From: Harvey Rose :Subject: [PCBUILD] Abit Hot Rod 66 Controller


> I've installed the controller card in my Abit BX6 computer. I've got the
> driver installed in Windows 98 on my 10.2 Gig (5400) 33mhz drive. I want
to
> put in a new drive 20.4 Gig (7200) Maxtor and make my 10.2 Gig a slave.
The
> new card won't recongize the 10.2 Gig drive as a master using the 80pin
cable.
> When I boot up I get the message "No Disks connected to HPT366 host
> Adapter" and "BIOS for HPT366 host adapter not installed." This appears
> when the 10.2 gig drive is connected as orginal to the motherboard. If the
> drivers are installed on the old drive and it boots, how is the controller
> recongized tell the drivers are loaded? I've looked on the ABIT site but
> there isn't anything about this or in the manual either.
>   Should I disable the IDE on the mother board? I have a LS120 connected
as
> a slave to the harddrive right now. Also I have a R/W drive and CDROM
drive
> connected to IDE2 on the motherboard.
> I plan on using Partition Magic to copy the old drive on to the new. Can
> anyone send me in the direction?
> Harvey Rose
> [log in to unmask]
>

Harvey,

The ATA 66 cables are color coded, the blue end must be plugged into the
card with the red line on the cable lined up with pin 1, the black connector
(the one on the end) is connected to the master drive and the gray connector
is connected to the slave. You should also make sure that you are using the
newest drivers for the HPT366 controller, they can be downloaded from Abit's
site.  In Device Manager it will show up under SCSI Controllers and only
uses 1 IRQ for both IDE channels, but two instances of the HPT366 controller
should show up even though they share an IRQ.  IDE 1 and IDE 2 do not have
to be disabled for the HPT366 to work.  I looked through the manual that
comes with the Hot Rod 66 controller and it lacked any trouble shooting
information.  I can tell you about the onboard HPT366 controllers, which I
assume would be the same.  The HPT366 controller does not like to share an
IRQ.  On the BX6 motherboard the only slots that don't share IRQ's are PCI
slot 2 and 3, so the Hot Rod Controller card should be installed in either
PCI slot 2 or 3.  You can set the IRQ that will be used by the PCI slots in
the BIOS under PnP/PCI Configuration.  The AGP and PCI slot 1 share an IRQ
and PCI Slot 4 & 5 share IRQ's.  When the controller is onboard there are
settings in the BIOS that you change to boot from the HPT366 controller but
the BX6 does not have these settings.  The 80 pin cable should only be used
with UDMA66 hard drives.  The Hot Rod Controller is backwards compatible but
they do not suggest using atapi devices along with hard drives for the
onboard controllers, and if you slave the slower drive to your new UDMA 66
drive, the new drive will only operate at UDMA 33 also thereby losing the
benefits of UDMA 66.  Have you tried attaching you new drive to the
controller to see if it is recognized?

Hope this helps.

Mary Wolden

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