At wits end (K7S5A)

[WhoDeeny]

For some reason my ES K7S5A Rev 4 board simply will not function under anything other than PIO, as soon as any drive on the board is forced into DMA she won't boot! Needles to say this has caused countless headaches for me!
As far as spec's go I don't know what to tell you, its standard config's with DDR Ram, latest ECS BIOS (no IDE drivers other than windows native) 1.06 AGP drivers and the standard lot. I'm really at wits end here trying to figure out what's going on!

 

[Zepper]

Check the FAQs in the ECS section of the forums on www.OCWorkbench.com
.bh.

 

[Jiggz]

I've got the exactly the same board but seems to be working perfectly. Of course, after going through all the roughs first. You said you already have the latest bios which is the 011016, then make sure you do not disable the modem in the bios. Even though there is no built in modem make sure this is always enable. Better yet start with default settings and then with minimum peripherals like a stick of ram, video card, HDD and a CDRom. Also use the built in sound for now until you figure out how to make this board work. Enable the DMA and if it still would not work do a clean slate installation.

 

[nortexoid]

which latest bios?...the official ECS one or the one from OCworkbench?

what native drivers - that is, for what OS?

in your BIOS, set the programmable PIO mode to 5, instead of 4 (which is default)
try that...

if it doesn't work, u can try flashing your bios to another one provided on ocworkbench, otherwise download the AGP + IDE drivers there and extract it...then install the IDE drivers and see how taht works....

I have the board running perfectly w/ DMA on, though I had to set the PIO to 5 in the bios to actually enable DMA...otherwise it just shows it enabled in windows, though it isn't (or so i figure due to the serious lack of performance)

 

[WhoDeeny]

Tried the "clean slate" deal literally dozens of times to no avail, so there's got to be something I'm missing. I'm going to try enabling the modem and PIO mode set to 5 as suggested (although, when you manually set that int th BIOS don't you also have to enter your drive spec's?). I'm using the latest offical CS BIOS and Win2k drivers. I've read all the FAQ's on OCWorkbench but none seem to cover my specific issue and when I d/l the drivers its lableled for both AGP and IDE but I'm only finding the AGP drivers are actually there (or am I just stupid?). Thanks for the suggestions guys, here's to hoping they work! (be back in a few to let you know the results)

 

[WhoDeeny]

As I guessed, enabling the modem had no effect but switching PIO mode resulted in the board not finding the drives @ all and then CMOS showed them as "not installed" when re-entering th BIOS. Guess i'll try to find an actual .inf file for the IDE as even the install CD only has the siside.exe file and no drivers, and perhaps try another BIOS. Thanks again, and as always I'm still open to suggestions!

 

[WhoDeeny]

Will do just that this afternoon

 

[WhoDeeny]

Ok, now I've updated to IDE drivers that were bundled with the AGP 1.07 from SiS' webpage, and the Win2k device manager is actually showing UDMA, but only on my slave drives!

 

[WhoDeeny]

Is UDMA not possible on master drivers in a master/slave set up as opposed to single?

 

[nortexoid]

the IDE drivers are also bundled w/ the AGP ones from OCworkbench - u didn't look hard enough...they're in a sub directory i believe...

anyway, u can set the PIO mode in the Bios without having to manually enter parameters...just do an auto-detect of them, and then set only the PIO manually to 5...if it doesn't work for some reason, try the IDE drivers bundled from OCworkbench

in a final attempt, trying flashing your bios to their latest one for yoru specific board (i.e. LAN or without LAN)...then go from there...

if u're afraid to flash the bios, don't be - make a backup first of your current bios and copy it to a disk, naming the file AMIBIOS.bin (i think)...double check a site first regarding AMI Bios recovery - known as "boot block"...if u screw up yoru flash, it auto-searches the floppy for a file called AMIBIOS.bin and then flashes it...i did it in fact and ti worked.

anyway, u'll probably have to flash the bios from your hdd, but make sure u boot into a DOS prompt (a real dos prompt, dont' load windows)...if the flasher states that the bios u're attempting to update is named 'illegible ASCI characters here', then don't flash it...something is screwy (this is how i screwed mine but easily recovered)

anyway, UDMA/DMA (multiword) works fine w/ master/slave, primary/master (in other words, all) configurations.

 

[Pabster]

Just run SISIDE. If you're using XP, I'd recommend the latest AGP driver (1.07) but there's no need to install anything further. You can verify the performance of your drive with something ala HDTach. I don't recommend Sandra, because the results are often questionable at best and unrepeatable.

 

[WhoDeeny]

I've flashed the BIOS to the latest version over the weekend and then updated the IDE and AGP drivers 10 1.07 (you're right, there were there but I used the ones provided by SiS) When forcing PIO mode 5 in the BIOS the board still hangs during the second win2k boot screen. Siside.exe was ran last night, which gave me UDMA on the slaves and the masterssstill remained @ PIO (although in device manager under advanced optins for ATA/ATAPI devices the masters do show as DMA if available but default to PIO). I guess the only other option I have at the moment is to try thr ocworkbench drivers and hope that ECS finally gets back to me or request an RMA

 

[WhoDeeny]

Yay, a new BIOS. Maybe this will help...

 

[MoleX]

1st run siside.exe (should fix prob)

Then try changing HD jumper to cables select


MoleX

 

[WhoDeeny]

Note to self: Next time use 80 wire cables! (Dumbass)