.Subject:
.        multi IDE cards
.  Date:
.        Thu, 19 Feb 1998 12:58:17 -0500
.  From:
.        Winston Pike <[log in to unmask]>
.
.My vesa IDE controller is set for master/slave on the primary address
.and my
.CD is on the soundcard IDE set as master on secondary. The sound card
.is
.software I/O programable for I think 4 or 5 different addresses. Does
.this mean
.that I could plug in another IDE card set to secondary and use the
.sound card
.at a tertiary address?
.
.ie:
.primary I/O     1F0     master/slave drives IRQ 15
.secondary      170      master/slave drives IRQ 14
.tertiary I/O      168     master/slave drives IRQ 12
.
.Or am I missing something else?
.
.Winston
====================
Probably, I have 4 IDE hard drives using both controller ports on my
mobo, and I wasn't paying attention when I bought a Phillips CD-RW
drive. Somehow I was under the impression it would be SCSI, BUT, when I
got home and opened it up, lo and behold it is IDE. Setting It aside for
a couple of days (weeks), I made excuses to my wife as how busy I was at
work.... didn't feel like messing with my computer at home also.  NOT
normal behavior on my part, but....

Driving home one night inspiration struck,  my old propriatary CD-ROM, a
2x Creative Sound Blaster sound card and drive (the CD's demise prompted
the Phillips purchase), had to be replaced, and so I just bought a
generic Yamaha sound card WITH an IDE port.  Works GREAT. No problems at
all then.

It is still working well even after a motherboard replacement under it,
even though it indirectly caused the mother$%^&board problem.  In case
any of you are still interested this was an interesting one.

To help prevent recording underuns I decided to increase my memory to
128MB from 64MB (2 32MB SIMMs), well when I added the additional memory,
I started getting VCACHE blue screen errors when I tried working with
large files or many programs at once. The memory address always the
same.  Bad memory chip, right?  So I interchanged the 2 new chips to see
if the address changed, IT DIDN'T. So then I switched my old and new
SIMMs to determine which was at fault.  No change, still the same
address.  Re-installed windows 95, same problem.  Un-installed Windows
set machine up as a pure DOS 6.2--- wouldn't run.  At this point I took
out my original 64MB of SIMMs reinstalled Windows 95, tried again, SAME
DARN address error in VCACHE, FINALLY, I changed the mother@#$%^&board
to an ASUS board and that solved the problem. By the way every
diagnostic program I have or could borrow indicated the old board, the
memory, and the processor were good.

But in the process I messed up the bios configuration of 2 of the 4 hard
drives and it has taken several weeks to get everything back to normal.
BUT the new sound card and the PHILLIPS CD-RW worked fine as the 5th IDE
device (tertiary port) thru all of this.  Maybe I could add another
drive??? oh well.

By the way if some of you are wondering how I can mess around like this,
without my wife coming unglued -- she has her own computer!! and she
teaches MIS at a local college, besides which she has written 3 books
for QUE on computers. Nuff said??

Jim Baber