DMA for CD-ROM on A7V133- only works with HDD?

[xenite]

I have (what I think is) an interesting problem. I have 2 HDDs on my Promise controller and a Creative DVD (master) & CDR (slave) on my primary IDE controller.

The problem is this: When I have just the DVD and CDR on the IDE controller, the BIOS refuses to accept them as UDMA (it shows up as disabled), as does Windows ME (as evidenced in the Device Manager). Also, when I try to burn CDs on the CDR, it fails at 6x.

Now, when I take that cable and detatch it from the Primary IDE and put it instead on the secondary port of the Promise controller, they work great (can burn CD's from disk to disk). The Promise BIOS shows up with "Bus Mastering Enabled" and windows doesn't show the DMA check box at all- I guess that's only for primary IDE?)

Here's what really surprised me. When I hooked up my primary IDE with one of my HDDs (master) and the CDR, Windows ME recognized it as having DMA enabled, and I was able to burn at 6x.

It seems like DMA will only work on the "regular" IDE controllers if used in conjuction with an HDD. What's up with that?

I spent much time upgrading to the latest VIA drivers. I'm flummoxed. I also ran the DMATOOL that came with the VIA drivers, but it shows an error message saying "This only works with VIA IDE Controllers" (I can CLEARLY see the VIA IDE controller in my devices).

I can just hook everything into the Promise controller, but I want to know what's going on!

Any thoughts?

--Xenite


Beware the Sword of the Righteous, for it's hard to tell where the handle ends and the blade begins.

 

[stable]

As a heads-up, we usually put a CD-R/CD-RW as the master on it's own IDE connection (only device on either the primary or secondary IDE connection). We have recently confirmed a bizarre problem specifically concerning the KT133A chipset as it relates to DMA control, which is especially relevant with SoundBlaster cards.

You can read about it at:

http://www.au-ja.de/review-kt133a-1-en.html

I hope this helps answer your questions.
Steve Benoit


Stable Technologies
'The way IT should be!'

 

[xenite]

Thanks. I read the article. It's very discouraging. I think I'm going to slap everything on the Promise controller and not worry about it until I add another IDE device.

Thanks



Beware the Sword of the Righteous, for it's hard to tell where the handle ends and the blade begins.