SA6R Abit MB Setup Question - IDE's

[djelfert]

Bought this board for the very reason that I am having problems. Its possible that it is impossible to do what Im trying to do, so bear with me....

SA6R has 4 IDE connections: each can handle 2 IDE devices... Does this mean that, given a correct setup, I can have 8 IDE devices running at the same time?

Currently, I have the following set up:

On what I refer to the blue IDE connectors ( standard IDE ).. I have on primary a 8Gig HD primary and a DVD drive. On the secondary, I have a 60Gig and a 16 Gig. All these drives show up on the boot message and likewise are recognized once WinXP is loaded and running.

I then wanted to install an IDE Zip100 drive. So, I connected the Zip drive to the first of the orange IDE connector ( I beleive the techincal term is Ultra DMA IDE connector ). I used the 80 conductor cable to hook up the Zip drive to the orange IDE connector.

On boot up, when the process goes through attempting to recognize what is hooked up, the HPT controller recognizes the Zip drive as being present. ( Although interestingly I can never get to the 'settings' page of the HPT controller due to its ignoring my CTRL-H ).

However, when WXP comes up it operates normally, but, it does not see the Zip Drive. It doesnt even see the Zip to the extent that it doesnt even show up as a problem in the hardware list under the Device Manager. Any ideas whether this is a hardware or a software problem. I have not installed any driver software thinking that WXP has the newest drivers, etc to take care of anything I installed.

Thanks

 

[mschell]

The Hi Point controller used on the SA6R is not very good for ATAPI drives or anything that's not a hard drive. I would take one or both the drives on the blue secondary and run them from the orange connector(s) and attach the zip to the secondary. You probably can't access the Hi Point setup because it's trying to detect the zip, I bet you will be able to enter just fine with HD's attached.

 

[Thalasi]

Yeah, the HighPoint RAID controller will only detect hard drives. If you want 8 fully functional IDE channels with that board you'd need a PCI ATA controller (non RAID). There are certain RAID controllers out there that support non-hard drive devices with the switch of a jumper.
If you put your hard drives on the RAID controller all will be well though.