ide controllers- bios or mobo?

[Rookie]

Hi there, I've lurked long enough. Are ide controllers bios or mobo? My first system quit seeing hdd. set specs, used auto detect, tried 4 different hdd, cable select, mst, slv combos. No luck. Got a Fic va503 mobo for fathers day.
Just for kicks I tried an old ide card from a junk 386 I was gonna put linux on, and it works! Cant see the floppy from either onboard fdc or the card (probably is a jumper setting- no documentation...)No dual ide channels- windows still wants to give me ide controllers for the motherboard reasources it finds in the bios. What ever it offers in the way of win95 choices cause conflict. cant change drivers if it doesnt see the cd. Cant boot w/ win98 disk to load dos drivers for the cd- now I'm stuck.
This machine is fine for my kids and to learn how to network/ play with a firewall ect. Cant see throwing it out cause of this.
Will flashing the bios help?
machine is: generic box, biostar 8500 tac ver 3 mobo, ami bios 10/94, pent 133, 32m edo,
Please help, Thanks,
David

[Comtech]

Sounds like you have on-board IDE controllers, and installing a second IDE controller card will give the machine a fit. Take out the card, plug the IDE cables into the mobo, and let the BIOS run the thing. If you must use the card, disable the onboard IDE controllers in BIOS.

[Rookie]

Thanks, I did have to disable the onboard ide in bios. Thats how I was able to get the ide card to work. So the machine is semi-functional now. What I want to know is: how can I get the floppy & cd rom to work?
Do I need to get a newer ide card? One that comes with a floppy for drivers?
I thought I could get better drivers off of the 95 cd- but not if cant see the cd. I could I think- take out the hdd (& its copy of win95)and manually load dos drivers into autoexec and config.sys with my new machine? then put it back in the crippled machine? Would that give me access to the cd?
The original question was: will flashing the bios fix this- Is the bios where ide controllers are Or are they hardwired into the mobo?
Thanks

[Comtech]

The BIOS controlls the IDE, floppy, and everything on the mobo.
Why would you want to have a separate IDE card?
Throw the thing away, and enable the stuff in BIOS. Plug in your cables, and go.
Start with just the master IDE drive, and see if BIOS detects. Did you try a different cable? Did you try reversing the cable? The controllers don't just quit for no reason.
If you need to use the IDE card, you must disable in BIOS everything that's on the card. Primary and secondary IDE, probably Com 1, and 2. The floppy should still work from the mobo, if not you need to disable that in BIOS too.
No, there's no flash that does what you want.

[Rookie]

Perhaps my original post wasnt explicit enough- the mobo died, it was a used machine- refurbished by a reseller. AMI bios dated 10/94. Pent133, 32m edo, 1.6g maxtor dated 1996. The cpu fan quit- I didnt know it, I'm a newbie, the power supply fan worked. I opened up the case to see what kind of ram I had and discovered the cpu fan quit.
I replaced the fan but soon after that I lost the ide controllers. Nothing I tried worked. Known good hdd, different lba/normal settings, 1024 cyl limit ect. Swaped ide ribbons, Spent days reading bios manual found on this site.
On fathers day my kids got me a mew Va503 w/ amd 350, I put it in the pent box, Used all the old parts, swapped them out to see if they were the culprit.
So I thought the biostar was dead- just for kicks I put it in a 486 box and put in the ide card from an old 386 and it works- kinda. Its useable- no floppy, no cd rom, and windows keeps wanting me to install drivers for the pci stuff it detects (and I no longer use)in the mobo.
My original question Is: can I flash the bios to fix this? Does bios controll the ide stuff or is that hard wired to the board?
If its hardwired than it stands to reason if I get a newer ide card (with better drivers) this old machine will work again??
I think.
Rookie

[Rookie]

I just thought of something, the biostar mobo had an AMI bios chip- can I put in an Award chip? just bypass the ami stuff altogther? All the other machines I've worked on have award bios, I like it better.
I posted the last one before I read your whole reply, so flashing wont make it see hdd anymore, Ok. I think the cpu fan was over heated for a couple weeks before I got the courage to pull the cover and look inside- performance would be ok for an hour, the slow down dramaticaly- after it got too hot. I did go to (& email) the biostar tech site. Got an archived manual for jumper settings for this board, not very newbie friendly. Hope that cleared up the *throw the ide card away* stuff.
Thanks for replying. (sometime my questions posted to tech help mail lists dont get answered- questions *too* newbie?)
Rookie

[CMonster]

Okay, I understand..it sounds like the motherboard or BIOS has "gone south for the winter" try clearing the CMOS - still doesn't work does it? If you can somehow gain access to the floppy disk I would recommend that you now try flashing a new BIOS, after that.....maybe it is time to look at a new motherboard.

[Rookie]

Thanks, so I gather in order to flash a bios its necessary to have the floppy work? How does that work? d/l the flash to 3.5 then exe? How about swaping that AMI for an Award? Never did like the ami pages, Award bios seem to have more choices and is more self explanatory, compared to the ami one.
To be fair though, I've never seen a new ami-- this one is 1994...
Is that an alternative?
I know its probably better, faster & cheaper to just get a used fully functioning mobo- I'm trying to teach myself enough to pass the A+ test- have been told that what I'm doing is *hands on* expiriance that the *book* learning wont provide...
Thanks again
Rookie

[CMonster]

...and experience that in all likelyhood will not be on the test.

Swaping BIOS chips will probably not work and it may even make things a whole lot worse. You may toast both BIOS chips.

Generally speaking, to flash a BIOS you download a flash program and new BIOS file from your board manufacturer's website; the BIOS must be for that EXACT motherboard! the flash program and new BIOS are then placed on a bootable disk (that is a disk with the system files on it, usually DOS6, or DOS 6.22), you then boot the computer with that floppy disk, run the flash program, and use it to install (flash) the new BIOS file to the ROM chip.

You should carrefully read about it at the board Mfgr's website and follow the instructions to the letter, exactly, verbatum......