Questions about Promise Ultra 100 controller

[Snoopy]

I am thinking to buy a Promise Ultra 100 controller. I'm still thinking if it would be really useful or not for my system. I have an PIII 850Mhz (100FSB) on a P3B-F MB (440BX, just ATA33 supported) with 1GB of PC133 RAM (used at 100..) and two WDC drives, both at 7200 rpm, with 2MB cache and of 20GB capacity each, one ATA66 the other ATA100. I have also on the seconddary IDE channel a Pioneer 10x DVD and a Plextor 4/8/32x CDRW. I am running Windows 2000 Pro (NT4 and XP Pro also possibly). The HDDs run just at ATA33 but the huge memory file cache helps a lot also the big cache buffers on the drives and fact that they have 10GB, respectively 20GB per platen (just 1 platen in the ATA100 drive, lower number of platens means increased data density on a platen and this improves access speed). So I don't really feel that I have a big bottleneck here.. Would a Promise Ultra 100 help a lot with my system performance?

Could someone tell me how these Promise controllers are configurable, do they have their own BIOS that loads just after the MB BIOS, like SCSI controllers? Hope they aren't OS dependent. Or are they? Would I need any drivers to use such a conteroller, let's say, in Windows 2000? Or it would run anyway and the driver (if any) would be just for improved performance?

Thanks..

[Snoopy]

Anyone?

[Jon]

I would say you would get a very nice performance increase. Nothing to crap your pants over but quite noticeable.

Windows 2000 does have support built in for a HPT370 controller but you really should use the drivers that are available for it. Installing Win2K with an IDE adapter takes an extra step beyond using the onboard controllers as well. Documentation with the card will fully explain.

There is a BIOS on the card that initializes after the mainboard BIOS and it is fully updateable with it's own BIOS flash utility.

The ATA100 7200RPM drive will really give you the biggest performance boost when using the new controller.

[Snoopy]

Thanks, Jon! I have it now inside my computer..

[Jon]

How you like it? Tell a difference?

I would imagine throughput on the ATA100 drive would practically double if you were at ATA33 before.

[Snoopy]

Yup.. Ops like loading large number of image files, enumerating folders and files, loading big applications and other stuff like that appear to be a few times quicker than they were before. It's very nice, I don't regret at all buying it.

Do you know if XP comes with an in-box driver for this Promise controller?

[Jon]

It does. When installing XP you still have to hit the F6 button to indicate 3rd party SCSI driver is needed but once you supply the driver it will tell you it has one already.

You should either use the one it provides or flash your controller card with the latest BIOS and use the driver that goes with it if upgrading to XP.

BIOS and driver files are at Highpoint Technologies (http://www.highpoint-tech.com).

If it's a Promise controller you can get it here. (www.promise.com)

[Snoopy]

Thanks again!

It's a Promise Ultra 100 TX2. One more question, saw the following chipsets listed at http://www.highpoint-tech.com/:

HPT374
HPT372
HPT371
HPT370/370A
HPT366

Which one it's on my card? (easier to ask than to open one more time the computer case now..)

I checked the promise.com site today for updated drivers and BIOS versions but looks that the links to the TX2 on the support page are broken.. Or the site is temporarly down maybe. I;ll check again the next days.

Thanks

[Jon]

In that case you'll want to go here (http://support.promise.com/Support/All.asp?product=ultra100TX2) for Promise certified drivers and BIOS updates.

[Snoopy]

Found something at ftp://ftp.promise.com/Controllers/IDE/Ultra100/

Let's see...

[Ebola]

wow thats my computer. almost.

i have 1 gig of ram on a bx board. one ata 66 and one ata 100 hd. my board only supports ata33 and i'm planning on getting the same controler card

but then again my chip is a p3 1000E running at 1240


:burn:

[Jon]

You'll want the Ultra TX2 folder then. The plain Ultra 100 is a different card.

[Snoopy]

Bummer... I have a problem.. Every time I shutdown Windows 2000 I hear 3 loud BANG! sounds from the HDDs like the heads are parked with force multiple times...

Didn't have these sounds before to mount them on the Promise controller not a single time..

