Enabling UDMD with an ECS K7S5A

[edjam]

How exactly can I do this? Am pretty much stuck where to look after the SiS site and ECS. Thx
James

 

[Lord Evermore]

Set the drives to "Auto" in the standard setup in CMOS. It will detect the drives' capabilities upon boot. If you have done that, watch the POST screen and see what the drives are detected as. If they show up as UDMA but aren't showing UDMA in Windows, then it's a Windows issue, not the BIOS.

 

[nortexoid]

update to the latest BIOS from ECS' website and then go into the BIOS and change the mode to 5 for each drive instead of auto or 4 (though it should be 4 manually or set to that automatically).

i've heard this working for a bunch of people.

good luck!

 

[edjam]

Well, I've tried all of these things with no lucl unfortunately. I have taken off the IDE Zip disk which was on the same shannel to see if that affected it, no luck there. I have updated the BIOS. I have changed cabled to what at least I think are ATA 100. I have ordered some of those anyway just to make sure I have the proper cabling. Does everyone else have these problems? I couldn't get UDMA on my Asus CUSL2 before working either. Any other suggestions before I go nuts?

 

[daddyo]

Everyone once in a while, XP decides to detect my IDE stuff as PIO. I usually end up formatting and reinstalling.

Now I use Norton Ghost, with an image of a fresh installation. I can usually do a whole "redo" in about 15 minutes.

 

[stevewm]

For DMA to enable properly on the k7s5a you MUST run this utility: http://filebox.vt.edu/users/lzas/SISIDE.EXE


It will appear to do nothing when ran, but Windows will report DMA mode upon reboot.

Since you are a fellow k7s5a owner I suggest you bookmark this site:K7S5A FAQ at OCWorkBench.com, Its THE faq on this board, covers pretty much every problem you might have with this board.

 

[edjam]

Thanks guys very much.

 

[nortexoid]

steve, why must u run that? - i've built 3 or 4 systems based on k7s5a's running winxp w/ all drives detected as UDMA enabled (and multi word DMA mode 2 for roms)...

i find it odd that some people can't get their DMA to enable without using that program...just what is that program doing anyway?

 

[stevewm]

Some drives will not go into DMA mode under 2k/XP on SiS735 chipsets, SiS released the SISIDE utility to fix this, it changes a few registry entries to get DMA to enable.

 

[skriefal]

I've used two K7S5As, and I was able to use DMA on both without having to run the SISIDE.EXE utility. In both cases, XP detected the DMA capability and enabled it automatically. The first board had the Jan/02 BIOS and an old 8GB WD & 15 GB Maxtor drive. The second board has the 3/25/02 BIOS and a 40GB Seagate.

 

[stevewm]

The DMA thing only affects some drives/device combinations.

I've setup five k7s5a systems, had to use SISIDE on 2 of them. The two I had to use it on had identical hardware configurations. Maxtor 40GB 7200 RPM and Liteon 32x CD-RW drive. Both where stuck in PIO mode until SISIDE.exe