Promise Ultra33

[cavingjan]

I am looking at buying a new motherboard. I have been looking at the Abit KT7 or EPOX 8KTA+. I need to use three IDE controllers. The KT7-RAID will work wonderfully for this but since I happen to have an old Ultra33 controller lying around not being used, I thought that I might save the $40 and just drop this into the motherboard to run a zip drive and CDRW off of it. Will using this card have any adverse effects on the onboard ATA66 channels? I was planning on putting my ATA66 hard drive and DVD drive on separate channels. It shouldn't but maybe there is something out there that I wasn't aware of. Also, are there any other Socket A motherboards that support 6 PCI and 1 ISA? I really hate to give up that ISA for emergencies. The 6 PCI is more important.

 

[Davegod75]

def get the abit. and no you shouldn't have any problems with the controller card but i would highly recommend you just use the controllers on the mobo. or get a udma66 controller at least.

 

[Eug]

"i would highly recommend you just use the controllers on the mobo."

Why? Can't hurt to try. I suspect it will work fine. cavingjan, what is your setup anyway?

"or get a udma66 controller at least."

Considering that neither a zip drive or CD-RW even come close to maxing the throughput of an ATA33 controller, the money would be wasted getting a new ATA66 controller. (Sustained transfer rate is what's important with CD-RW and zip, not burst rate.)

 

[cavingjan]

Right now I have a TMC TI5VG+ motherboard with a K6-2 450 but its getting dumped since I hate that motherboard and I need to replace a 300 chip that is in the server. I am looking at either the Epox EP-8KTA or Abit KT7 with a Duron. I just hate letting cards lie around and collect dust.

 

[DocDon]

Might want to check, but I don't think the Ultra 33 can run a CD or CDR.

 

[Mark R]

The Ultra 33 doesn't work properly with non-HD devices.

It also doesn't support drives larger than 8 GB - at least mine didn't.

 

[cavingjan]

Dully noted. Thanks for the info guys. I forgot about the non HD issue. I didn't know about the 8 Gig limit on the thing. I guess I'll have to read the manual again when I get home tonight. I guess I'll just get the KT7RAID. With my luck for hard drives, my system would be down all the time with hard drive failures if I tried to use disk spanning.

 

[Eug]

Promise Ultra33 Manual

Well, I was under the impression that it does work with both ATAPI CD-ROMs and hard drives larger than 8 Gbs.

However, Promise recommends putting the CD-ROM on the on-board controller, but I thought the reason for that was to keep a slaved CD-ROM from slowing down an ATA-33 hard drive master. But, I could be wrong, and I haven't seen any mention of zip drives though. In your case no hard drive will be installed on that controller so that isn't an issue. Also it states that 8 Gb hard drive support is a driver add-on or something like that, but again, that isn't an issue.

It can't hurt to try. Just don't give bootup priority to the Promise, so your C drive stays the same.

 

[Bloodybrain]

I'm using a DVD drive on my Ultra33, no problems so far. I believe it is the same for any ATAPI devices.