- Joined
- Dec 28, 2001
Just in case anyone out there runs into this problem. I was recently given a desktop computer. Older, but decent hardware: a Gigabyte 7N400 Pro2 motherboard, in a nice case, with an XP3200, the fastest officially rated Socket A CPU. It was combined with only 512 megabytes of memory, and a very slow old Maxtor IDE hard drive, making it very slow. Adding an SATA hard drive (this board has an integrated Sil3112 SATA controller), a more powerful (but still obsolete) ATI X1650 video card and upping the RAM to two gigabytes really made it perform like a much more modern machine (as it was done with stuff I had laying about, it was very cheap).
I decided to swap in an even newer hard drive, a Western Digital 750 gigabyte to see how much faster it could be. I jumpered it to limit it to 150 MB/s, but it would hang at the SATA BIOS screen when the drive was attached. It turned out that the Silicon Image SATA controller BIOS bundled into the mainboard's BIOS was too old for such a large drive. Doing some searching, I found forums where people talked about updating the BIOS for the SATA controller by using a DOS based program called CBROM to insert the newest Silicon Image 3112 SATA BIOS (4.4.02) into the mainboard's BIOS. People had done this, but the links to the resulting BIOS images themselves were all dead. So I decided to use the tools and modify the BIOS myself. And I was successful! With the new SATA BIOS, not only can it handle the WD 750 gig hard drive, it doesn't even have to be limited to 150 MB/s! On the slim chance that anyone out there happens to have this motherboard, finds this post by Googling, wants to update it with a new, large SATA hard drive, and doesn't feel like bothering to modify the mainboard's BIOS themselves, send me a PM, and I can email a copy of it to you.
I decided to swap in an even newer hard drive, a Western Digital 750 gigabyte to see how much faster it could be. I jumpered it to limit it to 150 MB/s, but it would hang at the SATA BIOS screen when the drive was attached. It turned out that the Silicon Image SATA controller BIOS bundled into the mainboard's BIOS was too old for such a large drive. Doing some searching, I found forums where people talked about updating the BIOS for the SATA controller by using a DOS based program called CBROM to insert the newest Silicon Image 3112 SATA BIOS (4.4.02) into the mainboard's BIOS. People had done this, but the links to the resulting BIOS images themselves were all dead. So I decided to use the tools and modify the BIOS myself. And I was successful! With the new SATA BIOS, not only can it handle the WD 750 gig hard drive, it doesn't even have to be limited to 150 MB/s! On the slim chance that anyone out there happens to have this motherboard, finds this post by Googling, wants to update it with a new, large SATA hard drive, and doesn't feel like bothering to modify the mainboard's BIOS themselves, send me a PM, and I can email a copy of it to you.