ATA66 Hard Drive and Cabling

[Der Spankster]

I recently bought and installed a Maxtor 20.4 Gig ATA66 harddrive and a
Promise PCI controller card. My problem is that I cannot seem to cable in
the 3 other IDE devices I have. I have a CDRom. CD RW and a Zip drive. I
can Master/Slave any 2 of these on IDE2 on the motherboard. I cannot use
IDE1 because the Bios can't find the harddrive to boot. It tries to boot
from what-ever's on IDE1. I've also tried running one of the CD's (or the
Zip) from the extra slot on the Promise card but this doesn't work either.
No matter how I set up the bios (autodetect etc.) , I am unable to run these
3 IDE devices with this new hard drive. Currently using an ASUS slot 7 HX
board. Getting ready to change out for an Asus P5A Super 7. Can anyone be
of help. Thanks in advance.

[Too_Much_Coffee ®]

If you have an 80 wire ATA66 cable on the HDD, you may need to set all
devices to Cable Select. Cable Select is one of the jumper settings on the
device.

Too_Much_Coffee ®

"Der Spankster" <lai...@marion.net> wrote in message
news:yvIn4.208$QM4.4812@news...

[FMichel679]

At the moment I would bypass ata 66----take the Promise card out and install
your 4 drives in the normal fashion. I have read that unless your bios and mobo
is set up for ata 66 there is very little gain. I have an ibm 20 gig ata drive
and it works great as ide. A really good ata 66 card may come out soon . At the
moment there is none that I know of.

[Ron Reaugh]

FMichel679 wrote in message
<20000208222326...@ng-fb1.aol.com>...

>At the moment I would bypass ata 66----take the Promise card out and
install
>your 4 drives in the normal fashion. I have read that unless your bios and
mobo
>is set up for ata 66 there is very little gain.

The mobo either works or it doesn't with the Promise Ultra66. There is
nothing special needed in the mobo setup for it to work.

> I have an ibm 20 gig ata drive
>and it works great as ide. A really good ata 66 card may come out soon . At
the
>moment there is none that I know of.

Nope, the Promise Ultra66 and FastTrak66 are excellent.

[Steve Mattingly]

Do you have an option to select what you use to boot up in BIOS? If you do,
select SCSI since the Promise is detected as a SCSI device. If you have
problems usning this, then I imagine you are having a problem with the jumpers
on the drives not being correct for the setup you are trying to connect.
Master/slave/dual master, etc.

[Dirk]

In article <nF6o4.830$LC4.21147@bgtnsc04-
news.ops.worldnet.att.net>, "Ron Reaugh" <Ron-

Rea...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>FMichel679 wrote in message
><20000208222326...@ng-fb1.aol.com>...
>>At the moment I would bypass ata 66----take the Promise card
>>out and install
>>your 4 drives in the normal fashion. I have read that unless
>>your bios and mobo is set up for ata 66 there is very little
>>gain.
>
>

Good Idea. Why pay money for another IDE connector offering
little or no improvements?

>The mobo either works or it doesn't with the Promise Ultra66.
>There is nothing special needed in the mobo setup for it to
>work.
>
>

It works, his problem is getting the *other* IDE devices working
on IDE1 as non bootables. If your board doesnt support IDE1
devices as nonboots then put the boot HD back on IDE1 and then
your problem is gone! OHHHH but your *UDMA 66* is gone too :(

>
>>I have an ibm 20 gig ata drive
>>and it works great as ide. A really good ata 66 card may come
>>out soon . At the moment there is none that I know of.
>
>Nope, the Promise Ultra66 and FastTrak66 are excellent.
>

The cards work but how can a horse buggy be helped by increasing
the speed limit to 120mph?

Excellent at what? Are you running your drives at **UDMA 66**
on Promise cards? If so why? Are they running faster than they
were at non-UDMA 66 configuration ? Are you saying he should
keep the Promise card in his machine because it will provide his
HD a faster speed than it would otherwise have if installed on
his IDE1 ? That is after all what he is trying to accomplish
buy using it...not simply substituting it in there as an equal
replacement for an onboard IDE connector, which the promise may
be "excellent" at doing BTW for current HDs.

I suggest to the original poster to benchmark your drive while
installed on IDE1 for yourself, then connect to the Promise
using the 40 pin 80 conductor cable and repeat same benchmark.
You may want to consider the possibility that your current HD
will not be any faster when using **"UDMA 66"** than otherwise
so why use it for your *current* HD at all ??

Dirk

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