K7S5A PRO IDE0 not usable

[fxit63]

Trying to install WIndows 98 or XP using IDE0 port master does not work. Windows tries to format the drive but cannot use it. Currently have XP installed using IDE1.
400 watt supply
XP2400 processor
756 MB DDR
Geoforce 440 AGP VIdeo card.
Western Digital 120G Model 1200JBRTL
Mad Dog DVDR

I have RMA'd 1 board for Bios problem
Tried a DURON 1900 and a XP2000.
Also tried 256 of PC133 memory, Quantum Fireball 5 gig disk and Mad Dog CDrom
Same results for all combinations.
I believe the bios is the latest from ECS, have tried some different settings but so far no change.

[BipolarBill]

See if disconnecting the CD drives helps. I have found that a bad optical drive on the Secondary channel affects the Primary channel on this particular motherboard.

Oh - a common issue with WD hard drives is misjumpering. My money is on that.

http://www.sysopt.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=136530

[fxit63]

Thanks Bill,
Great links too. Way too little time but tried CS and moving to end of cable and putting CD's on IDE1. Same result, again did it quickly and want to go over the setting much closer.

[BipolarBill]

I mean that you should disconnect the CD drive(s) or try other ones.

[fxit63]

Have tried a MadDog DVDr and MadDog CD and also working with many options in the BIOS. Still not getting it to work. Auto detects same on second IDE interface as first. ATA 66. Optical drives detecting at ATA 33. Goes through all the motions and then windows cannot format the drive.

When I move it all to the secondary IDE formats, loads and runs. The auto-detect screen looks the same ATA66 for the hard drive and ATA 33 for the optical.

I had a wild hair and wanted to load a SIS driver for IDE during windows setup initialization. I couldn't figure that out. Got the generic driver download from SIS but not sure how to get a driver that windows will recognize to load during setup.

I cannot connect the optical drives to the primary port as it does not recognize them as atapi devices.

Really been going over the jumpers and have used both a Western Digital and Maxtor hard drive.
Have one other optical to try.

[Peter M]

Seems like the excellent vendor who sold you a dud board got you another dud for exchange. Return, ask your money back, and buy elsewhere - somewhere "new" product doesn't come out of the RMA bin.

[fxit63]

Been running in circles with ECS support. One test they asked was to see how the disk was detected patched as CS and as the only device. This is how it detected the Western Digital 102Gig .

With the hard drive (only) patched as CS on the end connector of the 80 conductor cable

Primary:
Cyl 53349 Head 16 Sector 255 Size 111.4GB LBA LBA 32bit on Block Mode 16 sec PIO 4 ATA 100
Secondary:
Cyl 57461 Head 16 Sector 255 Size 120.0 GB LBA LBA 32bit on Block Mode 16 sec PIO 4 ATA 100

Notice the different number of Cylinders and therefore the smaller size.

I believe it's time for different vendors mb, piled way too much time on this one.

Thanks for the suggestions!

[causticVapor]

One of my friends complained about constant lockups on his system once - I replaced all sorts of things, reinstalled windows, reinstalled drivers, ran memtest86 and prime95 for hours on end without any error...

...and the system would still spontaneously lock up in regular usage. It seemed to be related to disk access, so I finally got the bright idea to put the hard drive on a promise card. All the random lockup problems were suddenly gone.

So yes boards can have faulty IDE controllers - or ones that malfunction after a certain time period - which are very difficult to diagnose, since there are no real "hard drive controller" stability test programs.