FastTrack 100

[Rob100]

2 questions....

1) Can you put two of these in one system?

2) Is there a way to connect a drive LED to I can see when the array is being accessed?

I can't connect to Promise's site ATM to look for info, so thought I'd ask here....

Thanks, Rob.

[hippie91]

yes
and
yes


as far as the fasttrak 33 and 66 models were concerned, you could have a few in a system, i'd only asumne that it'd work the same for the ata100 models.

as far as led connections go, there should be a couple pins out that you can connect it to.

[Sciascia]

I am not sure about multiple devices since they use the Int13 and the same memory address block or something. I tried to use a FT66 and a Ultra66 with no success. At the time Promise was assisting me, since no one had tried it. I never got it to work right. The FT100 may be different, I just installed one last week, but I figure that 1 is enough for me right now. Pretty tempting to have 2 of these puppies screaming though.


As for the LED there are 4 pins on the card. Just hook them up until it works, polarity is important but will not harm anything if it is wrong.

[Traderx25]

If you're gonna go with multiple Fastrack card, that is not such a smart idea.

SCSI RAID would be a better solution in this case.

If you have multiple Fastracks, they will take IRQ + DMA ports. You will have lockups.

[Dr Mordrid]

You can use two Fasttraks in NT (and possibly in Win2K as well, I'm checking with my contact so...) because they will share the same BIOS and memory space. As for more than two, that's iffy. The link for NT instructions is here;

http://support.promise.com/install/u...ttrak33_66.htm

Some mainboards may require the loading of a dummy BIOS into the second card in order to get past the POST. The directions for this are also on the above page.

Win9x is a much less likely scenario.

Using a FT with an Ultra card won't work because they both do use the same BIOS and memory space. The one that fails is the second one intitialized and this depends on the slot order.

As for the LED connection, just get an LED cable from a hardware vendor, connect it to the LED conector on the Fasttrak and splice the other ends of the cable into the lines for the system drive LED. Just watch the polarity. More info on page 2-2 of the FT66 manual.

Dr. Mordrid




[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 14 May 2001).]

[Dr Mordrid]

Update on >1 Fasttrak in Win2K: my sources tell me that Promise is working on drivers explicity supporting it. No timetable yet though.

Dr. Mordrid

[hippie91]

well i knew it worked for nt, i suppose i should have figured that it wouldn't work for windows 9x

[Technoid]

Wouldent it be posible to make newer Bios to the cards so they can support this?

If the secondary card's bios detects that a previous promise card already has loaded a bios it could skip loading its own and use the one thats already there?

To make it easier they could make it an exclusive for identical cards models.

[This message has been edited by Technoid (edited 21 May 2001).]

[Dr Mordrid]

A new BIOS for Win2K, yes. For WinNT, no since it's already made to do it for that OS. They are not identical as some suppose.

When you have two onboard the first to initialize is the BIOS they both use.

Dr. Mordrid

[Technoid]

What I was meaning was that it would work with whatevher OS...

[Rob100]

Thanks for all the replies. Been away for 3 weeks - finally back ;-)

I actually have a FastTrack 100 and can't see any pins for a drive LED. Can't see any mention of it in the manual either. Anyone?

[LvR]

Hi

Look on the component side of the card:

Just below the "IDE1" connector, you will find a row of 4 pins labeled "LED" - it sits between the IDE connector and the big EPROM chip on the one side of the card

------------------
Lawrence

[Rob100]

LvR,

Found the pins - how did I miss that!?

Any idea what's what? Which do I use 1 & 4 or what? Which is anode and cathode?

Thanks,

Rob.