SIIG Ultra ATA 133 Controller

[helpmeout]

HI, anyone using this card? I've been using it for about three weeks, and suddenly the other day things changed. On boot up, after the card runs through the drives connected to it, it now finishes by giving me the option to "hit F1 to continue or F2 to run setup". When I hit F1, windows loads normally, and of course F2 puts me into the computer BIOS. No idea why it started this. I am running two drives off this card: Primary connector---C: Secondary connector---Storage HD. Everything is running just fine. I emailed SIIG tech spt two days ago, but haven't received a response. Anyone have any ideas, I'd sure like to hear them. Thanks.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: helpmeout
HI, anyone using this card? I've been using it for about three weeks, and suddenly the other day things changed. On boot up, after the card runs through the drives connected to it, it now finishes by giving me the option to "hit F1 to continue or F2 to run setup". When I hit F1, windows loads normally, and of course F2 puts me into the computer BIOS. No idea why it started this.

Honestly, I don't think that the card has anything to do with what you're experiencing. Normally, if your CMOS battery-backed settings get corrupted, erased, or the battery starts failing, you will get that message. It can also happen if you touch the wrong things on the mobo when doing hardware maintenance, sometimes you will ground out something and cause the CMOS to get corrupted that way too.

Normally, the next time that you boot, the BIOS will display an error, and prompt you to hit F1 to continue, or F2 to enter setup to re-config settings yourself.

This error-message display may be occuring after the SIIG card's BIOS executes, because the mobo BIOS executes add-on card BIOSes before continuing on with POST.

I've dealt with several systems with those cards, and have never seen what you describe, to be caused by these cards, although I've seen it caused many a time due to clearing CMOS or a failing CMOS battery.

 

[helpmeout]

Thanks, Larry, that makes sense.Explains why the option is to go into the computer's setup, not the card's. I had made some changes in the BIOS when I was trying to get my HD to boot from the card. Solved that problem when I found out the bootable drive had to be on the card's primary connector. I'll go back into my BIOS and see if I can spot anything that looks wrong. I thought I had reset all the changes I made, but probably missed one. My battery should be good, this comp is only about 7 months old, and I have no other problems. I'll post back when/if I find something wrong in BIOS.

 

[helpmeout]

I think I've found the problem in the computer BIOS, but don't know how to correct it. In the BIOS, under DRIVE CONFIGURATION, my two hard drives connected to the controller card are shown as Unknown Devices. I guess this means the BIOS isn't recognizing them?????
Also in the BIOS, under HARD DISK DRIVE SEQUENCE:
1. System BIOS boot devices
2. USB Device (not installed)
3. Model nr for my C: drive
4. Model nr for my storage drive.

So the BIOS seems not to recognize the drives under Configuration, but does under Disk Sequence. So now the question is: How do I get the drives recognized? In Windows, everything is OK. No errors in Device MGR, drives are running fine in UDMA mode. Whole computer is running great. Thanks for any help you all might provide.

Here's my computer's configuration:
P4, 2.40 512 RAM XP Home,sp1
PCI Controller primary: C: drive
PCI Controller Secondary: Storage HD
IDE Primary: CD-RW
IDE Secondary: DVD-ROM

All jumped to master.

 

[boomerang]

Try Cable Select instead of Master.

 

[helpmeout]

Boomerang, Thanks for responding. I've always thought the cable select option was really just a convenient way to save assembly time in a factory, and that master/slave was the preferable way to go. I put the controller card in specifically to get all four drives as master to keep the drives from slowing one another down. I'm ripping vinyl to my storage drive with a ripping program, another software program cleans the file there and moves it to my C: drive, and it's burned from there, so three drives are pretty much involved. I put both HD's on the controller card since it lets the HD's run in a higher DMA mode. Would the cable select mode interfere/ slow things down?

 

[boomerang]

No, it won't slow anything down. Just try it to see if it corrects your recognition problem.

 

[AMCRambler]

I don't see how your motherboard bios could possibly detect any devices plugged into a controller in a pci slot? There might be a place where it would show the controller card plugged into a slt, but until the card's bios goes and detects the devices plugged into(after the pc's bios has loaded) the system will have no clue that anything is there. I've got a SIIG ATA 100 controller card and nothing shows up in my bios regarding any devices plugged into it. The devices aren't recognized until the card's bios loads.

 

[helpmeout]

AMC Rambler- That's what's happening. When I boot up the computer, the first thing I see is the card's bios. When that finishs, I get the error. When I press F1, the system finishs the post and Windows opens. The system Bios shows the card as an SCSI device (normal, right?). It shows the 2 drives as: Primary --- Unknown Device; and Secondary--- Unknown Device.

 

[helpmeout]

I don't have time to keep messing with this now. Going to put the HD's back on IDE and the removable drives on the card. It worked fine like that a few days ago.

FYI, here's the response I received from SIIG tech spt an hour ago:

"Unfortunately, we do not have a way to stop this message in a few systems. Your system is happened to be one of those fews. Please try to upgrade ypour system BIOS to see if it will help."

SIIG makes it sound as though the card causes the problem. Well, got to drop this for now, and want to thank you all for your recommendations/help. If I come back to this problem at a later date, I'll post any results.