abit vp6 boot problem

[benjamit]

ok i got this board barely used from some one else and it seems to work fine but my problem is that when it posts it doesn't recognize all the ata drives on the ide 1 and 2 controllers

i have 2 roms on the 2 nd ide controller, master cdrw and slave rom
i have 2 hdd on the 1 st ide controller both set to CS, one boot the other storage

the bios of the board sees all the drives but when the boards boots it only see the primary drive of 1 st ide controller

i have set the boot sequence to cdrom 1st, zip 100 2 nd, hdd 0 3 rd

in order for me to boot off the rom to install an os i have to switch the ribbon cable from 2 nd ide controller to 1 st controller, install the setup files, reboot and switch the ribbon cables back to 2nd ide controller so that the rest of the os files can be copied to the hdd 0

what is going wrong? why cannt i just boot off the rom on the 2nd controller?

 

[benjamit]

anyone?

 

[DieHardware]

Have you tried setting the CD-RW to slave and the reader to master? And it doesn't see the primary slave HDD at POST?(maybe jumper them master/slave).

 

[benjamit]

i'll try your suggestion

do you think it could be the ribbon cables? i have the 40 wire cable for the roms and the 80 wire cable for the hdds

 

[DieHardware]

If you have(or can get your hands on) spare cables it doesn't hurt swapping them for known good ones. Is the slave HDD seen?

 

[benjamit]

only in the bios and os but it doesnt show up during post

 

[NucEm]

Are you plugged into the HighPoint IDE connectors instead of the standard IDE? Try just the standard connectors. Also check the settings in the bios to see if the IDE controllers (1&2) are enabled as well as the ATA100 is enabled (HighPoint). Turn off the AGP-4x and AGP fast writes. I have a couple of these up and running. I boot from the ATA100RAID drive (HighPoint). I run Windows-XP Pro on both systems and during initial OS install I used the HighPoint drivers from HighPoint not MicroSoft (F6 during installation?). It could be a cable as others have suggested. I haven't tried CS on my hard drives. I set one as the master and the other as the slave.

 

[benjamit]

the boot drives are on the standard ide connectors and not the highpoint ones, i tried a 80 wire cable for both the roms and HDDS and still only the primary drive on the 1st ide connector is showing

should i try have my boot master and storage slave in stead of both as CS?

i have the cdrw is master and the cdrom as slave now, should i try both of them CS? wouldnt that confuse the OS on which rom is which? i had that happen to me in the past thats why i usually have the cdrw master and the other rom slave

im not using the highpoint controllers right now

also the cpus are not the same stepping, slightly off

does that have a negative impact on the system?

 

[NucEm]

If you pull one of the CPU's out will it boot then?

 

[Peter]

CS will only work when you have a CS-enabled cable (and got it the right way round ...). If unsure, use jumpers not CS.

 

[benjamit]

the cables im using now are ata66/100 they have a blue connector for the mobo side and black connectors for the drive sides

i'll try one cpu at boot up and setting the drives master and slave but that still doesnt explain why the roms set at master and slave are not showing up at post

 

[DieHardware]

Are you sure you've got them jumpered correctly?(the drives have to be jumpered differently for CS). If so maybe try rearranging them and put the HDDs as masters on each IDE channel and the optical drives as slaves.

 

[benjamit]

im sure that i have both the boot and storage hdds set to CS

in fact i took these from another system where they worked fine as CS

whats odd it that of the several other mobos msi ecs dfi asus this is the only thats ever given this kind of problem

 

[MetroRider]

i had this exact problem 2 months ago. let me ask you... have you updated the motherboard's bios to the latest one? you are probably using an older version. once i updated the bios, i was easily able to boot off from either of my cd-rom drives.

the newest one is vp6yt.exe and cable be downloaded from HERE

good luck!

 

[benjamit]

yea the bios is the one that shipped with the mobo so it hasnt been touched in 2 years

i was going to flash it but the abit web site didnt saying anything about fixing a boot up problem in it newest bios so i didnt do it


ill give it a try

 

[benjamit]

excellent

thanks guys

i thought it might be the bios before but thought it would be unlikely, ive flashed a few boards before but have never seem this type of problem

the ty version you linked me fixed the problem but i noticed that abit have a newer version of the same date, the dr version so i flashed the board again

everything seems fine now

so the problem wasnt the cabling, master slave, or CS or even the high point

 

[MetroRider]

glad to hear it worked!