P4B533-E: Can I use RAID sockets as IDE channels?

[gba]

I would like to use the Promise RAID sockets for IDE HD's but I cannot get it to happen under Win2000. I actually got three distinct answers from ASUS: 1) on the phone... "...it's RAID or nothing, sorry 'bout that;" 2) e-mail response #1 "...you can do it but you need to set the HD jumpers to "Master;"" and 3) e-mail response #2 "...you can do it but you need to set the HD jumpers to "Slave."

I have tried everything with no luck. I thought I saw something about flashing the Promise BIOS to make it think it is really an ATA 133 controller, instead of a RAID controller, but that may have been for a different chip. The P4B533-E has a Promise PDC20276 RAID controller chip.

Does any one know the real deal???

 

[Shaka]

I have the same question as you do. But, it seems I'm a couple of months late. Well, hopefully this bump may get some attention.

I have 1 HD set up on one of the Raid sockets. So I boot up and the Raid bios dialog shows that the HD is there. Great!

So Win2k boots up. The drivers from the mobo CD are installed correctly, but that HD doesn't show up in "My Computers". Ok, so I go to the Disk Manager thing in Adminstrative Tools and find that the HD is still not there. Hmm. Help?

 

[RalfHutter]

There's a hacked BIOS for these boards that lets you use the RAID sockets as regular IDE channels. You can get it here. You have to browse to the files. Note that you need a new IDE/RAID driver as well as the BIOS file. Make sure you read the "readme" that's included.

Here's the BIOS readme:

"Bioses in this folder contain an UDMA-rom instead
of the lite-raid-rom. by the help of these bioses
you can use your promise-controller as a normal
udma-controller. no need to create one-disk-arrays,
faster boot, support for dvds, cdroms, zips and
other optical drives - up to 4 devices !!
you need an udma-driver which can be found here:
/drivers/(pure)udma/"

 

[Shaka]

Wow crazy...

I can't seem to get to the page to download the bios. Good thing, cause I don't trust those hacked bios's. Damn, I really wanted to use those RAID sockets for regular IDE.