BIOS tweaks and original HDD

[sciport]

Hello, I recently purchased an ASUSTEK CUS2LC Mainboard and a new
ATX case .
Not sure of the Award bios version
Socket 370 PentiumIII 733mhz (1.70v).
Video card Diamond Viper Ultra 770 32mb AGP
Printer HP Laserjet 1100 (parallel)
Scanner Visioneer 7600 USB
128mb SDRAM (Non ECC 1 stick)
HP 7200I CD Burner
Generic 1.44 floppy drive
SB Live PCI sound card with Eastern speakers

Ihave a WD hdd (AC313000R 13gb Buffer 512kb.
Max transfer rate (buffer to host)
66.6MB/s (mode 4 Ultra ATA))
from a PII system which I would like to
use in the new box as a master.
I notice the the new board has the primary IDE colored blue
to accept the (supplied by ASUS) 40 (80wire) IDE cable.
Is there a setting in the BIOS that will allow me to optimize
this drive?
I intend to zero out the drive with WD's utility program (DLGDIAG.EXE)
partition and format it for FAT32 and re-install Windows 98 SE.

I notice that the Western Digital utility program has a
program which will turn Ultra ATA on or off.
Not sure when I would do this, I was thinking of doing it before
Fdisking and formatting.

Ive already set the chip to 733 and the voltage shows
1.70.
Any other Bios tweaks you can think of would be appreciated,
I don't intend to overclock, just looking for stability.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Sciport

[NDD]

Blue colored IDE is for ATA100 HDs, you won't have performance improvement if you plug you ATA66 HD in it. If you let your mobo to autodetect the HD, it will also place the best settings for it (DMA, block transfer, etc). You can turn Ultra ATA whenever you like to, you don't need to format the drive before or after it, but you'd better leave the HD as you got it, believe me, it's already pre-optimized http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif
As for better performance, try if your memory does CAS2, you can do it by setting under "Advanced Peripherals" all the memory timings (CAS/RAS) to lowest (2T/5T, if I remember correctly for your type of board).
That's about all, good luck !

Best Regards ...

[sciport]

Thanks for your assistance ND.
I'll try that memory setting.
Appreciate the help.
Regards.
sciport

[sciport]

Informative Link.
Thanks for the pointer.
sciport

[Bovon]

You might want to read a little about the bios, and what certain things do there. They are pretty criptic sometimes, and you don't always know which setting does what.

Go here and read about the bios settings.
http://www.rojakpot.com/Speed_Demonz/BIOS_Guide/BIOS_Guide_Index.htm