Lite on CDRW...UGH

[Kooldino]

Originally posted by Technoid
the "modes" are not set there in XP
They are set in the "IDE/Atapi Controllers" in the primary or secondary controllers pages

That's only if you're using the on board IDE...the add in appears under SCSI devices and doesn't have those uptions.


High - I replaced the cable (said so in my original post). Didn't work.

[Kooldino]

GAWD DAMMIT. I'm running on an old school IDE cable on the CDRW in the Promise controller. I put a CD in...hard lock. WHY ME?

[GNEP]

I dunno if it will help, but I've had a bad DVD-rom drive bring a machine to its knees - intermittent wierd errors (first just when popping a CD in) and eventually a refusal to even POST. Only thing to fix it was to replace the obviously faulty drive. Wierd behaviour though.

[Kooldino]

Yeah, but it seems that the fault here is in whatever drive is connected to the PROMISE card, not the actualy drives themselves. They work fine in the MB IDE.

[Dr Mordrid]

Your problem may be that old school IDE cable. Devices faster than ATA33 need one of the double-wired cables certified for ATA66 and over.

Dr. Mordrid

[Rob(QG)]

I have the maxtor version of that add in card.

Never tried an optical drive on it, but I was getting an event log full of errors from the HD that was on it after some Windows Update or another.

Thought the hard drive was about to die as recreating the partitions and formatting didn't stop it happening.

Turned out that I could stop the problem by ticking the two boxes in the properties of the "scsi" drive (Disable tagged queuing and Disable Synchronous transfers).

Drive has worked a dream ever since - faster too. Don't know if those properties exist for your CDRW drive, but worth a go if they do. Also check for errors in the event log.

[Kooldino]

Originally posted by Dr Mordrid
Your problem may be that old school IDE cable. Devices faster than ATA33 need one of the double-wired cables certified for ATA66 and over.

Dr. Mordrid

I was running a 66 ribbon cable before, and i just moved the the 33 ribbon a half hour ago just to try one more thing. The same problem occurs either way.

[Kooldino]

Originally posted by Rob(QG)
I have the maxtor version of that add in card.

Never tried an optical drive on it, but I was getting an event log full of errors from the HD that was on it after some Windows Update or another.

Thought the hard drive was about to die as recreating the partitions and formatting didn't stop it happening.

Turned out that I could stop the problem by ticking the two boxes in the properties of the "scsi" drive (Disable tagged queuing and Disable Synchronous transfers).

Drive has worked a dream ever since - faster too. Don't know if those properties exist for your CDRW drive, but worth a go if they do. Also check for errors in the event log.

Good call, but I don't have those options. :-(

[Zao]

The Promise Ultra-series cards are horribly incompatible with any IDE devices not being harddrives.
Behaviour with non-HDD devices is undefined.

How do I know this? I have a Ultra100 TX2 too, and it wouldn't even boot whenever a disc were present in any of the two cd drives connected to it. Without a disc the boot took 10-15 min.

[Rob(QG)]

And to think my 8meg buffer 24x LG drive got a negative comment in a review for being PIO only - sits very happily on the secondary motherboard connector which would otherwise be unoccupied.

WHich reminds me, I did have my DVD ROM drive sat on the add-in card and that caused no problems - Liteon as it happens

[The PIT]

I was forced to use a promise controller for my cdrw and dvd drives and had no problems. Perhaps the controller card has gone to the great controller card in the sky. Atapi devices work fine on it. If it was a highpoint I could understand it.
The controller not sharing it's irq with another device is it. You may have to look at the motherboard manual to check that. It shouldn't have any bearings but stranger things have happened.

[Kooldino]

Originally posted by Zao
The Promise Ultra-series cards are horribly incompatible with any IDE devices not being harddrives.
Behaviour with non-HDD devices is undefined.

How do I know this? I have a Ultra100 TX2 too, and it wouldn't even boot whenever a disc were present in any of the two cd drives connected to it. Without a disc the boot took 10-15 min.

yeah, mine won't boot either.

[Kooldino]

The IRQ is 19...doesn't appear to have any conflicts.

[The PIT]

Thats cos it's using apic under windoze. Check how your motherboard shares it slots. For example four may share with onboard sound. Still this shouldn't cause a problem since it worked before. Worth trying another slot anyway. Still think it's the card thats gone to controller heaven though.

[Zao]

About DMA modes on Promise: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-i3...0/18/0006.html