VERY annoying problem with Promise ATA66 card

[Soccerman]

this is weird.. I have a Promise ATA66 card, with my main drive on the primary channel as master, and I want to connect a second drive as master on the secondary channel.

the problem is, no matter what I do (master or slave, Primary or secondary channel), when I connect my second drive, the computer won't boot into windows. it just gives my the DOS prompt.

if you are wondering, yes, I have windows on the primary drive installed and running (typing from it as we speak, with the second drive not connected).

what can I do??

 

[sohcrates]

perhaps you have to fiddle in the bios and tell it to boot from scsi controller (it should see the promise as a scsi controller) versus onboard IDE controller.

just an idea, otherwise i'm not sure what to tell ya right now.

 

[oldfart]

Hmmm. I've set up a few Promise cards but never used the secondary channel. Did you update the Promise Bios? Rhe ones I have installed have not come through with the latest. You can get the new bios here.

 

[Soccerman]

heh, ok, I'll try the new BIOS. I was reluctant to though, cause AFAIK, it prevents me from modding the card to a Fastrack 66..

 

[Soccerman]

ok, I tried updating the BIOS.. BIG PROBLEM now..

here we go:

updated the BIOS with the latest Ultra66 BIOS from their website. everything went according to their instructions, until the card's BIOS screen showed what it detected. it took MIGHTY long to find any hard drives at all, and when it DID show what it found, it only found the secondary hard drive.

so of course, I could not boot (it doesn't have anything on it at all). I tried disconnecting the second drive altogether AGAIN, to see if it was conflicting or something. no go. the main drive would not detect. I then put it on the onboard chipset controller, and booted windows normally.

I then checked the Device manager, and it now has an exclamation mark beside the Ultra 66 card.

needless to say, something is seriously wrong. if a new BIOS doesn't let me see all the drives, let alone let me boot up correctly from the drive that has the system files, then something is wrong. fortunately I have the backup of that old BIOS, so I might be able to restore the old BIOS. correct?

 

[Viperoni]

The exclamation mark means you need to reload drivers
You should be able to flash to an older bios version, hopefully...

 

[Soccerman]

sorry, forgot to mention, I already HAD the latest drivers installed for that card, BEFORE I flashed.

I saw the exclamation mark, and when checking on it, it said that either the device is not present, not working properly, or does not have all the drivers installed.

so, I pointed it again to the newest drivers (using the update driver button), and.. no go, it tells me it already has these drivers.

 

[Big Lar]

My guess would be to remove the promise from device manager in safe mode, then reinstall the drivers in windows after a reboot, I don't beleive that will mess with the bios on the card, Least I don't beleive so...

 

[Soccerman]

I'll try it. I highly doubt it'll work though, becuase the problem begins with the BIOS of the card not detecting my main drive..

if this does not work, I'm contacting technical support.. I wonder if there's a warrenty still on this card...

Big Lar, I tried taking out the card in safe mode, and rebooted into normal windows mode. installation went ok and now the card doesn't have any exclamation marks.

 

[Big Lar]

What if: You used the onboard IDE to boot with, then deal with the promise?? Today I installed an ata100 Promise controller on my Bxmaster that I had been running off of the Onboard Promise controller, and was still able to negotiate the swap from 1 to the other, I think you should be able to at least install your drivers for the card in that manner, then reflash it? While using the onboard ide???? May be worth a shot.........

 

[oldfart]

Sorry you are having such trouble. I've put in 3 of these with never a problem. The bios update never caused any issue either. Boot into safe mode and remove the device, then re-install the drivers. Try with just a primary master first. What IRQ is it using?

 

[Soccerman]

ahh ok.. first of all, I forced it to boot from the onboard controller first (where the main drive is currently), I also have the secondary drive on the controller card.

before, I had the DVDROM on primary master on my onboard controller, the CDRW on my Secondary master of the onboard controller, and the Main drive as Primary master on the ATA-66 card.

I wanted to just have the second hard drive on the Secondary master position of the ATA-66 card, but these problems began occuring.

now, however, I've been forced to put one optical drive on the ATA-66 card (well, not forced, but I want 1 device per channel), and have the secondary drive on their as well. both are detected properly, and run fine in this configuration, but I don't want it like this.

before I did this BIOS change (it's still on the newer BIOS), I was at least able to detect the main hard drive, however it would not boot into windows, only DOS. I initially suspected that the MBR (master boot record_ of the second drive was killing me, but after repeated FDISKs, and a few FDISK /MBR's on that drive (D:\), I still could not get it to start into windows. it would just sit their in DOS. perhaps I'm doing something wrong??

oh, BTW, the 'latest' drivers I downloaded appear to be ATA-100 card drivers. yet they're listed on the ATA-66 card webpage, (after repeated updates on that page, they consistantly have been ATA-100 drivers).

I believe it has to do with the BIOS of the card itself. it is using IRQ4, and is the only card using that IRQ.

 

[Grminalac]

Hello,
My suggestion is this. Try switching the hard drives on the promise card. i.e. place the drive you have on channel one to channel 2 and vice versa. Possibly then it will boot correctly.

 

[Big Lar]

From my understanding, The ata66 drivers and the ata100 drivers are different,in that they have different build #'s. Perhaps this is part of the problem??
Edit= Irq4 is a pretty low irq for a controller card, I would think it should be irq 10 or above, I noticed you had mentioned irq4 after re-reading your thread.

