cards have just finalized DMA-capable
specs. so soon, CF cards will use DMA. I just have to wait...
Click to expand...

Microsoft says that some ATAPI.SYS issues were fixed in SP6/6a. Is that
what you're running?

http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/nts/downloads/recommended/SP6/allSP6.asp
 
Paul D.Smith said:
Sadly yes.

Paul DS.

"Mike Brown - Process Manager"
Click to expand...
wrote in message news:[email protected]...
Click to expand...

Maybe this link will help you:

http://www.benchtest.com/nt_udma1.html

It appears that even with 3rd-party tools, DMA is still a per-channel
selection in NT4, not per-device. I would start looking for a 3rd-party
driver, i.e. your motherboard manufacturer or another manufacturer that made
boards based on the same chipset. Good luck.
 
Paul said:
Rob,

Just to check, does the Promise card have 2 cables or 4? I'm not clear what
you mean by a "port" here. To clarify, the options are:

2 cables, Primary and Secondary channel, each channel has master and slave
=> 4 devices
i.e. port == device

...or...

4 cables, Primary and Secondary channel, each channel has master and slave
=> 8 devices
i.e. port == channel.
Click to expand...

It had 4 ports on the card and you could hook a cable up
to each port.

This, however, has raised another issue in my mind: I can't
remember if you could hook two devices to each port or only
one. I *know* you could only have one device/port with the
8 port 3Ware card I have used: I just can't remember if it
was the same way with the 4 port Promise card. In any case,
details galore are available at the sites for Promise, HighPoint,
and 3Ware. I think Adaptec also makes some IDE and SATA cards,
but IIRC they use Promise controllers on their cards.
 
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