X800 pro - 3nd ATA controller not initialising

  • Thread starter Thread starter Arthur Hagen
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A

Arthur Hagen

I'm not sure whether this is a known problem or not, but if anyone here have
seen this and know a workaround, it would be great.

Problem: After adding an X800 pro AGP to the system, only one out of two
ATA RAID controllers will run its BIOS startup routines. This problem
doesn't occur when using different AGP video cards (Matrox Parhelia, 3dfx
Voodoo 5 5500 AGP or an old Rage32).

With other video card:
....
System ATA init
ATA RAID controller 1 init
Video BIOS init
ATA RAID controller 2 init
BOOT

With ATI X800 pro:
....
System ATA init
ATA RAID controller 1 init
Video BIOS init
BOOT

If switching the ATA controller order in the system BIOS (Boot order set to
"internal" or "external" first), I get the same result, but with the
different controller being detected:

With other video card:
....
System ATA init
ATA RAID controller 2 init
Video BIOS initialising
ATA RAID controller 1 init
BOOT

With ATI X800 pro:
....
System ATA init
ATA RAID controller 2 init
Video BIOS init
BOOT

System details:

ASUS P4T533, latest BIOS
P4 3.06HT
512MB PC4200 RDRAM
On-board Promise FastTrack Lite 133 ATA RAID controller
PCI Adaptec 1200A ATA RAID controller
AGP ATI X800 Pro (ATI branded)

Is this a known problem?
Is the ATI card incapable of passing the buck back to the system BIOS so
other devices can initialise?
Are there any workarounds?

Regards,
 
Toggle these options in BIOS, one at a time, and see what happens:

assign irq to VGA

video boot order (may also be listed as "primary vga" or something along the
lines)
 
First of One said:
Toggle these options in BIOS, one at a time, and see what happens:

assign irq to VGA
Click to expand...

There's no such option. I can assign IRQ to PCI slots, but not to AGP.
Since the AGP slot tends to share one IRQ with slot 1, I tried setting that
hard to all possible values, but to no avail -- exact same problem.
I also tried turning off PnP and assigning all the IRQs for all PCI cards
manually, which also made no difference.
It doesn't seem to be an IRQ problem at all.

The boot init order remains the same:
ATA controller choosen as first in the BIOS (internal or external)
Video
Other ATA controllers

And the ATI card invariably cuts this short and causes the remaining devices
not to run its BIOS startup code (which is necessary for RAID controllers,
to detect the current array of drives).
video boot order (may also be listed as "primary vga" or something
along the lines)
Click to expand...

You can choose that, sure, but it only chooses which card to use for the
boot display on a system with both a PCI and an AGP video card. In this
case, I only have an AGP card (and no on-board video). Still, I tried, with
no better results.

To sum it up, it appears that the X800 (and possibly other ATI-based cards)
causes a problem if you have devices that have to be initialised *after* the
video BIOS but before booting. Most people would never see a problem here,
of course, but that doesn't make it less of a problem.

Anyhow, because of this and due to the X800 being unable to do video overlay
in independent mode, I went back to the old and slow Parhelia. I'll lose
quite a bit of money on the restocking fee for the X800, but have learnt a
valuable lesson.
Too bad, ATI, I hardly knew ye.

Regards,
 
bubble head said:
Instead of taking the hit on the video card why don't you buy a new
mobo
Click to expand...

Sure thing. Tell me just which socket 478 motherboard with 5 or 6 PCI slots
and on-board parallel RAID that is guaranteed to work with an ATI Radeon
card *and* a second RAID.

Never mind that I'd have to get new RAM too due to the dearth of 32-bit
RDRAM motherboards, and most likely back up and restore one full RAID set
too, due to controllers not being compatible. For something that isn't
guaranteed to solve the problem (remember: the problem doesn't occur with
other video cards, so I wouldn't assume that the MB is at fault), it doesn't
sound like it'd do much more than adding to the list of things I have to
return and lose money on.

Of course, if anyone *have* run an ATI Radeon card with multiple RAIDs, I'd
love to hear the specifics.
 
Are there any workarounds?
Click to expand...

Is the RAID card in the PCI slot right next to the AGP slot?

I had a similar issue with my new X800 - moving the RAID card down to the
next PCI slot cured all.


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