Abit KT7A and IDE Problem!

[Guest]

I recently upgraded to an amd 1.4 gig ath with the abit kt7a mobo. I am having problems with the IDE 2 and my cdroms. My 10x Acer burner that worked fine in my old system wont burn above 4x. And my dvd player on the same ide wont show up. Im thinking data is getting slowed down or is being slowed down in the bios. This is my first amd so im not sure of all the details of the chip/mobo and this may be a simple fix. Ive done a clean windows install of 98 and win2k with same results. Thanks for any help!

Sean

 

[FatBurger]

What version of the BIOS do you have?

-----------------
Whoever thinks up a good sig for me gets a prize

 

[jlanka]

Also, what changes did you make in the BIOS to accomodate the 1.4?

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

 

[Guest]

Well I think I fixed the problem. The mobo was forcing the data transfer in PIO mode. I have no idea what that was, I jsut know ive never seen it. Found in win2k where to switch it to dma and bammo, im rocking on now.

This bios is still confusing me. The bios is like 6.00 or something like that Soft menu III. I cant get my front side bus to run at 133 or even 103. But I hear this is a common problem. Im runing at about 1.3gigs.

I am not sure if my ram is running at 133 though. I dont see a place to select DRAM to 133. I got poor results when benchmarking with Sisoft Sandra. In the bios there is a selection for bank 0/1 dram timing. Now its set on 8/10ns. I can change this to normal, medium, fast or turbo. Not sure about that though. Advise if you know.

There is also a DRAM Clock setting, default is Host CLK. I can change it to HCLK+PCICLK. Any thoughts? Thanks

Sean

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by seanbmc on 07/31/01 06:57 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[njeske]

I had the same problem in Win2k before I figured out how to set all my IDE controllers to use DMA. Also, depending on what version of the KT7A bios you have, it might not automatically have your IDE devices using DMA. Check to make sure you have the latest bios, and also check your bios settings to make sure it is using the DMA feature of your controller and drives.

 

[jlanka]

There is also a DRAM Clock setting, default is Host CLK. I can change it to HCLK+PCICLK. Any thoughts? Thanks

bingo

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

 

[Guest]

By the manuals, the Abit KT7a supports t-bird chips up to 1200mhz if you noticed, but theres no problem runnig it faster (just set it at 133 x 10.5...)