It's a PIA, but I saved the instructions in a Word Doc for future reference. My wife had a system based with this board and I tried this "trick" and it worked! I just wanted to have full access to the stripe sizes. Getting RAID1 is another benefit.
Where to find the necessary files:
You will need the bios of your choice for the a7v133 bios, and aflash ASUS bios flash utility, get them at
http://asus.com. I use, avu1003a.awd, so that is the example I will use, next you will need to go to
http://www.stormpages.com/crazyape/downloads.html, there you need to download, ft100v130build12mod, this is fullhack.bin, when you unzip it. This is the FT bios modded for pdc20265 also works on pdc20265r, as you will see, also get drivers ft100v130build44mod (or make them yourself!), these are the drivers you will need, unzip them, and put them on a formatted plain floppy, Win2k install will ask for them, and you will need to go into Win98 and install them, also download cbrom.
Create the Full RAID BIOS and enable it:
After you have all of these downloads, format a floppy, with system files, doesn?t need to be a full boot disk, but you will need one of those to FDisk, and format, your new array after the bios mod. To the system floppy, copy, avu1003a.awd, or your a7v133 bios choice, aflash, aflash.eng, fullhack.bin and cbrom.
Prepare your system to flash bios, this usually means, clock back to normal settings, and disable byte merge in your bios. Now boot up too the system floppy you have made, and at the, a: prompt, type, (note spacing):
a:\>cbrom avu1003a.awd /d (press enter)
This will show you the contents of your a7v133 bios, I am just using avu1003a.awd as an example any a7v133 bios will work, just type its name in place of avu1003a.awd, now in the contents you will see oem1, oem2, oem3. The one we are concerned with is oem2 the Lite RAID part of the bios. (We will replace the Lite RAID bios with a Full RAID bios! edit.) At the command:
a:\>cbrom avu1003a.awd /oem2 release (press enter)
It will finish up and say oem2 is released, then at the command:
a:\>cbrom avu1003a.awd /oem2 fullhack.bin (press enter)
It will say adding fullhack.bin.
Then you are ready to flash the modded bios, at
a:\>aflash (press enter)
and enter that bios name and flash.
Set up your new Full RAID drives:
Now put your RAID-ultra100 jumper in the RAID position, and have your array plugged in ready to define, when you get to the ft100 bios screen, push Ctrl-F to get into the RAID bios, setup your array under define array, this takes getting used to, as you use the space bar to switch settings, I use, stripe, 8k stripe size or block as it might be called, there are several stripe-block sizes to choose from, then select your 2 or more drives and make them bootable, don?t confuse stripe size-block size with, cluster size, that is what you do when you format.
Now that you have defined your array, reboot and go into bios and set the FT ATA 100,as your second boot device, floppy being first. Now you are ready to FDisk and format your array, you need to boot up with a system boot disk-install disk, and choose 2 for no cdrom support, then a:/fdisk. I dual boot so, I setup 2,4gig partitions, remember to make C: active, one for Win 98, one for Win 2k then the rest mp3's or storage.
Fine-tune your new system:
Just so you partition the full RAID array, now reboot up to the same install-boot disk, and format your RAID partitions, remember what letters they were when you FDisked, if you have another drive besides the RAID array. This is where cluster size comes into play, from everything I have heard cluster size, should be half of stripe-block size, that you set while defining array, some swear buy 16k -16k, others 32k-16k, I like too use, 8k stripe, 4k cluster. It feels fast to me with my 4 gig, OS partitions, and SiSoft Sandra drive bench, seems to agree. Just remember every time you define array, and change stripe-block size, you will likely wipe the array, and have to do, FDisk, format and install, over again. If you have an extra drive besides the RAID array, you can just ghost your partitions back in place. Now to chose your cluster size during formatting, use the z: switch, like this a:\>format c: /z:8. How this works is, 8 is actually 4k cluster, and 16=8k, 32=16k, 64=32k cluster, normally windows picks a default cluster size based on partition size .You really only need to use the z: switch and be picky about your cluster size with your boot partitions.
Now you are ready to ghost over your files or do clean installs of whatever operating systems you use, after win98 install go into device manager and under SCSI devices, change to CrazyApes ft100v130build44mod drivers, if you are installing Win2k, you will need said drivers on a floppy, and press f6 during install, when it asks for third party SCSI device drivers, and load them, if you?ve done it right Win2k will ask for them twice during the install. Otherwise you will get blue screen with inacesable boot device. I have tried the newest FT drivers modded, and get better performance with ft100v130build44mod, also I get better RAID benches with avu102a1.awd, and avu1003a.awd, for some reason avu1004.awd benches slower.
Cheers!
Any way to get RAID-1 running on this guy?
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