this is my motherboard :

http://www.abit.com.tw/page/en/motherboard/motherboard_detail.php?pMODEL_NAME=BE6-II&fMTYPE=Slot+1

there are ide 1,2,3 and 4 which 3 and 4 supports ata/66 which is faster then ide 1 and 2. the problem is, the harddisk is recognised as udma100 on ide 3 and 4, but will not boot. it only boot from ide 1 or 2. so is there anyway i can attach it to ide 3 or 4 and be able to boot from there? thanks for all advices.

What makes you think IDE1 and 2 or not ATA/66. I find it hard to believe they would make a board that way. Download and run HDTACH to compare speeds on the controllers.

Acording to your MB manual both of your IDE controllers support 33/66 transfer speed. This means the maximum speed is 66 but the controllers are backward compatible. Your bigger issue, if this drive is new, is if the BIOS properly identifies the drive by model.

1 and 2 are in black, and 3/4 in blue which use 80-wired date cable compare to 1/2 which can only takes 40-wired cable. have a look at the manual if you wish :

http://www.abit.com.tw/page/en/download/download_detail.php?pFILE_TYPE=Manual&pMAIN_TYPE=Motherboard&pTITLE_ON_SCREEN=BE6-II&pSOCKET_TYPE=Slot+1

maybe i should add these :

there is something strange about this pc. there seems to be 2 bios in it, 1 is the normal award boot bios while the other is highpoint technology inc. hpt370 bios ver.0.95b. i've heard of award, ami, pheonix....etc but never heard of this. i'm not new to pc. and while i connect 80-wired cable to ide 3/4, it only recognised by this highpoint bios and not award. strange. so i think thats the cause of it not booting from it. also, highpoint bios show my hard disk at udma100.

ps : 1. pc boot with award bios detecting hardward first then follow by highpoint bios.

2. 80-wired data cable doesn't fit in to ide 1 or 2 cause 1 of the hole is filled.

anyone any clue?

OK I see now. Why do you say you can't boot from the blue ports? Aren't there any BIOS boot options to boot from IDE 0,1,2,3,4. I believe that this was the intent of these faster IDE channels. Your manual states that they don't recommend connecting optical devices to the faster channels. I think your issue is setting up the boot order. Set the jumpers on the harddrive to MASTER or Master alone if available. Then you need to enter the BIOS screens and change the boot menu to select that controller.

That's a strange one!
Do you have a way to enter setuo for each Bios? You might be able to disable booting from the ATA/33 bios and set the ATA/66 bios to boot from one of it's drives.

OOPS, there's an echo here. I didn't see Othehill's post.

My son had a Abit MB for AMD SlotA like that. It was a way to speed up the ATA transfer rate, give you the ability to have 8 IDE devices. It isn't two BIOSes. There is a separate Highpoint controller that needs to be installed if you want to use the higher speed IDE controllers. You need to verify that you have the Highpoint drivers installed. That may be why you haven't been able to boot from the blue controllers. I suggest that you sit down and read over the manual to understand how this board works.

No, no, no...the blue IDE connections are for the Highpoint RAID controller, built on the board...

"We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about 'and'."
- Sir Arthur Eddington 1882-1944

That IS NOT a RAID controller. It is an ATA66 Controller. As I said it allows faster transfers and 8 IDE devices.

I think is, in fact, a built in highpoint raid controller...like on my old ABIT TS-20 board.

No real idea about how to make it work without a drive on IDE1 because of the generic manual but it says my TS-20 supports ata 33/66/100 on all channels.

One of us has to do some diggin' to find out how this works.

Skip

I think the channel 3 and 4 slots must be enabled through turnng on SATA from the "integrated peripherals" page of the main BIOS.

From an FAQ on this boards BIOS

.

