CompUSA ATA 100 Controller Card

[palladrj]

Hi All
I am having a problem configuring (or correctly installing) CompUSA ATA 100 Controller Card. After installation, the card is recognized in the Device Manager, and configured to enable both Pri and Sec channels. Both ROMs are recognized, can read from both, but slooooow. In fact, 120 minutes to copy 40 MB from CD-ROM to HDD. Tried Nero Burn, many errors, I don’t recall which. In summary, HDD appears to work fine, but Rom drives on ATA 100 controller do not. Does anyone know if the CD-ROMs will operate as master on Primary and Secondary on the ATA 100 controller card? Would they need to be configured as Slave?

On-Board Channels
Primary
Master - 80GB HDD w/WinME
Slave - Blank
Secondary
Master – HDD docking, no HDD installed, will be slave
Slave - Blank

CompUSA ATA 100 controller Card
Primary
Master – Generic 50X CD-ROM
Slave - Blank
Secondary
Master – TDK 16X CD-W/R
Slave – Blank


Reconfigured by switching HDDs to CompUSA and CD-ROMs to on-board. Now the sys will not boot because it is looking for the table in HDD(0), which of course, has been moved to the alternate controller.

Any suggestions on what do to get all HDDs and CD-ROMs on individual channels?

WinME
ECS K7s5A, On-Board LAN and Sound
IEEE 1394 Card
TDK 16X R/W
Generic CD-ROM
1.2 Duron
512MB OEM RAM
80GB Seagate Barracuda HDD
CompUSA ATA 100 Controller Card

Thanks
palladrj

[HAL9000]

Controller cards are not meant to run CD devices and they should remain connected to the motherboard. Also, double check your jumpers and BIOS settings as moving the hard drive from the controller back to the motherboard should still work fine. Better yet, move ONLY the hard drive to the controller card now, use the 80 wire IDE cable to connect it, set the hard drive to cable select, and connect the hard drive to the end IDE connector.

[palladrj]

Hal 9000
When I connect the HDD to the ATI 100 controller card, and rebooted, the system could not find the HDD boot file, and requests input from the floppy.
Had another HDD with WinMe installed. I connected the on-board primary channel to the docking system with an 80 wire cable, inserted the WinMw HDD into the docking bay with the Master/Slave/Sel set to Sel, the primary partition set to active, and booted up. System booted with the HDD in the docking bay. The HDD connected to the ATA 100 Controller Card was recognized, and I could read from it. The controller card is working. How can I get the system to boot from the HDD connected to the controller card when it asks for the floppy?
New ground for me.
Thanks
palladini

[HAL9000]

A couple things you can try. Set the boot order in your BIOS to read SCSI first (the controller is recognized by the system as SCSI even though it is IDE). If that doesn't work, put the hard drive back on the motherboard, don't connect anything to the controller, boot the system and install the controller drivers when requested, shut down, connect the drive to the controller card (your system may still require it to be set to boot from SCSI first).

[mike breck]

Is the HD on the controller card partitioned and formatted. If it is, does it have an OS installed.

Have you installed the drivers for the controller card on this HD?

Have you set the the correct boot sequence in the BIOS according to the controller card manual e.g. SCSI, A, C or A, SCSI, C. Try different combinations to see if they work.

[palladrj]

Hi Mike
Is the HD on the controller card partitioned and formatted. If it is, does it have an OS installed.
Yes, it is the original WinME boot HDD.

Have you installed the drivers for the controller card on this HD?
Yes

Have you set the the correct boot sequence in the BIOS according to the controller card manual e.g. SCSI, A, C or A, SCSI, C. Try different combinations to see if they work.

I'll try it tonight, although I believe I set the Boot seq to HDD(0), CD-ROM, Floppy, and all other devices. I may have seen it try the SCSI, not certain.

HAL9000
What are the IDs for the slots? How do the physical slots relate to the IDs in setup?
On-Board Pri, Master=HDD(0), Slave=HDD(1)?
On-Board Sec, Master=HDD(2), Slave=HDD(3)?
ATA 100 Pri, Master=HDD(4), Slave=HDD(5)?

Thanks Guys
palladrj

[mike breck]

palladrj,

The BIOS sees the controller as a SCSI device and it should be set to boot from that first. The reason for this is, the card controller BIOS will cut in before your mobo BIOS and take control of the HDs.

A usual sequence would be SCSI, C, A but I know with an old P200 mobo, I had to change the sequence to A, C, SCSI before a Promise controller would work. Very peculiar. Your mobo is newer, so you shouldn't have my problem.

HTH

[palladrj]

No luck so far guys. The only experience that I’ve had in this area was with the docking system. If I swapped slaved HDDs in the docking bay, I first had to remove the previous slaved HDD from the Device Mgr. If I didn’t, the system did not recognize the new, slaved HDD as being formatted. I think I’ve got the same problem here. After moving the connector form the on-board to the ATA/100 Controller Card, the system is looking for the boot sector, but does not find a formatted HDD. I confirmed this by booting with a start disk (as demanded by the system) and going to FDISK. It found no formatted HDD in the system.
The problem simply stated is that I cannot move a HDD with the OS from on-board to the controller card. When I move a HDD with the WinME OS on the on-board Primary, Master Channel to the ATA/100 Controller Card Primary, Master Channel, the system does not recognize the HDD as being formatted.
What the heck am I doing wrong? I would suspect the card if it hadn’t operated correctly with the HDD as a data disk, and not the OS.
Since the system is asking for a boot from the floppy, and since I have a start disk, and since I could format a blank HDD, I could install the OS on the HDD on the controller card. I’m hopeful that there are other means of getting the HDD recognized.
I’m lost.

[mike breck]

I would try formatting and partitioning the HD on the controller card using the Seagate utility floppy. Then load ME with the HD still on the controller.

See if that works.