Connecting Burner to Controller Card

[Seekermeister]

When I first installed THIS controller card, I only had the data ribbon connected to a DVD burner, because I didn't have a molex splitter to connect the power. However, the machine wouldn't boot at all with it connected. Usually, when I have done something like this with a device connected to the motherboard, it was totally ignored, or at worst, the boot was delayed while it detected devices. This has me wondering if it would work, even if totally and properly connected. Is it possible that the ATA133 port on the controller is only for HDs?

 

[bwnv]

The PATA connection will also work with optical drives. Maybe try it in a different slot. If it still won't boot disconnect the optical and see if it boots than. The add in card may need drivers loaded before it actually works with drives?

 

[Steve]

It could be that the card does not do ATAPI commands, in which case it can only control hard drives.

 

[Seekermeister]

Originally posted by: bwnv
The PATA connection will also work with optical drives. Maybe try it in a different slot. If it still won't boot disconnect the optical and see if it boots than. The add in card may need drivers loaded before it actually works with drives?

There is only 1 PATA slot for 2 IDE devices, so there is no swapping.


sm8000,

It could be that the card does not do ATAPI commands, in which case it can only control hard drives.

The CD that came with the controller has a bunch of different folders in it, which I'm not too sure about. but the VIA folder contains the SATA raid folder that I used , and it also contains a PIDE folder, which I do not know if the setup.exe deal with or not. However, the WinXP folder contains a 2 files labeled viadsk and an vidpide.inf, but no setup.exe. I suppose that I could manually install it, but I'm not sure that I should. What do you think?

 

[Steve]

It's more about the chipset on the card itself, and maybe its BIOS too. The link you gave for the card syas nothing about supporting optical drives, but you might try Via's website to see if the VT6421L does ATAPI.

 

[Seekermeister]

That's odd...I did as you suggested, but when I used the search function for that chipset number, it came back with zero results. Knowing how badly some search functions work, I may have to dig deeper.

 

[Zepper]

I didn't see any mention of ATAPI drive support on the linked website - generally when I see that sort of lack, I assume it doesn't exist and wouldn't buy that card if I needed ATAPI support. Apparently the 6421 chipset does support ATAPI. So maybe you will need to install the Via IDE driver into windows for it to work. Check the Via driver site for the latest for that chip.

.bh.

 

[Seekermeister]

For lack of a better idea, I sent an email to the vender's support address about this. I would have preferred to have something more to go on than just their word, but I need something definitive.

 

[Seekermeister]

Zepper,

I posted before I saw your post. I scanned the page that you linked, and I guess that you were looking at a couple of items where that it said that it supported ATAPI 6, which would make it appear that I shouldn't have a problem. I bet that I'm going to have to manually install the PIDE driver, but I will check on VIA Arena first. Thanks.

 

[Zepper]

No such thing as ATAPI-6. What they meant is up to ATA-6 (133MHz) and ATAPI. IDK of any ATAPI devices that have faster than 66 MHz interfaces.

.bh.

 

[Seekermeister]

I just got a response from the vender, and they passed the buck to the manufacturer. So I just fired off another email to them. Curiously, the manufacturer is Syba, which is not mentioned anywhere on the box. I really love the way that they rebadge things.

 

[Seekermeister]

I tried running the minidumps through windbg, but something was wrong with the source path, and it wouldn't download the symbols. But I still went ahead and ran the analysis, and it seemed to suggest that the problem was with viamraid.sys. Since the OS is on the harddrive that I connected to my new controller card (VIA chipset), I don't know how, I'm thinking that the controller card or it's driver may be the problem. Since this drive was never part of any raid system, can I simply move it to an onboard SATA port without any problems?

 

[Zepper]

Generally swapping drives between mobo SATA ports that are driven by the same brand of controller chips won't cause problems. Sometimes switching between different brands can be problematic. Sometimes installing the Adaptec ASPI layer software can help with optical drive support. It comes with a utility to check if an ASPI layer is already installed and what version it is as you only want one ASPI loaded at a time and the Adaptec one is the most generic one I'm aware of. I've not heard of ASPI software doing significant harm - "First, do no harm!"

I know that ASPI is supposed to be for SCSI, but controllers that are capable of RAID are usually treated like SCSI controllers by Windwoes.

.bh.
aka Johnny ASPIseed...

 

[Seekermeister]

Thanks Mr. ASPIseed.

 

[Seekermeister]

I tried moving the HD from the card, to an onboard SATA port, but it failed to initiate. I'm surprised, because the chipset of the controllers are nearly identical. I downloaded the ASPI, but haven't installed it, because at this point, I don't see much point. I'm beginning to believe that the controller card is defective. I'm probably going to RMA it, but I would like to know if it really is defective, or if I'm overlooking something first.

I found that the driver from the controller card had never really been installed. It was in Windows/OemDir all by itself. I went ahead and updated the card's driver with it, but it didn't solve the problem. Since the card is so cheap, I may be better off just buying a better one. Any suggestions for a reasonably priced SATA/PATA card?