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One of my computers has a motherboard (VA-503+ socket 7) whose on-board IDE controllers are bad. Sometimes the system won't recognize when the IDE drives are plugged in, or sometimes the drives suddenly disappear and I get failed read/write errors while the OS is running. My question is, if I buy a PCI IDE controller card (such as a Promise IDE controller), will BIOS automatically recognize the card and the drives attached to it upon boot or are PCI controller cards only recognized within an OS with the drivers loaded? I mean, if I disable the primary and secondary onboard IDE controllers in CMOS and use the PCI card by itself instead, will the PCI controller card be cold bootable?
Yes, you can boot a hard drive attached via a PCI controller card. You will need to find the setting in your BIOS to identify your boot devices and boot order. The PCI COntroller card will probably be recognized as a SCSI device.
Michael J
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If I recall correctly, the 503+ only supports ATA33 anyway, so the IDE controller card would be a good idea regardless.
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And if I disabled both onboard IDE controllers then the hard drive attached to the PCI controller card would be recognized as C:? Just wondering if my installed 95/NT4 setup is still going to boot without any problems...
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The most important part is the PCI add-in card needs to have a Bootable BIOS, which will auto pop up its Drives/Boot Options Menu of attached drives at end of BIOS POST.
Be aware that not all cards support optical drives, a second-hand mobo would be cheaper.
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Thanks for all the help. I got a Promise Ultra66 IDE controller for cheap which hopefully will do the trick. (hd I'm using is only ATA 66)
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Just curious, how cheap? I got one new a long time ago for $20.
Somewhere I still have a K6 II 450 on a Tyan 1590S MOBO with that card and it booted fine off that IDE. The card is recognized shortly after POST and the card's BIOS loads.
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You do not need to disabled the MoBo IDE controllers in order to boot from the hard drive connected to the controller card. You just need to make sure that the card is in the boot order before the onboard controllers. however, if you are having problems with the onboard IDE it probably isn't a bad idea.
Michael J
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Doctor: Got it for $5 (plus another $5 to ship).
Michael: thanks for the info. I'm trying to figure things out as much as I can before the card arrives later this week, as I really don't want any headaches. My only question remaining is, if I set the PCI controller card to boot first, will the hard drive on the primary controller of the PCI card automatically become C: or would it only become C: if I disable the motherboard's onboard IDE controllers? I really don't want to have to install Windows again because it ends up being on drive E: or what have you once I swap the hard drive to the PCI controller.
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I don't think it is as complex as you are making it.
My experience with PCI IDE adapter cards is that the computer will boot off the OS on the first bootable drive it finds as per the boot sequence established in BIOS. If your HDD is on the IDE of the adapter card and you don't have a bootable diskette or SCSI device ahead of it, it will boot off the HDD and the primary partition of that HDD will be seen as the C: drive.
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Doctor,
Thanks for clearing that up. I've just been having so many hardware headaches lately that I was stressing about it.
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As noted by Santa in response#5 be aware that you may not get an optical drive to work on that promise card. Many of thier older cards, at least, wouldn't recognise optical drives.
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Apparently, according to the Promise Ultra 66 specs, you can mix both hard drives and opticals, though I think you have to stick them on different IDE ports.
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 Demension 8200 No video
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psu problems??
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