GA-6BA: 2X LS-120 Slows Down with DMA enabled

[Joe]

Has anyone else experienced weirdness with these 2X LS-120 drives.

With DMA enabled it barely runs and is noisy (example ... AVI files freezing
or playing jerky and sometimes lock up my Windows ME system).

However, it works okay with DMA unchecked and is definitely faster than my
older previous 1X LS-120.

But according to the specifications, the 2X drive is supposed to support DMA
mode and it is identified by my motherboard Bios during bootup as a Mode 3
device. When I swap it back into my system with my older 1X LS-120, the
bootup process Identifies the older one as a Mode 2 device, so it seems that
my motherboard Bios is handling the devices properly.

I'm running WinME on a Gigabyte GA-6BA BX Chipset motherboard (with the
latest F1g Bios) and using a separate PCI Promise Utlra66 IDE Controller for
my two ATA-66 IDE Hard Drives.

I have enabled both of my Intel BX Chipset motherboard's onboard UDMA33 IDE
controllers where Channel 1 has a Master ATAPI CD-Rom with DMA enabled and
Channel 2 has the Panasonic 2X LS-120 as a Master (Model LKM-F394-1 Ver 5
00 ..... firmware F515 ....... Build Date April 1999 ...... S/N
9A9418DLW14144).

Detailed specs on the LS are found here:

http://www.mke.panasonic.co.jp/en/device/superdisk/superdisk934.html

I am using the standard Windows ME driver for the LS-120 drive.

Could this be a firmware issue?

The drive is nearly new, but would a cleaning kit be a possible fix here?
However, since it runs good with DMA unchecked in Windows ME, I can not
believe that dirty heads could be the problem.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated .... Thanks.

[Doug G]

I've had similar problems with an older system using an Epox board and K6-II
400 processor. When I enable DMA for my CD or CDRW drives they cease to
function, and if I enable DMA on my HD I have to sit through a 10 minute
hiccuping start process at boot up. Turn off the DMA and everything is fine.
Everything had been fine too, including DMA, till I updated to Win ME. I've
got the latest drivers, Bios, etc but with ME DMA doesn't work. I think that
may be the culprit.
I am shortly going to upgrade my system to an Athlon 1700 and new MB and
HD. We'll see what happens then. I also plan to do a CLEAN install of Win XP
Pro after all the other stuff. We'll see what happens. Meanwhile, my system
works much better without DMA. Good luck.