Boot issues with A7N8X, Serial ATA, and ATA Controller

[WxAxGxS]

I just upgraded my system, adding a WD Serial ATA Raptor Hard drive to my Asus A7N8X Deluxe system. However, to accomodate my other Hard Drives, it was necessary for me to buy an extra controller-the Adaptec 1200A ATA RAID Controller.

The problem is that I cannot get the system to boot off of the Serial ATA while the controller is installed, it will not boot off of the Serial ATA. During the boot process, it checks for a bootable drive on the Adaptec Controller first. For some reason, its BIOS automatically sets the Primary Master as the boot drive (even if i go in and deselect it) and since there is no OS installed there, it gives me a "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER" error.

How exactly do I set up my BIOS(es) to allow booting from the Raptor? I currently have the only boot option as "SCSI" in the Asus BIOS. When I enter the Adaptec BIOS, i deselect the "BOOT" drive, turning back into "HDD0". I hit ESCAPE and then Y to exit, but when it reboots, "HDD0" is back to "BOOT"

ANY help is appreciated! My friends and I worked on this darn thing for hours last night. We can't figure out what to do. Let me know if you need any more information.

 

[mechBgon]

As a starting point, if you hit ESC during POST, you should get a full menu of boot options when POST completes, so you can select the SATA device.

Looking through the manual, I don't see a way to reverse the order in which the board scans the PCI bus, but I *think* that if you've set it to boot from SCSI, it will grab the first bootable PCI controller it finds and stick with that. So you might try going into the BIOS and manually giving the SATA controller a lower IRQ than the PCI slot that contains the add-in controller, and see if that helps. I'm not sure if I've even got my facts straight on this, but maybe it's worth a try.

Hope that helps some

 

[WxAxGxS]

None of that worked

The ESC thing didn't work. I didn't get a boot option menu. When I clicked ESC during POST.

Also, I am unable to edit the IRQ numbers. At least, after browsing the entire BIOS, I couldn't find one. Could you give me a step by step.


If anyone else has information that could help me, it would be GREATLY appreciated! Thank you in advance!

 

[mechBgon]

Just on a hunch, if you don't mind, try putting your Adaptec card in PCI slot #2 and see if that changes anything.

If that doesn't help, see section 4.4.5 of your manual and set the Resources controlled by to Manual, and see if that gets you on the right track.

 

[WxAxGxS]

Ports 2,3,5 don't work (I put it in 3 to start with, then to 5 thinkin that it would read them in order and hoping that the SATA would be above it... but then found that that is 3 automatically shared the the SATA and 5 has the greatest priority, so i swapped it to #2).

I'll try the manual thing when I get home. Thank you for your help!

 

[WxAxGxS]

I don't know if this helps at all, but with ESCD on, these are the data I receive from the Device listing (assuming these are the only relavent listings):

Controller, Bus Number, Device Number, Func Number, IRQ

Adaptec in Slot #1:
IDE Controller, 0, 9, 0, 14
Mass Storage Controller, 1, 6, 0, 12
RAID Controller, 1, 11, 0, 11

Adaptec in Slot #2
IDE Controller, 0, 9, 0, 14
Mass Storage Controller, 1, 7, 0, 12
RAID Controller, 1, 11, 0, 11

Adaptec in Slot #3
IDE Controller, 0, 9, 0, 14
Mass Storage Controller, 1, 8, 0, 11
RAID Controller, 1, 11, 0, 11

Adaptec in Slot #4
IDE Controller, 0, 9, 0, 14
Mass Storage Controller, 1, 9, 0, 12
RAID Controller, 1, 11, 0, 11

Adaptec in Slot #5
IDE Controller, 0, 9, 0, 14
Mass Storage Controller, 1, 10, 0, 12
RAID Controller, 1, 11, 0, 11

::EDIT::
I'm assuming I'd want the controller to have IRQs 3, 4, or 7 correct? I have no COM ports or LPT enabled, so these IRQs should be open and have lower Priority than that of the SATA. 4.4.5 of the Asus manual does not give any help in actually setting up IRQs Any help on this would be much appreciated!