Q:My IDE hard drive couldn't be auto-detected by the IDE-2 connector in slave mode, but my IDE CD-ROM is fine. Is it related to the SATA function? ( BH7 )

A: The SATA port of the BH7 is converted from "IDE-2 master" of the Intel ICH4 south bridge, so, once the SATA function had been enabled in the "Integrated Peripherals" page of the BIOS, the "IDE-2 master" will be disabled automatically. If you turn on SATA but attach nothing onto SATA channel, the auto-detecting mechanism will be affected and leads to a detection failure when IDE hard drive is connected to "IDE-2 slave". The solution of this problem; which is also our recommendation in user's manual, is- never turn on SATA function in "Integrated Peripherals" page of BIOS when you don't want to attach SATA devices on to BH7 board.

What SATA controller? Are we talking about the original post here?

Yes, I believe we are. My little micro board has 4 ide slots, has a highpoint raid controller, and if you plug a drive into either of the blue slots (ide3 or ide4) it goes crazy looking to recognize the drive.

Skip

thanks guys,

ham30 is right.

let's get down to business. i'll explain how i got it work.

1. reboot system and enter award bios, then DISABLE all 4 ide boot option which are ide1 master/slave and ide2 master/slave.

2. connect 80-wired ide cable to ide 3 controller and hard disk.

3. boot up till highpoint bios and press ctrl + H to enter setup. then set udma mode accordingly(mine at 4+)

4. next, press F1 to exceed and reboot to confirm highpoint is set correctly at udma 4+.

note : if one of the ide boot device (all 4 ms/sl) is not disable in award bios, system will not boot, it shows "no input signal" on my monitor.

thanks again, guys.

"note : if one of the ide boot device (all 4 ms/sl) is not disable in award bios, system will not boot, it shows "no input signal" on my monitor"

sorry, i made a mistake. it should be :

"if previous ide drive was not disable, it will not boot. as the system will fail to find the boot device. hence, you'll get "no input signal" on your monitor"

Take a look at the manual for this MBoard. It is linked at the beginning of this thread. This is not a RAID board This board predates SATA by 4 or 5 years.

OtheHill is correct...I'm wrong. This board does not support raid anything. The highpoint controller is just to take advantage of ATA66.

That motherboard manual is quite a long read but worth every minute invested.

Skip

Hmmm...sure enough...should have checked out the link first. My only experience with the highpoint bios is on the Abit raid board on one of my systems. When downloading updates for the bios, I never noticed it was used for anything other than a RAID setup.

"We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about 'and'."
- Sir Arthur Eddington 1882-1944

This brings us back to getting the posters HDrive to boot on that controller. I am quite sure the answer is in the manual. I think it is just a matter of installing the Highpoint drivers and setting the boot priority. Response #6 may have some incite into what MAY be necessary to allow boot.
Litz
Post back and bring us up to date on what you have done with this issue.

this is kind of weird.....

i'm able to boot into win98 but not xp. there's a BSOD and reboot right after that....lol. i've tried doing clean install of xp, but right after all boot up driver loaded during preinstallation(hope you understand what i mean) it just reboot. maybe i should really spend sometime studying the manual. i'll first try googling for the highpoint driver that you guys mentioned and try it out if it works.

additional infos..

1. i've connect my quantun fireball(20gb) onto ide1 with 40-wired cable now. master.

2. cd-rw on ide2 as master.

3. ide3/4 empty

thanks guys, i'll be back..........

hi guys,

i still can't get any clue from the manual or abit's site. well, guess i have to leave it as it is at the moment till i found the solution...tks anyway

I suggest you visit PC perspectives. They have forums over by brand and I think the Abit site is supported by a tech from Abit. You should be able to get the answers on how to setup that controller. Look here:
http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=326254

If memory serves me correctly you will need to find the correct driver for you highpoint controller and install it before you can boot you OS.
I used to have a few of these boards and I think the easiest way I found was to install the OS with the HD on IDE 1, then install highpoint driver, shut PC down and switch HD to IDE 3. I did have CDROM on IDE 1. I believe you have the better of the highpoint controllers. My first one had HPT 366 contrller and that was a bear to find drivers for.

GL
Savage112