dragon plus, cd-rom drives...

[Ichelo351]

hey all,
ok i was just wondering if anyone else has ever encountered a similar problem. ok, up to a week or so ago, my computer was working pretty good, then all of a sudden, no cd-rom/rw drives would work. or atleast they woln't work on the second ide controller. i have been doing alot of testing with it today, and trying to find the problem, and i haven't found much. the cd drives work on the first controller, but not the second. hard drives work fine on the second, so i'm hopeing that the ide controller is not blown somehow, but i fear that it is.
i dunno, any ideas?

 

[knack4it]

If your board raid jumper is set to ultra100 and not raid, and if your raid controller is enabled inbios, when you are booting, does your promise controller see the cdroms?

Mine does that, it will see up to four devices. I have two hdds on ide3 and two optical drives on ide4. If it sees them, you at least know that much. Then look at device manager under scsi. See if you have a problem with a conflict or drivers.

Report back.

Later.

 

[Ichelo351]

i do have it set to ultra 100, but it is turned off in the bios cause i don't use it right now because i was just useing ide1,2 but ide2 doesn't work for hdd's anymore either, so it appears like it is kinda dead. but i don't know what from...

i will have to try doing that, i tried once, but the drivers for the controller were on the cd! doh. and i forgot to copy them over from a cd driver on the network. so as soon as i get the drivers on it i will try it.
thanks for response,

 

[crazyman]

i do have it set to ultra 100, but it is turned off in the bios cause i don't use it right now because i was just useing ide1,2 but ide2 doesn't work for hdd's anymore either, so it appears like it is kinda dead. but i don't know what from...

i will have to try doing that, i tried once, but the drivers for the controller were on the cd! doh. and i forgot to copy them over from a cd driver on the network. so as soon as i get the drivers on it i will try it.
thanks for response,

what os do you have?

I can e-mail you the ultra drivers and you can try installing them that way!?!?!?!

pm me your e-mail if you want,we have the same mobo's
Dan
the whole thing is only 456k

 

[knack4it]

I am sorry that I misread your first post. Thought you were on ide3/4. One thing I have noticed is that on ide1/2, you must use an 80 conductor ide ribbon cable. A 40 conductor will not work, even for a cdrom drive. However on the promise controller you can use the standard 40pin cable for cdroms. Wierd, huh. I sometimes find that maybe one corner of one of the ide cables is not in. Or sometimes you can even bend the little posts on the hdd or board. Have you tried a different set of cables. You gotta use the 80 conductors. Have you tried putting a mixture of hdd/cdrom as mas/slv or slv/mas on each channel? Have you tried any of the bios settings that would enable or disable. Have you tried leaving bios to auto and also tried setting parameters manually? Have you tried other cdroms other than the ones that were in there?

I am out for now.

Later.

 

[Ichelo351]

thanks crazyman, but i have a home network, and was able to get the drivers off of one of the other computers.

knack4it:
hrmm, thats interesting that you can only use 80-connector cables, i wouldn't know why, it shouldn't really make that much difference, but oh well, its probably one of those things that doesn't make sense, but just works. i will have to keep that in mind, but for now, i am useing all 80-connector cables, specifically the ones that came with the board, so if any work, those should....

I sometimes find that maybe one corner of one of the ide cables is not in. Or sometimes you can even bend the little posts on the hdd or board.

yeah, i have found this many many times, but i have checked many many times, and as far as i can tell, every thing is hooked up right, pretty soon i may get out the multi-meter and do connectivity tests on each pin through the cable, hehe jsut to make sure it is connected.

Have you tried putting a mixture of hdd/cdrom as mas/slv or slv/mas on each channel? Have you tried any of the bios settings that would enable or disable. Have you tried leaving bios to auto and also tried setting parameters manually? Have you tried other cdroms other than the ones that were in there?

i have spent a few days doing the swapping of stuff, i have tried every combination of hdd/cdrom i could think of, at one point i had both controllers working somewhat, but it was weird because i had 4 drives on it and it saw the first 2, and the slave on the second one, nothing else, just the slave, weirdest thing. as far a bios settings go, i usually just set it to auto-detect, and let it detect it. i have tried as many different cd-rom drives, as i could, i am pretty sure that it is not the drives, but i am not totally sure...
i emailed soyo, but that wasn't very helpful, they said "check to see if the promise ata 100 controller is enabled" even after i put in it, that i wasn't useing the promise 100 controller... so... i'm not expecting much tech support from them...


thanks for the help so far, and sorry for so long to respond, computer has been down for awhile due to changeing cpu's and going to watercooling. and college semester ending is taking a ton of time

 

[knack4it]

That is wierd. If it recognized a slave at least it works. Although that may now be in a limited capacity. have you flashed the bios before this started? Perhaps you should flash it now. 2ba1 seems to be the preferred one out there. I use 2ba2 and have no probs, although I do not play games. Other guys say the brand new one, 2ba3, is great too. But maybe one of them could help you out? Short of pointing out that WesternDigital drives are crazy in thier method of determining what is jumpered slave and what master and what single, I give up. One would think that if all was going well, and then out of the blue the ide would not work, either the mobo is faulty there, or the hdd there was dead, or a little ESD got in somehow(any lightning storms around the same time?) or maybe you got a bug that messed with bios. If it were me and I were sure that the hdd's were ok and stuff, I would flash it. But that is me, I realize everytime you flash you run the risk of a dead board. At least a pain in the ar board to get a bios on anyway.

That is my 2cents.

Later.

 

[Ichelo351]

i haven't really flashed the bios, i have been wary of doing so from a friend looseing a mobo to flashing it. but i may flash it, i am still useing the 2ba1 bios, i may go to the 2ba3 and see if that helps at all...
yeah, i don't know what it is, i think that the chance of static shock is fairly low, and i can't remember any lightning storms reciently...
thanks for your help, i will re-flash it with the 2ba3 bios, and see if that helps any...

 

[mbigna]

With all the swapping you are doing--are you making sure that you are setting the master/slave jumpers on all the drives correctly? I would try to get just one drive working at a time and then add one drive--again making sure that your jumpers are set correctly each time. Do NOT have any of your drives set to 'auto' or 'cable select.' Specifically set each of your drives for either 'master' or 'slave' as applicable.

 

[Ichelo351]

With all the swapping you are doing--are you making sure that you are setting the master/slave jumpers on all the drives correctly? I would try to get just one drive working at a time and then add one drive--again making sure that your jumpers are set correctly each time. Do NOT have any of your drives set to 'auto' or 'cable select.' Specifically set each of your drives for either 'master' or 'slave' as applicable.

yup, all jumpers set right, never use cable select, doesn't work. only auto settings are in the bios...