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
If that doesn't help, see section 4.4.5 of your manual and set the Resources controlled by to Manual, and see if that gets you on the right track.

What happens if you try this ^^ ? I don't have my board here at home, and the manual doesn't say precisely what options you're given when you set this item to Manual. If it allows you to assign a particular IRQ to the PCI slot that the Adaptec is in, it might help. Or maybe not. I come from the Plug-'n-Play generation, so my understanding of how the PC reacts to this stuff is not the best

 

[WxAxGxS]

Wow.. I wish this computer had USB so i could just take pics of hte screen Anyway, I'll just type it all out...


When I set "Resources Controlled By" to "MANUAL", it ungrays "PCI IRQ RESOURCES EXCLUSION"

When I select this, it displays a table similar to this (IRQs 3-15)

IRQ 3 RESERVED -------- [PCI DEVICE] [RESERVED]
IRQ 4 RESERVED -------- [PCI DEVICE] [RESERVED]
IRQ 5 RESERVED -------- [PCI DEVICE] [RESERVED]

And so on.. the []'s being the options. "PCI Devices" is initially selected, which confuses me since to the left it says "RESERVED"

Beyond that, there are no other options.

 

[mechBgon]

Hmm, so could you use these menus to set up the SATA controller with one of these IRQs? If so, maybe that would get you out of the jam.

 

[WxAxGxS]

How exactly would I do that? I just don't understand what the whole "PCI DEVICE" and "RESERVED" options do?

Neither the BIOS for the adaptec or the Si SATA controllers have any options relating to IRQ. They both are rather baren.. Only giving "create/delete/fix array" options...

The other thing I don't get is why is it that if I go into the Adaptac BIOS and deselect HDD0 from being boot (so no boot is selected) and exit that it automatically makes HDD0 boot again? MUST it have a boot selected (therefore doing what it's doing) or is it just not saving when I exit. If it's just not saving, is there some key I must press other than ESC to exit? I looked in the manual and on the adaptec site, but found nothing...

 

[mechBgon]

Regarding those menus... use the arrow key to move to PCI Devices and hit Enter, and see if the SATA controller is in a list that you may chose from.

Regarding the Adaptec BIOS, I don't have that card so I'm not sure. Just peruse the menus to see if there's any special "Save & Exit" key listed, is the best advice I can think of.

 

[WxAxGxS]

Default in the BIOS is "PCI DEVICES." It appears that this just means that it can be assigned via PnP. When I switch it to reserved, whatever is assigned to this IRQ (in this case IRQ 4 - Multimedia) it gets moved to another IRQ and nothing gets assigned this IRQ.

 

[WxAxGxS]

As a last resort, is there any way I can make a boot disk (preferably DISK, not DISKS.. so I could just leave it in the floppy) that would automatically load Winbloze XP off of the SATA drive?

 

[mechBgon]

Thinking about all of this, I almost wonder if you should just pick up an add-in SATA controller and put it above the Adaptec. Keep it in mind, anyway... I don't see an easy way out of this one unless you can get away from having the Adaptec controller in there, because the system regards it and the SATALink as SCSI, and it doesn't sound like you can opt for the SATALink as the preferred device. Sorry I don't have any better suggestions

 

[WxAxGxS]

That's what I've been worried about Thank you for your help!

 

[BobPaul]

WxAxGxS, I just sent a large e-mail to your hotmail account. Basically I want more information. I'm fairly certain the solution can be found in the SATA bios. Also, I thought I must point out that the 1200A is an ATA 100 based raid card, and not a Serial ATA card (like the 1210SA) and that I can no longer refer to it as a SATA card, but will call it the Adaptec if I ever reply here again.

Also, I thought I'd mention to mechBgon that the IRQ idea was good, as the card with the lower IRQ will boot, but my understanding of WxAxGxS's computer is that he only has 1 add-in card with the rest of the HDs on the mobo's IDE controller. My experience with add-in cards has been that add-ins bios's take precidence to the mobo's bios regardless of their IRQ. Had WxAxGxS a SCSI addin controller, though, it would be the addin with the lowest IRQ that took precidence. I'm not entirely sure about how the cards react with the mainboard, mind you, but it has been my experience that they take control from the system bios.

