Motherboard Compatibility Issues (ABIT)

[sbriel]

This is a letter I wrote to all the email addresses I could find with Abit. Please email Abit after reading this to have them give a fix to this problem.

I have purchased your newest motherboard, the BE6, and have run into a big
wall. I also bought the new Fasttrak 66 controller card from Promise Tech. so
that I could either stripe or mirror my 2 new hard drives, Western Digitals' 18.0
GB Ultra 66DMA(7200RPM). At this time it appears that there are compatibility
issues with the mass storage devices IRQ's. There is no way to disable these
2 PCI mass storage device controllers in the BIOS, and as I have been told by
one of your technicians, there are no plans to add this feature in the future.
Well, when you add a raid card, such as the Fasttrak66 card, it too also loads
with one PCI mass storage controller of its own. This then makes the
motherboard see 3 mass storage controllers at the same time! This Fasttrak
card then takes over IRQ11 and sets the 2 other motherboard mass storage
controllers to IRQ 15. This locks up windows every single time and then will not
boot up to windows. EVER.
Now I purchased this motherboard with thoughts of having a very compatible,
upgradeable and easily changeable BIOS, that had lots of special features. I
am sure that I am not alone in this reason for purchasing this board. I am
asking that you give me and all your future customers of this board a way to
utilize other PCI add on cards such as the Fasttrak66 without conflicts. All it
should take is a small, quick BIOS upgrade. As more boards are made and
introduced each day, I would like to believe that your company wants to go
forward and not backwards. By not leaving the end user an "out", this and
other boards will find there way to the archives of newer boards that could
have been a rare find. And as your motherboards start to decline in being user
friendly, so too will your customer base.
Please take the time to read this, and then read it again. This small problem
will get out very fast to websites that cater to all kinds of computer related
articles. I will be waiting for a fast reply. Thank you for your time and I will be
looking forward to a solution to this problem.

Sincerely,
Shawn Briel
SDB Computers

P.S. Email all responses to sbriel@hotmail.com. I will no longer have this email
address(flboy29@aol.com) as of 9/05/1999.

[Vidfreek]

Just one question, im not exactly sure what mirroring means, does it mean copy from one drive to another?

Anyway why would buy an ATA66 controller for a board that already supports 4 ATA66 devices? Just though I would ask.

[sbriel]

The fasttrak66 is a controller card however it also lets you stripe 2 drives together at the same time, boosting transfer rates way past the 66MB's a sec. It saves bit #1 on the first drive, then bit #2 on the second drive, bit #3 on the first drive,#4 on second, etc....It then always pulls off the both drives the same ways speeding up your sustained transfer rates twice as fast. And yes mirroring reads to both drives, using one as a backup disk just in case of the first drive's failure.

[Bleeding Edge]

This is like a basic Bios feature, you know, to be able to disable the onboard controllers.

They must have had a reason to make this decision to remove the option. Probably a flaw in design or the implementation of it...

[KillerBug]

So no way to simply enable this in BIOS? I had been informed that the BE6 had a fully functional ATA/66 card built right in, I guess fully functional means that it will boot without blowing up.

[sbriel]

I thought this motherboard was going to be fully bios friendly. Heck it has everything else, why not just add the IDE3 and 4 channels to the bios so you can disable them? Big mistake on their part. Many people will not buy this motherboard due to this left out option!!!

[zskillz]

I have the Abit BP6, and I also get 2 "PCI Mass Storage" controllers that constantly pop up in my device manager. I have no idea what the hell to do with them. Could you please explain what the hell exactly that they are. Do they take up an IRQ even though they aren't functioning, because if they do I'm gonna be really pissed. I've had a hell of a time getting passed IRQ issues with my soundcard.
thx,
-Z

[sbriel]

Yes they do take up the same IRQ. Check your bios to disable them. If you cant call ABIT directly. Go to their website for the number. Dont let ABIT rest until they fix this issue on all Abit boards. Especially the BE6!!!!!

[Vidfreek]

My Abit BE6 is running perfectly with my ATA66 Western Digital 13 gig drive, I got it installed and running with that drive and the drivers in no time, I love this board it works great.

Now the BP6 I dont too many people who have that one, but I know 4 other people, my friends to be exact, that have a BE6 and have no problems, it took them a little while to get it working right, but now they are up and running great, and with ATA66.

[Bleeding Edge]

What is this Skillz? Is it listed under hard drive controllers? Did you load motherboard specific drivers that you may not have needed?

edit~

vidfreek. i hear there is now a date and price for the psx2.

[This message has been edited by Bleeding Edge (edited 08-19-99).]

[MadMatt]

While I think Abit should post a BIOS fix for this issue, I can understand the oversight. ATA66 is stil leading edge stuff for 99% of users and adding a RAID controller to such a HOT mobo is probably pretty rare. However, ABIT has actively embraced the title of 'King of OCing' and as such should have realized that someone would try this.

Sorry to be nitpicky, but RAID striping alternates CLUSTERS between the two drives, not BITS. And if you're only storing 1 bit in each cluster.... - well you're wasting almost all of your hd space.

[sbriel]

You are correct. I am still new to this type of arena. You can change your cluster sizes from 1kb to 1024 kb. Promise recommends 64kb per cluster for high end graphics and video. So thats what I took, the 64 kb route. Still don't know if that is good enough or not. Any ideas would be appreciated. But it really does me no good at this time until I can get the BE6 to accept my Fasttrak66 card. When I talked with an ABIT technician last week, he said they have no plans to update the bios for the reasoning of being able to disable the 2 mass storage device contallers that hog up IRQ11(IDE 3,4). However he is only a technician and does not make those type of decisions. What do you guys think? Will Abit update the bios for this? And if so, when?