running ATA-133 hard drives in older BX motherboard systems.

[Joseph]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage (More info?)

With so many systems with BX motherboards around for such great price I
am hoping to utilize these systems. Only problem is their IDE
controllers usually only run at ATA-33 (way too slow for anything
good).

I have an idea that if I can plug in a pci-ide ata-133 controller into
these systems, then the problem is solved. However through more
research I realize this has an inherent problem. Which is that you
need to install the Win2k driver so that it will detect these pci
cards. so that u can then see the hard drive its connected to. Defeats
purpose because you must already be running your Win2k boot OS on the
slower interal drive.

My question is this. Are there any PCI IDE ata133 controllers out
there that has bios boot capability? By this I mean being able to at
bootup of computer read an installed OS on its hard drive and boot from
that instead. Do you remember back in the old days, Adaptec SCSI
controller has this ability to hijack the boot process and force a boot
from a scsi drive connected on its daisy chain? I am hoping ot find
ATA-133 controller PCI cards that can do this. Anyone know anything
about it?

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage (More info?)

What are you using them for, servers? A pentium-II can do 25 MB/s or less on
ethernet, so the UDMA-33 channels are not really a bottleneck.

The bigger problem with older BX boards is the 32GB BIOS bug.

"Joseph" <spmok2@canada.com> wrote in message
news:1112115530.855858.257070@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> With so many systems with BX motherboards around for such great price I
> am hoping to utilize these systems. Only problem is their IDE
> controllers usually only run at ATA-33 (way too slow for anything
> good).
>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage (More info?)

Joseph <spmok2@canada.com> wrote in message
news:1112115530.855858.257070@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...

> With so many systems with BX motherboards around for such great price
> I am hoping to utilize these systems. Only problem is their IDE controllers
> usually only run at ATA-33 (way too slow for anything good).

> I have an idea that if I can plug in a pci-ide ata-133 controller into
> these systems, then the problem is solved. However through more
> research I realize this has an inherent problem. Which is that you
> need to install the Win2k driver so that it will detect these pci
> cards. so that u can then see the hard drive its connected to.
> Defeats purpose because you must already be running your
> Win2k boot OS on the slower interal drive.

Nope, Win2K loads the driver at boot time, so
it runs the card at full speed once its booted.

> My question is this. Are there any PCI IDE ata133
> controllers out there that has bios boot capability?

Yes, most of them do.

> By this I mean being able to at bootup of computer read
> an installed OS on its hard drive and boot from that instead.

Yes, thats how SCSI works as well.

> Do you remember back in the old days, Adaptec SCSI
> controller has this ability to hijack the boot process and
> force a boot from a scsi drive connected on its daisy chain?
> I am hoping ot find ATA-133 controller PCI cards that can do this.

Yes, most of them do. Its uncommon to find one that cant.

> Anyone know anything about it?

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage (More info?)

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 14:18:48 -0800, "Eric Gisin"
<ericgisin@hotmail.com> wrote:

>What are you using them for, servers? A pentium-II can do 25 MB/s or less on
>ethernet, so the UDMA-33 channels are not really a bottleneck.

440BX was also used with P3's

>The bigger problem with older BX boards is the 32GB BIOS bug.

It should be conquerable between software layer and/or win2k or
above's non-reliance on the BIOS.

With the price of ATA controllers, though, there's absolutely no point
in dealing with ATA33 mode or the potential nuisances of the BIOS
limitations

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage (More info?)

> 440BX was also used with P3's
>
> >The bigger problem with older BX boards is the 32GB BIOS bug.
>
> It should be conquerable between software layer and/or win2k or
> above's non-reliance on the BIOS.
>
> With the price of ATA controllers, though, there's absolutely no point
> in dealing with ATA33 mode or the potential nuisances of the BIOS
> limitations

Three or four years ago I dropped a 1.2 gig Celeron into my Dell 400 MHz
440BX box, added a Promise 100TX controller with a couple of DeathStars
(which have always ran perfect for me) and it's still running fine for my
wife. Works fine as a file server to store my video files, she does
PhotoShop stuff on it and my daughter does some limited video editing on it
as well. Not bad for a box almost seven years old.

So to the OP, yes the card will enable a bios boot so if you just need the
extra space, a Promise card and a new drive is a worthwhile upgrade for a
440BX box.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage (More info?)

Previously Curious George <cg@email.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 14:18:48 -0800, "Eric Gisin"
> <ericgisin@hotmail.com> wrote:

>>What are you using them for, servers? A pentium-II can do 25 MB/s or less on
>>ethernet, so the UDMA-33 channels are not really a bottleneck.

A current mainboard with a Gigabit Ethernet card in a PCI slot also is
limited to 250...450 Mbit/s = 30...60MB/s in my experience. I have
seen peak rates of 600Mbit/s = 75MB/s, but only for UDP streaming,
with the right card/mainboard combo and no other device on the
IRQ used by the card.

For more speed a faster bus is needed. I see >900Mbit/s with TCP both
on a 33MHz/64bit PCI bus (dual Athlon 2800+, Intel NIC) as well as on
a PCI-X bus (Dual Opteron, Broadcom NIC).

It is not processing overhead, but the interrupt latency and bus
delays that limit network speed on traditional 33MHz/32bit PCI.

Arno

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage (More info?)

"Joseph" <spmok2@canada.com> wrote in message
news:1112115530.855858.257070@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> With so many systems with BX motherboards around for such great price I
> am hoping to utilize these systems. Only problem is their IDE
> controllers usually only run at ATA-33 (way too slow for anything
> good).
>
> I have an idea that if I can plug in a pci-ide ata-133 controller into
> these systems, then the problem is solved. However through more
> research I realize this has an inherent problem. Which is that you
> need to install the Win2k driver so that it will detect these pci
> cards. so that u can then see the hard drive its connected to. Defeats
> purpose because you must already be running your Win2k boot OS on the
> slower interal drive.
>
> My question is this. Are there any PCI IDE ata133 controllers out
> there that has bios boot capability? By this I mean being able to at
> bootup of computer read an installed OS on its hard drive and boot from
> that instead. Do you remember back in the old days, Adaptec SCSI
> controller has this ability to hijack the boot process and force a boot
> from a scsi drive connected on its daisy chain? I am hoping ot find
> ATA-133 controller PCI cards that can do this. Anyone know anything
> about it?
>

Pseudo ide controller cards are viewed by the PC as SCSI. So just set the
bios to boot from SCSI first. If you don't have that option, remove all
from the primary ide controller and disable it in the bios. It still may
work.

If you already have a SCSI controller, the one seen first by the PC is the
one the PC will try to boot from. But not both an pseudo ide controller
card and scsi controller card.

Yes, you have to install the driver for the controller card. This technique
is well-documented with Promise controller card additions.