..grrr..

Any idea?

Thanks...

[Snoopy]

The http://support.promise.com/Support/All.asp?product=ultra100TX2 link is not working for me... :(

[Jon]

Believe their site is overloaded. Didn't work for me either.

The FTP site is probably where the driver comes from anyway so I would just get it from there.

As far as the noises go, I'm not sure. WD drives are known as one of the quietest drives on the market. Hope it's not going bad on you since I can't see how a controller would cause that.

[Ebola]

Originally posted by Jon
You'll want the Ultra TX2 folder then. The plain Ultra 100 is a different card.

Ok well the one I saw was the tx2.
http://www.enpc.com/promultx2car.html

i might see if i cant find a better price though.

Snoopy, you shut down your computer?

[Jon]

Newegg's got them for $23.

That's a steal far as I'm concerned.

[Ebola]

thanks for the tip jon

[Snoopy]

:(

About the sounds: the Win2K controller driver must be responsible, I'm sure. It attempts to put the heads on parking position several times on each drive.

The only Ultra TX2 driver at ftp.promise.com is the same as the one I have on my floppy disk that came with the controller. I reinstalled it anyway, works the same of course, including the parking sounds when the computer is reset or shutdown.

Something Promise doesn't say about in their documentation: I had to configure the system BIOS to boot from SCSI.. Otherwise I cannot boot from the drives connected to Ultra TX2. Is this normal?

[Snoopy]

What I can do about the clicking noises (hdd head parking?!) that occurr at shutdown?

Any idea would be much appreciated...

[Jon]

Setting up the BIOS to boot from SCSI is normal. I run IDE RAID on all but one of my systems and they're all configured that way. It will still boot without it set that way, but who am I to argue? Haha.

The hard drive parking is something I have no clue about. I'd have to hear it to know what's going on. Might want to try Promise support and see if a similar case was ever admitted. I've never had, nor heard of that before.

[Snoopy]

I called the Promise tech support. They didn't hear of this either (but the guy also told me that Canada - were I was calling from - is overseas.. oh well).

The only advices he gave me so far are to remove my SCSI controller (I have an Adaptec AHA-2940U) and if the sounds are still there to move the TX2 controller to a different PCI slot. Still why would this fix the problem since there is no problem booting up and using the controller?! The problem is just at shutdown..

He told me also that the ver 2.00 build 3 driver I have is the latest one and that I do not need any BIOS update.

I had to wait 10 minutes on the phone (long distance call... they have no toll free number) while the guy tried to find the Asus P3B--F on the Asus site (he never heard of this MB).

Otherwise that person was very friendly and nice and gave me his extension so I can call him back directly if the problem still persists.. :(

About the sounds: most HDDs make such a sound (but just one) when they are powered off if they are configured to automatically park their heads in a safe position. It's like a metallic "click" that is simultaneous with the power cut. In my case, before this sound there is a sequence of other 3 similar sounds, at an interval of like 1/2 sec between, that appears to be a bit louder. They sound exactly like the heads would be moved suddenly from one side to the other.

Thanks..

[Snoopy]

So nobody here ever saw a Promise Ultra100 TX2 in action besides Jon..? Hmm.. Maybe I should change my stupid avatar, maybe some more people would answer to my desperate requests for H E L P

:( :( :( :( :( :(

Snoopy (from overseas)

[Snoopy]

Just talked with WD customer support.. There's their theory: the LBA translation may be not done exactly by the MB BIOS (when the HDDs were partitioned and formatted on the computer being atatched to the MB IDE ports) and the translation that the Promise controller is doing.. So they suggested to just repartition and reformat the driver connected to the TX2 controller... The person told me that anyway on the long run I might get corruption problem if I would keep the HDDs on the controller w/o to have them pertitioned on the controller...

Jon, what do you think about this?

It sounds a little fishy to me.. I had moved HDDs on various computers with different BIOS programs several times w/o problem (w/o to need of course to repartition them). According with customer service rep opinion different BIOS manufacturers use different translationg schemes.. Still...

[Ebola]

I'm probably going to buy the card after thanksgiving. if i have any problems with it, i'll make sure to post something.