How do I enable IDE channel 3 & 4

[Wicked Klown]

Ok with the Dragon+ and Windows XP how do I set it up so I can use IDE channel 3 & 4. I just read about getting better performance with this. The only thing is I already have XP running on my system. Is there anyway to do this without reformatting.

 

[mbigna]

Do you want RAID or not?

Just set the RAID jumper, located between the battery and the southbridge chip to pins 1 and 2 for RAID, short pins 2 and 3 for regular IDE. You will need to install the ULTRA family driver (see page 107 of your manual) to enable the regular IDE function.

 

[Wicked Klown]

No I just want to be able to use them. I have two hard drives and a CD-R. I want each to have his own channel. Tonight I reformatted and reinstalled XP so I could use channel 3 & 4 but no luck. When I tried to do it I got an error.

 

[Zeke009]

Here is how I managed to get IDE 3&4 working. Although I have read that putting your cd-r/cd-rw on either 3 or 4 is not recommended.

----------------------------
1) make sure the jumper is at pins 2 & 3
2) plug em in
3) in add-hardware wizard, select new RAID/SCSI controller
4) insert the disk you made from the cd and load from there
5) reboot and go into the BIOS and enable RAID, PnP OS, and finally hitting the PCI reset option in BIOS did the trick
----------------------------

Original Thread

Maybe someone can comment on #5 up there. Not sure if the PnP OS and PCI reset are neccessary.

 

[portorock]

To enable them, go into the bios and enable it there. Though it refers to them as raid controller, it is just the on/off switch for the IDE. Then load the drivers from windows. Also, don't forget to short pins 2&3 like mbigna said. G/L

 

[Firewire]

I have a cd-rw on it's own channel and my hard drive and dvd rom drive share the #1 IDE. My reasoning for this was to get the two dvd/cd-rw devices seperate so there would be no conflict when i burned from my dvd drive to my cd-rw.

Am I wrong in thinking that if I put my dvd drive on either IDE 3 or 4 and have a dedicated channel for my hard drive I will have better performance from my hard drive?

Also someone mentioned that having a cd-rw on IDE 3 or 4 isn't recomended. Does this hold true for a dvd drive?

 

[Wicked Klown]

Well I tried again heres what it said " File \WinXP\Ultra.sys caused an unexpected error (18) at line 2108 in d:\xpclient\base\boot\setup\oemdisk.c.

 

[Firewire]

Klownin79 I also tried to enable my IDE 3 & 4 Channels using the SOYO disk files. Finally gave up and used my OS (windows xp) for the neccesarry files.

It worked~!

Although I went back to just a 2 Channel IDE set~up.

On startup it took a long time to detect the extra channels. Plus Ultra Lite Controller Kept looking for a Storage Drive on those channels (of which I only had my DVD drive on Channel 3)

Hope this helps.

 

[Wicked Klown]

I tried the Draon drivers and the XP drivers neither worked. On channel three I have a 60gig W.D. 5400r.p.m. H.D..D. I want it to have it`s own channel so it doesn't slow down my 60gig 7200r.p.m. Maxtor and I want to keep my CD-R on channel two so if need be I can boot off of it.

 

[crazyman]

thanks to this thread......

hey portorock !!!!! thank you for that tip,because of you and this thread I was able to finally get ide 3 & 4 working!!!!

I got this working,
ide #1 hdd
ide#2 internal zip100
ide#3 Asus cd rom
ide #4 tdk cd rw

all as masters now,,,YAHOO!!!!!!!!

the last install of win 2k I installed the ultra lite doing the F6 thing,but I was never able to get 3 & 4 working til I enabled the raid in the bios,I thought it should only be enabled for true raid.

anyway,,,,,portorock ,,, you da man!

Dan

 

[knack4it]

Why all the fuss?

I am using 2 hdd on ide1
2hdd on ide 2
cdburner master, cdrom slave ide 3
dvd master, cdrom slave ide 4

burns fine, plays dvd's fine.

Reasoning. I keep the hdds all together to keep the ata100 rate up. I (think) that whatever is the lowest tranfer rated device on a channel will limit both devices to that rate. The drawback is that the (scsi) raid controller will not operate anything but hdds until the drivers are loaded (because the hdd's are detected and then some magic happens and they boot). My solution to this was to (as always) copy the cabs and setup files from the OS disc to the hdd after a format. I also have the promise ultra family drivers from the soyo cd on my hdds. I copy that to the formatted drive as well. Since windows is a real work of art, I always unplug the power from my other hdds when installing an os. I never have had to change jumpers on the dragon+ to reroute the master/slave scenario, it does not care if there are no other hdds detected. So I put the OS on and then (when the board jumper is set correctly and bios raid is enabled) in the device manager go to the unknown device "MASS STORAGE ADAPTER" and install drivers from the promise ultra family drivers folder. It reboots with the raid controller listed as a SCSI device.

During bootup, my 4 hdds are detected in standard cmos setup. Then the raid controller starts looking for devices. Upon finding my optical drives, it lists them and states that it found no hdd's so it is moving on. When the OS is up, the raid drivers see the optical drives and all is keen again. I would suggest for a 4 hdd system and one cdrom that you put the cdrom on ide2. Of course your two primary drives (each with an OS) should go on ide1. Any other hdd's could go on ide 3 or 4. The reason for this is so that you have access to that cdrom at dos-prompt. I am seriously thinking about moving one of my hdds to ide3 or 4 so I can get a cdrom onto 1 or 2.

The really neat thing about this board is when you hit the ESC key after device detection. It allows you to boot from any device on ide 1 or 2. So by putting all 4 of my hdds on 1 and 2ide, I have up to 4 OS's to choose to boot from. Currently I can boot to 98se, me, xp pro, or win2000. That my friends is why I bought this board. It also gives me lots of optical drive options while retaining my OS options.

Like I said, I have had no problems with ide 3 and 4 and optical drives as long as a I keep the dvd and burner on seperate channels and make them the masters on thier respective channels.

Hope it helped.