Is it 66 or 100?

[dmoltrup]

I have the ECS P6VXA Socket 370 ATX Motherboard
I just bought a Maxtor 40GB ATA/100 drive.

The drive works fine, but I'm not sure if I should get the ATA100 PCI adapter card. The card is $50 bucks, but until Feb. 2, there's a $25 rebate. According to anything I find online, the motherboard natively supports DMA 33/66/100.

The book for the motherboard seems to say that it only supports UDMA 33/66.

Is there anything I can look at in the operating system or utilities to tell me which mode it's running in? I am running WinXP. If not, is it possible that the UDMA 100 feature is available in a BIOS update?

[acid_burn~187]

That mainboard has an ata 33/66/100 controller. Once the POST is finished, you a simple box with white writing that has information your drives and ram. It's the one that is shown just before booting the OS. It should say in there what speed the bus is running at, and which mode it's using. Eg UDMA5, 4, PIO, etc..

~Paul

[dmoltrup]

Do you know how to slow the display down, all the info just flashes on the screen and it's gone. I put a blank floppy in to force it to stop, and at the top of the screen was some drive info:

Pri. Master: LBA, ATA 66, 40029MB

Even in post it's reporting ATA 66. I've set all the hard drive settings in BIOS to AUTO, except that I turned on S.M.A.R.T.

[dmoltrup]

Well now. This is quite a hum-dinger!

I figured out why the board won't recognize the ATA100 drive!

I got a CHEAP knock-off of the actual board! I was supposed to get a ECS P6VXA motherboard, but received a PcChips MB694A board instead. Apparantly, the board I got is an OEM or something, the ATA100 is not supported. There are a couple of other small differences as well. :mad: :mad:

I've installed updated drivers for the ECS board in WinXP, too! Everytime I start Windows, I get a barrage of errors. Geeeez!!!


I got the motherboard off eBay from the user 'newrabit'. I've sent an e-mail to him, hopefully he responds. Unfortunately, I purchased the board on the first of January.

If anyone has any comments, tips, or suggestions, please let me know.