Very Computer

by **Timothy Mol** » Sat, 08 Jul 2000 04:00:00

I have recently purchased an Ultra66 controller from Promise. A Quantum
Fireball lm 20.5 is running off it. I have a Quantum EL 5.1, running off
the primary mainboard eide, with Linux and Win95 in a dual boot
configuration. This setup works fine without the ata controller.

When I connect the Quantum LM to the controller, windows crashes just
after loading, and Linux does the same when loading the Linux drivers;
the whole system, freezes irretrievably. Also when a drive is connected
to the controller my system will not read a dos/win95 boot disk, but
will read my linux ones. Both disk are set to master. I think It might
be a conflict but I don't know how to proceed.

I have a three year old system with award bios v 6.17J900, with a s3
virge graphics card, a Soundblaster 16 and an unbranded isa modem.

Any help will be gratefully received,

Thanks,

--
Timothy Moll

by **John Mazz** » Fri, 14 Jul 2000 04:00:00

Sometimes the Promise (and other) controllers support different LBA
translations for the drives. I ran into a situation where I had to
completely repartition and reformat a drive to make it work with one. That
may well be the case with your setup.

You may have a problem with the ISA modem. Make sure to go into your BIOS
and under PCI/PNP (or similar) be sure to reserve whatever IRQ it is using
to ISA or Legacy ISA. Make sure to do the same for all Non-PnP cards in the
system.

Also, some BIOSes let you manually set the IRQ by PCI slot number. You may
want to give this a try.

In a setup like this I would initially use:

IRQ Device
4 Modem (Assuming it is set as COM1 or COM3)
5 Sound Card (Some old SoundBlasters are not PNP - see above)
10 Ultra66 Adapter
11 Network Card (if installed)

The Primary onbord IDE will be IRQ 14, and the Secondary will go to 15.
Both of these are defaults that should not be messed around with.

If you want to try a repartition, first obtain a copy of Norton Ghost and
put it on a DOS boot disk, along with FDISK, FORMAT, and SYS.COM.

Make sure that the disk you want to repartition has less data in use than
you have free space on the other drive. Connect both drives to the onboard
controller and boot from a floppy that contains Ghost, and use it to create
an image of the smaller drive in a file on the larger one. Then repartition
the drive with FDISK, leaving enough free space for a later Linux install.
Then use GHOST to copy everything back.

It's kind of a pain, but sometimes you run across things like these.

> I have recently purchased an Ultra66 controller from Promise. A Quantum
> Fireball lm 20.5 is running off it. I have a Quantum EL 5.1, running off
> the primary mainboard eide, with Linux and Win95 in a dual boot
> configuration. This setup works fine without the ata controller.

> When I connect the Quantum LM to the controller, windows crashes just
> after loading, and Linux does the same when loading the Linux drivers;
> the whole system, freezes irretrievably. Also when a drive is connected
> to the controller my system will not read a dos/win95 boot disk, but
> will read my linux ones. Both disk are set to master. I think It might
> be a conflict but I don't know how to proceed.

> I have a three year old system with award bios v 6.17J900, with a s3
> virge graphics card, a Soundblaster 16 and an unbranded isa modem.

> Any help will be gratefully received,

> Thanks,

> --
> Timothy Moll

by **Timothy Mol** » Sun, 16 Jul 2000 04:00:00

> Sometimes the Promise (and other) controllers support different LBA
> translations for the drives. I ran into a situation where I had to
> completely repartition and reformat a drive to make it work with one. That
> may well be the case with your setup.

There should be nothing on the partiton table: it's a new disk, though I tried
adding partions using it on the onboard ide controller, but deleted them.

Quote:
> You may have a problem with the ISA modem. Make sure to go into your BIOS
> and under PCI/PNP (or similar) be sure to reserve whatever IRQ it is using
> to ISA or Legacy ISA. Make sure to do the same for all Non-PnP cards in the
> system.

I have 3 ISA slots and 4 PCI slots, but I do not know which one is controlled
by which IRQ, and the manual does not help a great deal. Also whn I remove the
modem from the computer, the problems persist.

Quote:
> Also, some BIOSes let you manually set the IRQ by PCI slot number. You may
> want to give this a try.

