From: Richard Lumley :Sent: Wednesday, July 12, 2000 6:41 PM
Subject: [PCBUILD] Promise Ultra66 card Problem
> Help..... I just purchased a PCI Promise Ultra66 card and have some kind
>
> of conflict with my system (W98,PIII 450MHz,256MB). I have tried moving
>
> it to another PCI slot but get the same results. My system starts to
> boot okay, then locks up. WHEN I get a message it says it has an error
> in a VXD--- file. I fdisked and formatted before attaching it to my
> Promise card. I am sometimes able to boot into safe mode and can even
> access my Maxtor 30GB drive. Any ideas to help me troubleshoot what is
> wrong would be greatly appreciated.
>
> TIA
> Richard Lumley
>
Richard,
Promise covers this on their site, there is apparently a slight difference
between the LBA translation of your motherboard and that of the Promise
card. The only way to get around it is to repartition/reformat your Hard
drive while it is connected to the Ultra 66 controller.
You do not mention whether you used DOS format or a third party format and
partition utility. From Promise's site:
"Please do not use any 3RD PARTY PARTITIONING OR FORMATTING UTILITIES. We
officially support the use of FDISK and FORMAT ONLY! Using 3RD PARTY
UTILITIES such as EZ BIOS, DISK MANAGER, MAXBLAST, ONTRACK, AND OTHERS can
cause SERIOUS DRIVE GEOMETRY ISSUES when using the prepared drives on our
cards, especially when it involves our UDMA Controllers such as our Ultra33,
Ultra66, FastTrak/33, and FastTrak66. Also you should never install LBA
Translation Software that is included with EZ BIOS, DISK MANAGER, MAXBLAST,
and ONTRACK Utilities. Our Controllers have their own LBA Support for
recognizing Large Hard Disk Drives.
Symptoms Include:
-Problems with drive capacity being misreported.
-Data corruption when installing any Operating System.
-Data corruption when copying or moving data.
-Problems accessing Hard Disk Drives. The Operating System will generally
locks up or it will take several minutes before the drive can be access.
-Operating System Hangs when opening Windows Explorer or My Computer.
If you are using programs like Partition Magic we recommend using the
software with the drives attached to our card at all times. Using the
software with the drives attached to the Onboard Controller and then moving
them to one of our cards can and will result in ISSUES. This also applies
for 3RD PARTY Multiple Boot Utilities, such as Boot Magic and System
Commander."
If your problem is related to IRQ conflicts, then you will have to check how
your motherboard assigns IRQ's to the PCI slots and which PCI slot shares an
IRQ with the USB. Promise Ultra66 cards Bios had a conflict with the USB
support provided on today's motherboards. You can download the new BIOS
from:
ftp://ftp.promise.com/Controllers/IDE/Ultra66/U66_0628.zip. These cards do
not like to share IRQ's and many motherboards now let you assign IRQ's to
PCI slots in the BIOS. You may have to go into the BIOS to assign the IRQs
to avoid conflicts. There are only 4 IRQ's that can be used by USB, PCI
and AGP, so usually the AGP and the first PCI slot share an IRQ. Depending
on your motherboard the 2nd and 3rd PCI slots may not share IRQs and the 4th
and 5th PCI slots and USB may share an IRQ. Again please check your
motherboard documentation, as this arrangement can be different based on the
motherboard or revision of a motherboard.
Some other items to verify, are that your motherboard is a least PCI 2.1
compliant as the Promise controller will not work on a motherboard that is
not PCI 2.1 compliant. You also must have a PnP BIOS on your motherboard
and your motherboard must support bus mastering. This information should be
in your motherboard documentation or manual.
Hope this helps,
Mary Wolden
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