Soyo D+: can't get IDE3 or 4 to work. Help!

[mooseAndSquirrel]

I've done everything, and no matter what I can't get the on board Promise controller to work with my Soyo Dragon Plus.

Here's what I have:
a known working disk on ide1
a known working disk on ide2
a known working disk on ide3
all with known, good cables in the correct orientation
the latest 2ba2 BIOS (1/2/2 - fixes the 3 dimm slot problem, yeah!)
pins 2-3 shorted on the RAID/IDE jumper (e.g. IDE)
the BIOS has the on board RAID controller enabled
I've tried PnP OS enabled or disabled

I boot up. It finds the devices on IDE 1 and 2 then the promise controller BIOS scans for disks (BIOS 201 Build 37) and says "Ultra100 BIOS not installed because no drives attached.

XP loads, and I can see the U100 controller and I have loaded the latest XP drivers, but needless to say, since the BIOS didn't find any drives, neither does XP.

I looked at the Promise web site, but they are very clear that for controllers on the motherboard you can't use their BIOS downloads. They refer you to your mobo manufacturer, but Soyo doesn't have any Promise BIOS updates.

Half the reason I got this board was to support 4 IDE devices as masters on their own channels. I currently do not want RAID, just 4 working IDE channels. Everything else is working great with this board and I have been running XP without a hitch for a week.

Any ideas?

 

[SilentRunning]

Don't have WinXp so don't know if it applies but you might give it a try. Pulled from Soyo FAQ

Q: When atempting to install windows 2000, I get a message saying no hard drive found on the system, when my drives are installed on IDE3, and/or on IDE4?

A: The promise drivers are not supported by windows 2000. when windows 2000 first comes up it will prompt you to press "F6" to specify any third party RAID or SCSI Controller drivers. at this point you need to press "F6" on the keyboard to be able to install the Raid or UltraATA Drivers(depending on how the jumper for IDE RAID is set on the board). you may need to transfer the neccesary drivers for the Promise controller to a floppy drive to be able to specify Promise Drivers when windows 2000 prompts you for it.


EDIT: You might also make sure you have the latest RAID drivers found here.

 

[mooseAndSquirrel]

Thanks, but I don't think that's my issue. The BIOS scan is not seeing any hard drives, so any operating system install is going to also not see the drives.

I got XP installed with everything master/slaved on IDE1 and 2. Now I'm reconfiguring to try to get 3 and 4 going. XP has the latest Promise drivers loaded and it says the device is working. But until I can get the BIOS to detect the drives, XP will never see them.

Funny thing is the 2BA1 BIOS for the Dragon (not Dragon Plus) says it "Fixed Promise detect error" and this was dated 12/17/2001. My dragon plus came with its version of this BIOS (K7VXA 2BA1), but it would seem that promise detect error sums up my problem nicely. Now, even the latest K7VXA 2BA2 doesn't fix the problem (although hopefully it's fixed the only other problem I had with this board - getting 3 dimms to be stable).

Anybody else?

 

[volfan]

Did you enable RAID in the BIOS? The jumper on the board should be set to non-raid and in the BIOS, RAID should be enabled. It is disabled in there by default. That should fix it.

 

[mooseAndSquirrel]

RAID is enabled in the BIOS and the jumper is set to IDE (pin 2-3).

I *also* have a SCSI card in this PC (an adaptec 29160n). I tried every combination of slot and even went so far as to remove all PCI cards and still the Promise controller is not finding any drives.

 

[mooseAndSquirrel]

Shooting in the dark here - but is there a difference in ATA66 or 100 cables? There's no possibility these are ATA33 cables are they? I've used several different sets of cables, including the ones that came with the Soyo, but I'm grasping for anything at this point...

 

[volfan]

It shouldn't have to do with ATA-xx cables. Just make sure your cable is inserted the right way by the red line on the cable (look at how your working drive cables look). Only other suggestion I have is to maybe make sure the jumper settings on your IDE 3 & 4 are set to Master. Also, if it's a Western Digital HDD, I've heard you need to set the drive jumper to Cable Select. If none of that works, I'm not sure what else to tell you.

 

[mooseAndSquirrel]

Well, they are WD's, so cable select is going to get a try (I've NEVER done that before, but what the hell. I'll let you know. Thanks.

 

[mooseAndSquirrel]

Well, sheeyit.

Cable Select worked!!!

Boy do I owe you a beer, Volfan. If you're ever in the DC area, I'll damn sure buy you one. I've struggled with this for more than 20 hours. I don't think I ever would have come up with cable select.

 

[volfan]

<< Boy do I owe you a beer, Volfan. >>


Hey, sounds good to me! I'm just glad one of my many suggestions finally worked. This is a great board, once we all figure out these little quirks. Maybe you can help me on something one day!