On 16 Sep 2005 at 18:19, Edward A, Black, Sr. wrote:

> I have a computer I am working on that has an ASUS P3B-F Slot1 P-III.  I
> have a 20G harddrive attached thru an Untra100  PCI-IDE card.  The
> manual for the ASUS motherboard explains how to set BIOS information for
> onboard IDE ports [I have other harddrives/CD-RWs attached to those
> ports].
>
> How do I access the BIOS on the Ultra100 card so I can adjust if
> needed or check on statistics, depending on device attached [ie:  a
> future DVD unit]?  I assume this procedure would work had it been an
> Ultra66 or some other PCI-IDE card.

  It's also the same for a SCSI controller card.  There are basically three
possibilities:

1.  The BIOS ROM on the card may, when the motherboard BIOS gives it the
chance to initialize, offer an opportunity to enter a setup/config mode.
(On most Adaptec SCSI cards, you would get a prompt offering you a short
period -- 15 seconds, I think -- to type Ctrl-A to go into card setup.)

2.  The manufacturer might supply a utility with the board that you can run
from the booted OS.  This is less likely -- the OS might be running from a
drive attached to the controller, and so changing controller settings might
cause it to suddenly crash.  But it could work like Partition Magic, where
you define the settings you want, and they actually get applied when you
reboot.

3.  There might not be any user configuration options available.

> I also inserted a Wiseland ISA Parallel Port.  I am not sure if it is
> PnP or not, It is for an external  Zip250 drive I have.  How can I be
> sure if I can read or write to the Zip drive if it is plugged in to this
> parallel port.  I was unsucessful when I used in in the older Pentium
> computer that I have.
>
> In this case, the card can use IRQ5 or IRQ7 [set to IRQ7 by a jumper]
> and use ports 378, 278, or 3BC [set to 378 by jumpers].   I assume that
> I need to go to the ASUS BIOS and set IRQ7 to be reserved so that IRQ7
> is not used elsewhere and can be used by the parallel port card [&
> Zip250 deive]?  How do I reserve a port address for it?

  378 and IRQ 5 are standard for the parallel LPT1: port built in on most
modern motherboards.  Unless you've disabled the built-in port via the BIOS,
it's fairly likely that the 378 address is conflicting with that device, and
that could be why you had trouble with it before.
  You haven't said, but I assume the reason you want to install an
additional port is that you've got a printer connected to the built-in port.
(The parallel Zip 100 was supposed to work as a "pass through" to a printer,
but I never actually tested that.)  So the 378/5 settings are already in use
and 278/7 would be the LPT2: settings for the board.
  Being ISA, the board may not be Plug-and-Play.  So yes, you might need to
reserve IRQ7 in the BIOS setup.

David Gillett

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