Question about using PCI ATA133 cards

[imported_Davo]

I found out that I need to purchase one of these if I want to enable DMA on both channels on my computer. Right now I'm trying to run a 200 GB hard drive on one cable and an 18X DVD burner on the other. I've had minimal success with them both working at once. My computer gave me the blue screen talking about new hardware issues, etc. After I removed the DVD burner and set my DVD ROM drive to PIO mode, it's been fine.

My question is, how globally compatible are these things? I currently have a 700 MHz Celeron with 384 MB of RAM if that helps anyone who can help. I also know that right now I can successfully run my primary channel with DMA enabled.

Thanks to anyone who can teach me a little bit about this stuff.

 

[DaveSimmons]

PCI ATA133 and ATA100 cards should have Win2000, XP, and possibly linux support. Many ATA100 cards have large drive support (LBA 48) and all ATA133 cards do.

They will run fine on old P3 motherboards.

I used a Promise brand card in my old music server (Tulatin celeron 1.3) for the storage drives and it worked perfectly.

 

[Seekermeister]

I can't speak to your question, but I recall that there is something about XP that it can only recognize one burner properly. If you have a second, you have to change the drive type in the registry. It may have nothing to do with the problems that you had, but it seemed worth tossing in.

 

[John]

1) What mainboard?
2) Is DMA enabled in the BIOS for the primary and secondary channels?
3) What OS?

We need more info.....

Originally posted by: Seekermeister
I can't speak to your question, but I recall that there is something about XP that it can only recognize one burner properly. If you have a second, you have to change the drive type in the registry. It may have nothing to do with the problems that you had, but it seemed worth tossing in.

FWIW I have two DVDRW's in my current rig. I have also put dual burners in customer builds and never once encountered any problems. Where exactly did you come across that info?

 

[imported_Davo]

I use an HP proprietary board made by ASUS so unfortunately you couldn't find it much information about it.

DMA was enabled in the BIOS and Device Manager, however I disabled it on the second channel to stop the problems I was having.

I use Windows XP Pro SP2.

 

[John]

Remove (right-click & Uninstall) both primary and secondary IDE controllers from the device manager and reboot. You may also want to put a new 80 wire IDE cable on each drive if you have some spares.

 

[imported_Davo]

Now is that advice for when I get this card or do you think my computer already has this capability and I need to follow your steps to enable smooth operation?

 

[imported_Davo]

Well I did what you suggested but I got the error again. I guess there's something else wrong or I do need that card.

I want to wait and see what your opinion is though.

 

[imported_Seer]

One last thing to try...put the HDD where the dvd drive was and viceversa...ie, switch them.

 

[imported_Davo]

I tried that but found out that the problem was actually because of a video card that I returned, but forgot to uninstall. I guess whenever it went to use the extra memory it wasn't there, thus the STOP error.

From the answers that are totally unrelated to the card but rather my error, I take it I don't need the card, no?