From: Gerry Coburn :Subject: [PCBUILD] UDMA 66


> Hello Listers
>
> I have an Abit BE6 r2 board in my box with support for UDMA 66 devices.
Currently I am not using UDMA66 because I am about to upgrade from a Celeron
466 chip to a P3 600e Coppermine and want to make all the changes together.
>
> Currently I have two eide Maxtor hard drives installed, giving me a
capacity of approx 20Gb. Both of these run as udma 33's.at 5200r.p.m. I want
to upgrade to a faster hard drive(s)- ie 7200 - and wonder if anyone has any
recommendations.
>
> I want something of the same or greater capacity which can utilise UDMA66
and perhaps allow me to continue using the Maxtors. I understand that some
hard drives of particular manufacture do not co-exist happily with other
manufacturers products. Can anyone verify this?
>
> What is the recommendation of the list and is there any specific pitfalls
I need to look out for?
>
> Also can anyone tell me where I can get P3 chip supports from to allow me
to fit the new processor to my board? I am told that they normally come with
the board but either they were not in the box or I have lost them. I have
contacted Abit here in the UK but they are very slow in responding. Maybe
someone cand direct me to a source for these.
>
> Tia
> Gerry Coburn

Gerry,

There is a fact on the BE 6 which applies to the BE 6 R2 also and it has a
list of the compatible drives with the Highpoint UDMA 66:
http://members.xoom.com/abit_be6/  You might also want to read this review
from AnandTech comparing the UDMA 33 and UDMA 66 before you decide to enable
the UDMA 66:  http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1237

Many people are reporting problems with 13.6 gig drives from different
manufacturers including Maxtor, Quantum, and Western Digital with the HPT
366.  I happen to have both the Maxtor and the Quantum drives on a BE 6 and
am not having the same problems that the BE 6 R2 motherboards are having
with these drives.  They are not reporting the same problems with
compatibility with the Promise UDMA 66 controller cards.  Make sure that no
cards are in slot 5 (shares Bus Master signals with HPT and the only card
that can go in there with HPT enabled is a *non* bus master or no card at
all) and if there is a card in slot 3, it must be able to share IRQ's with
the Highpoint controller. Also be aware that many disk utilities can not
read the HPT 366 BIOS correctly and will not work with any drives connected
to it, including Norton Disk Doctor, which will incorrectly claim that the
partition table is invalid and you will lose all partitions above 8 gig
limit but it appears that all of the utilities that are not working with the
HPT 366 controllers seem to be working with the Promise controllers.  The
people who are having a lot of problems with the HPT 366 controllers on BE6
R2 boards are disabling these controllers and adding Promise UDMA66 cards
into their systems.

Hope this helps,

Mary Wolden

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