 

[oldfart]

Do you have your motherboard set to boot from SCSI first? That is what it considers the Promise as being.

 

[Grminalac]

The SCSI boot option on your motherboard will have no affect on which drive is booted on the promise card. The only time the boot from SCSI option is required is when you have another hard drive connected to the motherboards IDE channel. With no bootable drive available on the motherboard it defaults to the promise card (because of the promise bios) This is where your problem lies. The card should try to boot from the main IDE channel, if it cannot it will try from the secondary. As i said previous switch the hard drives. It could possibly be that you accidentaly have your main harddrive on channel 2 instead of one, either that or for some wierd reason your card prefers channel 2.

 

[Big Lar]

This may be drifting a bit from the actual scenario here, but 1 time I couldn't get a promise 66 card going until I formatted while being hooked up to the 66 card. By chance, Have you used a third party utility to boot from? ie;a Maxtor or WD Hard Drive Utility? On occasion, they have been known to foul up the MBR.

 

[billyjak]

Delete the drivers and pull the promise card then reseat the promise card so windows detects it, then load the drivers again. It should detect a new controller card and ask for the drivers.
I had to reinstall windows on top of windows to get my ata promise 100 card to work.
This way you will not lose anything on your Hard drive.
Right now I'm using a FIC SD11 with a Promise ata 100 card untill I get my new bios chip from abit.

 

[Soccerman]

Grminalac, ok, I'll try putting the main drive as Secondary Master on the ATA-66 card, however the fact still remains that it's not even detecting it (BTW it's not the ribbon, I tested it with the second drive).

Big Lar, no I have not used any 3rd party boot utilities...

Billyjak, I'll try to do that after I try putting the main drive on secondary master, and the second drive as primary master...

 

[Big Lar]

OK/ Real quick dumb question ( maybe ), on my behalf,Are you certain that the ide cable is in the correct oredr? As in,Blue connector to controller/ black to master etc???? Don't laff, it's happened before......

 

[Soccerman]

Big Lar, what do u mean in the correct order?

you mean, which connector on the ribbon the drive is connected to? that shouldn't matter if the jumpers on the drives are set for primary or secondary right??

 

[Grminalac]

Hello,
just to keep things straight I am going to refer to your old hard drive as the primary drive and the new drive as the secondary.
just a few questions.
After you flashed the bios then your primary hard drive was no longer detected?
If so I would reflash to the old bios, if it isn't even seeing the drive it will not boot whatsoever.

Before you flashed the bios did it detect both hard drives? I know it booted from the secondary drive when both were connected but did it see the first one? A lot of questions I know but lastly does it detect your primary drive when it is the only one connected?

As i said previously the problem lies within the card itself either the channels need switched or there is some incompatibilty between the drives where one takes precidence over the other and boots first.

i had a promise card i also tried to flash the bios and only found the ATA-100 one, it wouldn't even flash to the card so i gave up. I removed the card becasue it added a long boot time.

 

[Big Lar]

On the ata66 ( 80 pin cables), it does for some reason, I would assume you have it correct, as the 2 for the drives are spaced closer than the 1 that goes to the controller/ but the mistake has been done before, in haste I almost did this myself once.

 

[Budman]

With ata66 cables it does matter,Blue goes to board (or ata66 card) , then the grey goes to Slave, then the black goes to Master.

 

[Soccerman]

OK, I tried many things this last time. first off, I reseated the card, (there was quite a bit of dust there so I cleaned it off. I then tried putting the main drive on secondary master (without anything else on the card itself). no go, I mean, no detection.

I tried putting the Second drive to the primary with the main drive on secondary master. still no go detecting the main, though the second drive is seen fine.

ok, so I restored the old BIOS (lucky I saved it) from the floppy, and have the main drive installed again as primary master.

on an interesting note, I could probably make the main drive boot in Secondary with the second drive on primary master if I told the motherboard BIOS to boot from the D drive (which is what the main drive is called when in that position with the second drive on master).

Grminalac,

"just to keep things straight I am going to refer to your old hard drive as the primary drive and the new drive as the secondary. just a few questions.

After you flashed the bios then your primary hard drive was no longer detected? If so I would reflash to the old bios, if it isn't even seeing the drive it will not boot whatsoever.
Before you flashed the bios did it detect both hard drives? I know it booted from the secondary drive when both were connected but did it see the first one? A lot of questions I know but lastly does it detect your primary drive when it is the only one connected?"

yes, after I flashed to the new BIOS, my primary drive was NOT detected. on the old BIOS, both drives were detected fine, yet it always chose to do something weird (in this case, boot from the primary drive, but only into DOS, not windows. typing 'win' also doesn't do anything..)

"As i said previously the problem lies within the card itself either the channels need switched or there is some incompatibilty between the drives where one takes precidence over the other and boots first.

that's the only explaination I can come up with.. either that, or the BIOS gets confused, or both MBR's are screwed up..

"i had a promise card i also tried to flash the bios and only found the ATA-100 one, it wouldn't even flash to the card so i gave up. I removed the card becasue it added a long boot time."

yeah it did actually add alot of time to boot (actually it's just before it starts loading, it takes forever to detect ANYTHING).