Motherboard decision, can I get some help?

[rsboehner]

You guys are a tremendous help.

I want to say a few more things to make sure I got everything straight. If/when I get the zip drive, I'm almost certain I will get an internal one. We have a DSL connection I'm running off of right now, and many times this is faster than the university connections, so portability isn't really a concern. Can I assume the built in ata100 controller is backwards compatible to the ata66 so I can put the zip drive on it? Or would it be more sensible to buy an ata66 card to put it on and use the built in 100 one for the hard drive(s)? CompuGeekIAM said something about only being able to put hard drives on these controller cards, or was he referring to that I could only put IDE hard drives on them as well as any other IDE device?

 

[Dulanic]

I will agree with them.... if you can live with the 4 IDE devices go with the MSI, however I will say if you need more the A7V is a good board. I got the A7V myself because I used 7 IDE devices (3HD + CD + CDRW + DVD + Zip) and for that it works great.

 

[chansen]

rs, despite the fact that we all seem to get on one-another's backs about recommendations around here, I've always made my decisions based on the general concensus of respondents. I've had good luck with this approach. Here, you have two good choices - both will work well.

Points made against the Asus A7V are well-founded. Though very stable, it falls slightly behind the MSI. It also uses jumpers for multiplier and bus speed. Though a new BIOS with these adjustments has been leaked (or is it official now?), the general concensus is that the MSI is the better quality board. Mate that with an inexpensive ATA66 controller card and you have the general functionality of the Asus (5 PCI slots open, 4 ATA66/4 ATA100 capability) and increased stability for about the price of the Asus. I suppose you could also move the controller to another computer later if needed.

Now, I do not have experience with IDE controller cards, just SCSI, so somebody please correct me if I'm wrong, but this is how I'd connect these devices:

On-board ATA 100:
IDE1: IBM Deckstar 45G ATA 100(master)
IDE2: 6G ATA66 (master), Zip 100/250 (slave)

Controller card (ATA66/100):
IDE1: DVD (master)
IDE2: CDR (master)

The only question is where to put the darn Zip. Others may put it on the DVD channel, but if you're only using the 6GB drive for mp3s, I'd go with the above more for aesthetics.

Also, perhaps someone can relay how to boot from CD under this configuration. I believe that you MAY have to set the motherboard BIOS to boot from SCSI, and to make a change in the controller's BIOS as well. This is how I do it with my SCSI controller and CDROM.

Please, will a more learned individual than myself confirm or deny this?

Regards,
Craig

 

[Noriaki]

Get the MSi

K7T Pro has ATA66 and no multiplier adjustment
K7T Pro2 has ATA66 and does have multiplier adjustments
K7T Pro2A replaces ATA66 with ATA100, still a 4 device limit.

Get like an old cheapo Promise ATA33 card..or even 66 or 100 if you want.
Then you can have 8 devices for 3 IRQs or 6 for 2 IRQs (the promise has 4 devices and only 1 IRQ)

Don't get ABit...there boards look great on paper, and their hand picked review samples kick arse..but in general they have low quality boards that aren't very stable and have more conflicts and failures than other boards. Granted, if you get one that works they are good stuf...but the chances of getting a lemon with ABit are IMO too high.

 

[LXi]

I would get a real cheap ATA33/66 IDE controller, 'cause CD-ROMs, CD-Rs, and zip drives alike will not take advantage of anything above ATA33. I'd put things like hard drive and CD-R on the motherboard IDE ports for optimum performance, and put Zip and CD/DVD-ROM on the controllers.

 

[Fisher999]

The magazine "Maximum PC" did a review on an Alienware Systems Computer earlier this year in which a Promise Ultra 66 Controller (I have used two of these with Maxtor drives in two different systems) were used because Alienware had found that the VIA KX-133 chipset was not "up to snuff" when it came to ATA-66 performance. Maximum PC confirmed this while testing the system by swapping the Hard Drives to the mobo's onboard ATA-66 controller and saw HardDriveTach scores plummet.

HOWEVER, Alienware had also attached one (or two?) optical drives to the Promise ATA-66 and Maximum PC was getting terrible benchmark results. So they moved the optical drives over to the mobo's onboard IDE controllers and benchmarks were up to snuff.

Furthermore, it states specifically in my Promise Ultra 66 Controller's manual that the two IDE controllers on the card are ONLY to be used for IDE hard drives and NOT optical storage devices like CD-ROMS and the like.

I suggest you attach the two hard drives as masters on each of the Promise's IDE controllers, attach the DVD as primary master with CDRW as it's slave on the mobo's primary IDE channel (CDRW manuals often recommend that they be configured as slaves) and put the internal zip drive as a MASTER on the mobo's seconday IDE channel.