> In a setup like this I would initially use:

> IRQ Device
> 4 Modem (Assuming it is set as COM1 or COM3)
> 5 Sound Card (Some old SoundBlasters are not PNP - see above)
> 10 Ultra66 Adapter
> 11 Network Card (if installed)

The setting the bios gives me are:

IRQ-3 Legacy ISA
IRQ-4 Legacy ISA
IRQ-5 Legacy ISA
IRQ-7 Legacy ISA
IRQ-9 PCI/ISA PnP
IRQ-10 PCI/ISA PnP
IRQ-11 PCI/ISA PnP
IRQ-12 PCI/ISA PnP
IRQ-14 Legacy ISA
IRQ-15 Legacy ISA
DMA-0 PCI/ISA PnP
DMA-1 PCI/ISA PnP
DMA-3 PCI/ISA PnP
DMA-5 PCI/ISA PnP
DMA-6 PCI/ISA PnP
DMA-7 PCI/ISA PnP

The options for changing are; PCI/ISA PnP and Legacy ISA.

Quote:> The Primary onbord IDE will be IRQ 14, and the Secondary will go to 15.
> Both of these are defaults that should not be messed around with.

> If you want to try a repartition, first obtain a copy of Norton Ghost and
> put it on a DOS boot disk, along with FDISK, FORMAT, and SYS.COM.

When the controller has a disk conected to it I can't use a dos boot disk (I
can use a Linux one, though). When I do use a boot disk, not having the second
disk (Quantum LM) conected at all, I can't use fdisk, as it just crashes on me.

I would really appreciate any help,

Thanks,

--
Timothy Moll

by **John Mazz** » Wed, 19 Jul 2000 04:00:00

At this stage we should try to get the most basic setup possible going
first. I would start by removing the modem and sound cards from the
machine, connecting one drive to the onboard IDE and another to the Promise,
then see if we can get DOS to boot. While we're at it, let's also disable
the serial ports (COM1 and COM2) in BIOS.

Al

> > Sometimes the Promise (and other) controllers support different LBA
> > translations for the drives. I ran into a situation where I had to
> > completely repartition and reformat a drive to make it work with one.
That
> > may well be the case with your setup.

> There should be nothing on the partiton table: it's a new disk, though I
tried
> adding partions using it on the onboard ide controller, but deleted them.

> > You may have a problem with the ISA modem. Make sure to go into your
BIOS
> > and under PCI/PNP (or similar) be sure to reserve whatever IRQ it is
using
> > to ISA or Legacy ISA. Make sure to do the same for all Non-PnP cards in
the
> > system.

> I have 3 ISA slots and 4 PCI slots, but I do not know which one is
controlled
> by which IRQ, and the manual does not help a great deal. Also whn I remove
the
> modem from the computer, the problems persist.

> > Also, some BIOSes let you manually set the IRQ by PCI slot number. You
may
> > want to give this a try.

> > In a setup like this I would initially use:

> > IRQ Device
> > 4 Modem (Assuming it is set as COM1 or COM3)
> > 5 Sound Card (Some old SoundBlasters are not PNP - see above)
> > 10 Ultra66 Adapter
> > 11 Network Card (if installed)

> The setting the bios gives me are:

> IRQ-3 Legacy ISA
> IRQ-4 Legacy ISA
> IRQ-5 Legacy ISA
> IRQ-7 Legacy ISA
> IRQ-9 PCI/ISA PnP
> IRQ-10 PCI/ISA PnP
> IRQ-11 PCI/ISA PnP
> IRQ-12 PCI/ISA PnP
> IRQ-14 Legacy ISA
> IRQ-15 Legacy ISA
> DMA-0 PCI/ISA PnP
> DMA-1 PCI/ISA PnP
> DMA-3 PCI/ISA PnP
> DMA-5 PCI/ISA PnP
> DMA-6 PCI/ISA PnP
> DMA-7 PCI/ISA PnP

> The options for changing are; PCI/ISA PnP and Legacy ISA.

> > The Primary onbord IDE will be IRQ 14, and the Secondary will go to 15.
> > Both of these are defaults that should not be messed around with.

> > If you want to try a repartition, first obtain a copy of Norton Ghost
and
> > put it on a DOS boot disk, along with FDISK, FORMAT, and SYS.COM.

> When the controller has a disk conected to it I can't use a dos boot disk
(I
> can use a Linux one, though). When I do use a boot disk, not having the
second
> disk (Quantum LM) conected at all, I can't use fdisk, as it just crashes
on me.

> I would really appreciate any help,

> Thanks,

> --
> Timothy Moll

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