Promise Ultra100 TX2 Controller Setup Help?

skubik

Distinguished
Oct 13, 2001
22
0
18,510
Not sure whether this is the appropriate board to be posting this, so if it is, forgive me. :^)

I'm just wondering whether anyone has any experience using a Promise Ultra100 TX2 ATA100 controller card, or virtually any other PCI controller card, that can potentially answer a few questions for me.

Firstly, I'm planning on adding a new drive to my system and it will interface with this card (don't have either yet), and will dual-boot WinXP and Slackware. However, if the MBR is on the new drive, how will the system know to look on that card for the MBR? My system is about 3 years old (ASUS P5A with the latest BIOS... from September 1999), and since ATA100 was only on the drawing boards back then, I just wonder how this will all work.

Secondly, is it wise, or possible, to put all my existing drives (Fujitsu 8.4 ATA33 HD, 32x CD-ROM, 12x4x32x CD-RW) on the new controller, or should I only put the new ATA100 drive on the ATA100 controller and leave everything else on the onboard IDE channels?

Thanks,

- skubik.
 

BGates2B

Distinguished
Dec 31, 2007
371
0
18,780
When you put the card in, you go into the mobo bios and set the boot 1st (or 2nd if you want floppy to be 1st) to SCSI.

The board recognizes the card as a SCSI card, even though it is IDE.

Secondly, is it wise, or possible, to put all my existing drives (Fujitsu 8.4 ATA33 HD, 32x CD-ROM, 12x4x32x CD-RW) on the new controller, or should I only put the new ATA100 drive on the ATA100 controller and leave everything else on the onboard IDE channels?
I would only put the ATA-100 drives on the add-on card. The other drives you list all max out at UltraDMA-33, so why waste the throughput. Plus, if you put a slower drive as a slave on the ATA-100 master, you will slow up that ATA-100 drive.


Intel = Ford
AMD = Chevy
Friends don't let friends drive Fords