Anyway, check your e-mail Wags (I'm sick of those damn x's, I'm not typing them...) and get back to me, probably via the e-mail as it was kind of long, partially cause I was looking at adaptec's SATA offerings, and did not find you're board until I had written most of an answer idea... I think this would have been an easier fix on their SATA Raid card, though...

 

[mechBgon]

Thanks for the extra help BobPaul and welcome to the Forums!

The SATALink SATA controller on the motherboard *is* on the PCI bus, although being an onboard device it doesn't plug into a PCI slot. So that is the fun part, it cannot be moved from slot to slot to do an end run around the motherboard's PCI-scan order. And unlike some BIOSes, I don't think this one allows one to simply reverse the scanning order, although I'll look at my own tomorrow morning and see if anything jumps out at me

 

[WxAxGxS]

Sorry Paul, I guess I should have made things a little more detailed

I have the following set up:

Asus A7N8X Deluxe w/ onboard (not onchip) SATA
Adaptac 1200A PATA RAID Controller
2x200GB Western Digital Special Edition (attached to onchip Primary IDE)
2xOptical (attached to onchip Secondary IDE)
1x36.7 GB WD Raptor (attached to onboard Primary SATA)
2x80GB Maxtor D740X (attached to Primary Adaptec IDE)
1x80GB WD (attached to Secondary Adaptec IDE)


The problem is that there is no way to make hte Adaptec lower in the boot order than the onboard (Silicon Image) SATA Controller. It is Device No. 11 whereas the lowest I can get the Adaptec is 10. As far as I can tell, there is no way to reverse the boot order or to get it so that it moves on beyond the Adaptec and to the SATA controler. In the Adaptec BIOS, it gives me the ability to deselect ALL of the HDDs as "Boot", however when I reboot, HDD0 is automatically selected.

 

[mechBgon]

My other idea is to start reserving the IRQ's below 10 so the Adaptec can't have them.

 

[WxAxGxS]

I actually don't think it's a matter of IRQ, but of Device Number... I have gotten the Adaptec to be IRQ 10 and IRQ 12, where the SATA is IRQ 11. However, the Device Number of the Adaptec is ALWAYS below that of the SATA controller.

 

[BobPaul]

Oh, excuse me... You've done some upgrading since I last remember. I didn't realize your mobo had a built in SATA controller... that confuses things a bit from the answer I replied with. Sorry about that!

Yeah, I'd have to agree that it is as the documentation for the Adaptec controller specifically mentioned placing it at a lower IRQ than an add-on SCSI card to make it boot instead of the SCSI card... In this case, as mechBgon has been saying the whole time, the onboard SATA needs to be a lower IRQ than the adaptec board.

This is a bit of a longshot, but it might just work. After I send this I'm going to look up your mobo documentation and browse that over. Here's a thought, though. If the item is plug and play, you might be able to control the IRQ via windows. This was something I did back on an old dual boot Win98/Redhat 6 config to make a network adapter I had work under linux. Goto the device manager and find your SATA controller. See if you can't place it at a low IRQ, the lower the better. Then place your Adaptec in a slot that will give it a high IRQ. Try that slot with IRQ 10, again.

But then again, I didn't finish reading where you managed to get the Adaptec to IRQ 12... damn. I should stop doing this at 2am. Sorry Wags. I'll look for a PDF of your mobo manual and get back to you.

Have you tried e-mailing either Asus or Adaptec? I've always thought it best to bother them when you run into a jam so long as you aren't trying to get help from MS or something!

 

[WxAxGxS]

I've emailed everyone related.. even WD.. heh.

I've gotten the Adaptec to use a higher IRQ than the SATA controller, but still without success. Winbloze lists the Adaptec at IRQ 17 and the SATA at IRQ 18. Neither can be changed, at least from my efforts.