Promise UDMA66 to Fasttrack RAID

[CHHAS]

I've just read in a Danish HW-site that you can change your Promise UDMA66 controller to a Fasttrack RAID by flashing the BIOS and soldering a wire

Does anyone know anything about this ?

I'll try to find out more and post it here.

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P3 500@560, 192 MB ram, G400 16SH

[CHHAS]

Found this link:
http://www.nrw-online.de/~darmon/promise.html

now my German is a bit (well, a rather large bit) rusty, and Babelfish seems to be non-responsive, so I'll try to grasp the meaning of it later.

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P3 500@560, 192 MB ram, G400 16SH

[This message has been edited by CHHAS (edited 18 February 2000).]

[CHHAS]

Got Babelfish working again, it appears that you have to move a SMD resistor, btu according to this :
http://www.overclocking.dk/images/ul...6tofasttrack66

you only need to flash the bios and solder a wire from pin 16 to 23, I'll have to try this

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P3 500@560, 192 MB ram, G400 16SH

[Rakido]

CCHAS,

the site claims, that the only difference of the two controllers is the BIOS and a pullup resistor R10.

They tell you to update the bios first with the newest bios, than to remove the bios chip (sounds difficult, at least for me).
After this, remove the resistor from R10 and solder him into R9.

That's all :-)

Rakido

[Mark F]

Do a search on forums, there was a thread on doing this. It had translated instructions, tips, and succes stories. Even a pic or two.

Mark F.

Oh what the hell I'm in a good mood:
http://forums.murc.ws/ubb/Forum2/HTML/002981.html



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OH NO, my retractable cup holder swallowed a DVD...
and burped out a movie

[fouzi logic]

ouh yeah, its just killing me to try this at home

[Buuri]

So did anyone actually succeed in this?
Here are the instructions again: http://www.hardocp.com/articles/raid...omys_raid.html

:
B

[Guru]

They did it on www.tomshardware.com

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PIII450@558, ABIT BX6-2, 256RAM, G400MAX, SBLIVE, HOTROD-UDMA66

[cancer]

howdy kids
wow this Promise UDMA66 controller to a Fasttrack RAID thing is really getting around. just this week a local paper published an article about this in the tv guide! it refered to the posting on hardocp i read about this nifty idea some time ago on tomshardware, at that stage i didn't have a clue about it. now i realise how much a RAID card is worth and what i can do for your hard drive(s). now i gotta get me one, the only problem is i'd have to dish out for another hard drive. still when the cash comes in it'll be a nice addition to my pc. if anyone has done this, i would be good to see those benchmarks…
cheers.


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Aopen HX08 full tower case, Asus P3V4X bios 1.03, P!!! FC-PGA 550e @733, 160M pc100 sdram, Matrox G400MAX bios 1.4 PDesk 5.52.015, Seagate 28.5G Ultra ATA66 7200rpm HD, Pioneer 103s DVD 6X/32X drive, SB AWE64 Gold ISA sound card, SMC pci ethernet adaptor, Castlewood Orb 2.2G media drive, Nortel 100 cable modem, Mitsubishi 1995 19in monitor, occasionally use dualhead for dvd on a Sony 80cm Wega TV, MS natural keyboard, MS Intellimouse Explorer,
Win98SE 4.10.2222A, DX7a.

[moreau]

If anyone is going to try this, do the easy mothod, which is add a resistor between two pins.

this is the method I used, and it did work. Try tinning the ends of the resistor first, and then only apply enough heat to get the solder to wet to the chip.

I'm absolutely sold that until the internal transfer rates on IDE HD's improves, this is a good solution. After all there is plenty of bandwidth not being used on the ATA66 spec, (don't even get started on ATA100) plus ide drives are getting so inexpensive.

Here are some notes for anyone considering it:
Prices of the fasttrack are dropping (<100$US)
There are now IDE RAID cards from AMI and IWILL.
Make sure the drives you buy for your array are 7200RPM with a 2MB buffer.

These things make life a lot easier. Booting is a breeze (once the array scan completes during the bios screen), installing software is fast (try installing win98 from a hard disk to the raid array. A full install in less than 30 min. Including drivers and forty reboots!) And no more annoying harddrive lag!

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Home System:
G400 DH 32MB, PD 5.52, bios 1.5-22, TGL 1.0
RR-G, VidTools 1.52
Win98SE, DX 4.07.00
PIII 550E @733, Asus P3B-F 1.03, Bios 1005
128MB Crucial PC133, CTX VL710, SBLive Value, liveware 3.0
Promise Fasttrak66 Conversion, bios 1.08, Driver 1.14
2xWD136BA 7200,2MB

Work System:
Dual PPro 200 w/256k cache, Intel Providence PR440FX w/onboard UW SCSI, bios # 1.00.09
128MB 60ns buffered asyncronous ECC DRAM
9.1GB IBM Ultrastar 18ES UW SCSI
ATI Xpert 98 PCI+Hitachi SuperScan Elite 17
#9 Imagine128 SII+cheap15"
Win2K PRO



[This message has been edited by moreau (edited 21 April 2000).]

[CHHAS]

I've just read that Adaptec is making an IDE RAID card, it support all types of RAID, and comes with 2mb onboard buffer (which is upgradable to 64 megs).

It'll prolly be horribly expensive, but it sure sounds good

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P3 500, 224 MB ram, G400 16SH,
Maxtor DM 40+ 30GB, IBM Deskstar 16GP 10GB, Maxtor 4320 13 GB
SB Live Value

[CHHAS]

cancer:
I've read on Storage Review's message board, that software RAID under W2K is just as good, if not better than a Promise RAID card.

The recommended arrangement is to mirror your boot partition (for data safety and low seek times) and stripe your data partition (for transfer rate).

I haven't tried either but it might be worth trying before spending $ on an UDMA66 card and risking toasting it.


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P3 500, 224 MB ram, G400 16SH,
Maxtor DM 40+ 30GB, IBM Deskstar 16GP 10GB, Maxtor 4320 13 GB
SB Live Value

[moreau]

$429US to be exact.
Ouch.

I'm curious. Adaptec is a leader, not a follower. Therefore, they must see a need for a high end ide raid 'solution' (note the marketing speak in single quotes).

But, that product targets a completely different market segment than the other sub-$100 ide raid cards.

The cool thing about IDE raid was it was cheap. Cheap card + cheap drives was really great for those of us who couldn't afford SCSI. But if I was building an entry level server, and was deciding between a $400 ide raid card and a $600 (or less) SCSI raid card, I'd go SCSI without a second thought, even with the additional drive cost.

[This message has been edited by moreau (edited 24 April 2000).]

[moreau]

For the record, the adaptec card sounds like it is really sweet. This is truly an IDE version of a SCSI raid controller. Definitely a level more sophisticated than the Promise and other cards.

[xortam]

moreau, I believe my SCSI RAID, Mylex FlashPoint LW (KT-950), was only around $150 (don't have the receipt handy). I've been very happy with it. Mylex is now owned by IBM after Mylex bought out Buslogic.