no drives, no matter what!

[mobobobo]

I am having a terrible time with my neo4 (though it has been kinder to me than the MachSpeed board I originally bought that does not POST). The neo boots but will not detect any hard drives or CD-ROM. It sees the floppy and can boot from it.

I have tried EIDE (known good, this is an upgrade) on embedded controller, onboard SATA (slot 1), and the HighPoint RAID controller I bought for the upgrade in the PCI-E 1x slot. No controller ever detects a drive or tries to boot from it.

The board came with v5.2 BIOS, I have flashed it to v5.3 with no change. I have cleared the CMOS repeatedly and tried all kinds of setup options. I even tried powering a single hard drive from an old AT power supply with a mechanical on/off switch, to make sure the drive is spun-up (can't hear or feel drives any more, guess they're too good or I'm too old...).

This is my first try at a high-end AMD-based system, so apologize if I am missing something obvious here. This is my kit:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Socket 939 CPU
Ultra 1024 MB PC3200 DDR 400 MHz module (x 4)
Thermaltake Toughpower 750W power supply

Please help, I've never seen anything like this before and it is very frustrating. I don't want to run back to Intel!!

Thanks,
mobobobo

 

[grooge]

I don't know if you have the rocketraid 2300, but Highpoint has a compatibility list, and I don't think your board support it. May have to look at the 2310 model for it.

 

[o1die]

Some boards require you to load the sata driver off a floppy using f6 while loading windows (after formatting). I also suggest you look for a driver on your hardrive's software disk. Most retail box hardrives come with some software for setting up the new drive, or you can load the software off the manufacturer's website. I also suggest you try a different power supply lead. I had one fail, and the board couldn't detect the drive. And finally, try all the jumper options, including master and cable select.

 

[grooge]

Not the nforce4 chipset. Unless set for RAID, no need for drivers.

 

[mobobobo]

 

[mobobobo]

I thank all for your suggestions, and for being kind even though it must be obvious I don't know how to work these fora, let alone a kick-ass AMD processor/board.

I have come to the conclusion I've been dealing with some hardware failures, massive ones. Maybe building a PC on a carpet is not the best idea...although in Ohio, during a spring rainstorm, I have never experienced ESD that could break anything. Oh well, live and learn.

When I shut down the system I was upgrading, I just hit the power switch, since I was going to take everything out and rebuild anyway. What bothers me is that the 4 250 GB SATA drives are acting dead, though they are less than a year old (Samsung...maybe that is their lifespan? I've never bought that brand before, but they seemed OK). Even if I shuffled across the carpet and zapped each drive individually it seems weird they would all really have died at the same time.

The drives were two mirrored pairs on a Promise RAID controller, and I have seen references to "reserved sector" data on SATA drives that can keep the drives from working properly if the arrays are not deleted before you try to use them in a different configuration. But could that cause controllers from even detecting the devices?? That is what is happening to me.

I am shrugging my shoulders and getting ready to throw them away. Is there any way to revive them instead, or are they done?

Thank you very much,
mobobobo

 

[GeezerMan]

Try using just one stick of ram at first.