Why no optical drives on a promise card?

[ajf3]

Hey all -

I tried hooking up a cdrw to my Ultra66 card instead of one of the mobo channels, but the performance sucked. It reported DMA in the bios, but during a burn the machine would completely bog down like it was in PIO (but it wasn't).

Anyway, I did some research and came across a post saying to get the drive off the PCI bus (promise card) and use one of the built in mobo headers... tried it - worked like a top - no slowdown at all.

Anyway, why is this & is there a way to get around it? I'd like to run the DVD & cdrw off the Ultra66 since my drives are ata100/133 and my mobo supports 133...

Thx!

 

[kursplat]

from promise

34 Can I use ATAPI devices on the SuperTrak100/66 controller?
Cause : Adding a CD Rom, DVD, Tape Back up
Solution : No. There is no driver layer on the SuperTrak100/66 controller which will support ATAPI packet messages

 

[Sid59]

why would you want to run an optical drive off a promise card?

 

[billandopus]

Originally posted by: Sid59
why would you want to run an optical drive off a promise card?

Why not?

If one didn't know that you couldn't run optical off the card then it's not a reach to think that it wouldn't be any problem.

Many times the pci card is situated in a much more accessible way than the IDE headers. If you have a jumbled case then it may make more sense to just slap that optical into the pci card.

 

[Auric]

Silicon Image controllers support ATAPI. No idea why Promise and HighPoint fail to.

 

[Jeff7]

Anyway, I did some research and came across a post saying to get the drive off the PCI bus (promise card) and use one of the built in mobo headers... tried it - worked like a top - no slowdown at all.

Newer motherboards give the IDE controllers their own path to the southbridge, but the way it used to be, maybe only a year ago and prior, the onboard IDE controllers would still just be a part of the PCI subsystem. That said, either way, an optical drive will come nowhere near to saturating the PCI bus.

 

[ajf3]

Sorry about the delay... I've been preoccupied dealing with a dying drive for the last couple of days...

Anway, to answer the questions posted... I wanted to run my opticals off of the Ultra66 that I had since I have 4 ATA 100/133 drives in my system. The mobo header supports 133, so it made sense to hook all the hard drives up there.

That left me with a cdrw and a dvd that I tried to use via the Ultra66... they worked, but bogged the system down tremendously, so I swapped them around and put them as slaves on each of the two mobo headers. That left me with two ata100 harddrives hooked up to my Ultra66.

I guess the solution is to
1) Get a SI controller that supports atapi for the opticals, or
2) Get a ATA133 promise card to string some drives off of

Does anyone know for sure if the SI controllers don't bog the system when controlling ATAPI drives?

Thanks!

 

[aceO07]

I have a DVD drive and a CDRW drive hooked up to my new promise ultra 100 tx2. I can read a cd. I haven't tried dvd yet.

 

[CZroe]

Originally posted by: Auric
Silicon Image controllers support ATAPI. No idea why Promise and HighPoint fail to.

HighPoint always has. They were the first IDE RAID controller to support this I do believe.

There was a time when NO ONE assumed a RAID controller could do this. The Ultra66 is just a castrated FastTrak66. They took the RAID functions out of the BIOS and you can even add them if you want (I've done this). The HighPoint controllers support Zip drives, LS-120, tape and CD-RW drives in addition to HDDs.

Any why don't they? The question is, why would they need to?!

The primary reasons to have an IDE controller card are:
1) To overcome a storage limitation of Hard Drives
2) To overcome the performance limitation of an internal IDE controller
3) To add entry-level RAID functions

Have any ATAPI devices hit an IDE storage limitation? I think not.
Do optical drives require more than the typical 66 or 100MBps typically provided by the integrated controller? I think not.
Have you ever considered a CD-ROM or DVD RAID? I think not.

Examples:
1) All 200GB+ Western Digital HDDs were including a controller card in case the onboard IDE controller has a storage limitation (Many are limited to 120GB or less)
2) 440BX boards far outlived their onboard 33MBps IDE controllers, but only hard drives stood to benefit from anything greater. Most later boards were outfitted with an ATA66 capable integrated PCI controller while no optical drives could yet touch 33MBps.
3) IDE RAID is cheaper than SCSI RAID, expecially when purchasing the setup for only 2-4 drives, but there is no reason for a RAID controller to support CD-ROMs and other ATAPI devices when the onboard IDE controllers can handle those just fine.

Even today, your optical drives will never be fast enough to warrant an external controller, even if they support DMA and ATA66/100.

 

[selene]

How good are the SI cards ?

They came out a while back but not as popular till now... is this a front for another well known company ?

I have these in my dell poweredge 650 ide raid servers... just like to know..