From: "Joel M. Blackman" :Sent: Monday, June 18, 2001 7:50 PM
Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] Adding New Hard Drive


> If your mobo doesn't support DMA 100, the Promise Ultra 100 and an 80 wire
> cable won't help.  I'd still get the DMA 100 for when you upgrade to a
> system that does support it.  The price difference is kind of insignificant,
> so I'd say go ahead and get the drive you want.
> 
> 
> 
> I want to add a bigger hard drive to my system.  On reading my motherboard
> manual I see it has an Asus P2B motherboard with Ultra DMA/33 bus master
> IDE.  My hard drive is Fujitsu 6GB.  What I would like to know is can I get
> any benefit from a new ultra DMA 100 7200 RPM drive and make it the master?
> Do I need a Promise Ultra 100 and the 80 wire cable for this?
> 

Joel,

Here is an excerpt from Promise on the DMA issue and the Ultra 100:

The "DMA checkbox" that you’re referring to will not appear for any HDD connected to the Ultra100. Since the card’s sole purpose in life is to provide you’re computer with an ATA/100 interface, the feature is automatically, and always, enabled. As long as the Ultra100 BIOS detects the HDD as "Mode 5", the ATA/100 timing will be used. You can check this by running a benchmark program on the HDD. We recommend using the CoreTest utility that you can download from ftp://ftp.promise.com/Misc/CT3.EXE. NOTE: You should run CoreTest from a true DOS environment. To do this, reboot your computer using a boot disk. Now you can switch to the HDD and run CoreTest. 

Mary Wolden
A+, Net+, MCP+I, MCSE, CNA, CCNA
Cisco Networking Academy Instructor

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