<< If the hard drive is recent and you were using older hard drives before, you DO gain from the relatively large cache on it, which makes the drive load Windows a lot faster than an older drive will. That may give you the mistaken impression the drive is running faster than UDMA66, but it isn't. Some hard drive controller cards have a cache on them as well - that would make even the same drive load Windows faster - but they can't run the drive any faster than the chipset will allow either. If you don't believe me, see for yourself by testing the drive with something such as Sysoft Sandra that can test the actual max speed.>> Well said!!!! Smoke and mirrors!!! Still can't wait to build a new dual core PC with 2 GB fast ram.

0

Specs: http://www.intel.com/design/chipset... http://download.intel.com/design/ch... <<< The Intel® 820 chipset contains two core components: the Memory Controller Hub (MCH) and the I/O Controller Hub (ICH). The MCH integrates the 133 MHz processor system bus controller, AGP 2.0 controller, 400 MHz Direct RDRAM controller and a high-speed hub interface for communication with the ICH. The ICH integrates an UltraATA/66 controller, USB host controller,LPC interface controller, FWH Flash BIOS interface controller, PCI interface controller, AC’97 digital controller and a hub interface for communication with the MCH. The Intel® 820 chipset provides the data buffering and interface arbitration required to ensure that system interfaces operate efficiently and provide the system bandwidth necessary to obtain peak performance with the Pentium III processor. >>> <<< Memory Controller Hub (MCH) The MCH provides the interconnect between the Direct RDRAM and the system logic. It integrates the following functions: • Support for single or dual SC242 processors with 100 MHz or 133 MHz System Bus • 256 MHz, 300 MHz, 356 MHz or 400 MHz Direct RDRAM interface supporting 1 GB of Direct RDRAM • 4X, 1.5V AGP interface (3.3V 1X, 2X and 1.5V 1X, 2X devices also supported) • Downstream hub interface for access to the ICH >>>

0

"Too bad I couldn't find a pgm to "repair" the boot path for XP. Had no access to Recovery Console." That's very odd. Windows must have been screwed up. Were you able to load the Setup files up until that point from the XP CD? You should be able to access the Recovery Console, at the very least when you boot with the XP CD (as in, "Let Setup continue until the first screen where it asks whether you want to Repair Windows (go to the Recovery Console)" - press R at that point) often even if the drive won't boot otherwise, once you have the bios set to boot from a drive on the card. All recent and older PCI card IDE controller cards I know of are detected automatically as a "mass storage device" or similar by the XP Setup, and you don't normally need to install the drivers for it at the beginning of Setup by pressing F6, as long as the bios is able to boot the drive. "What I did: Formatted the (20 GB) partition which had XP, and re-installed with all 4 HDD (M/S) attached to the ATA 133 PCI card. HDDs now run DMA 6 = faster than HDD on C:\ = DMA 4." "....HDDs now run DMA 6 = faster than HDD on C:\ = DMA 4." Where are you seeing that, or are you assuming that? Unless you're seeing that in XP itself.......... You said the mboard chipset was rated at ATA 66 maximum, and that's what your specs say "The ICH integrates an UltraATA/66 controller...." . If that's the case, according to my experiences, the card CANNOT run the drives any faster than that on that mboard. It CAN run them at Ultra DMA 6 on any mboard that has a chipset that supports Ultra DMA 6 / UDMA133. On the other hand, your mboard is newer than any of the ones I tried a PCI controller card on. If you are seing Ultra Dma 6 in your information here, in the information in Device Manager itself: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devic... for any of your drives, then your mboard is an exception to my experiences.

0

Hi - Seeing DMA 6 during boot when the Promise controller appears - right after the memory screen (that you cancel pressing spacebar). Only have the 6 floppys for reinstalling XP. Have the upgrade CD made just after XP was released. Non-bootable. Earlier, made a Bart's bootable CD w/SP2, but it didn't work. Was able to reach "Recovery Console," however, was told to contact Microsoft. Big help. MSFT does gives free help on install. Well rerouting the boot path can be seen as a new "install." Right? Should have called them. Not many people run OS off the PCI HDD. It's like flying a plane from the edge of the wing. Fun when it works. SMART tests all say DMA 6.

0

"Seeing DMA 6 during boot when the Promise controller appears - right after the memory screen (that you cancel pressing spacebar). That may be a default message generated by the card. "SMART tests all say DMA 6." That may just be reading the capabilities of the hard drives, from the hard drives. If it doesn't say it's running drives in Ultra DMA 6 mode in XP itself in Device Manager, it isn't. http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devic... What does it say there? OR An add on controller card, or an additional IDE controller built into the mboard not in the main chipset, may have a separate SCSI listing or similar, and in that case it doesn't show up in the same place the onboard IDE controllers do, and the actual DMA mode the drives are running at may not be findable in Device Manager. E.g. I recently installed a recent Epox AD580XR mboard and it has an optional JMicron IDE/SATA controller on the mboard as well as the main chipset IDE and SATA controllers - it has a separate listing in Device Manager - the DMA mode the drives connected to that controller are running at is not found. In that case, the only way to tell the actual dma mode drives connected to the controller are running at is to test them with something that finds their actual max speed. "Only have the 6 floppys for reinstalling XP. Have the upgrade CD made just after XP was released. Non-bootable." "Was able to reach "Recovery Console," however, was told to contact Microsoft." Did you also have the upgrade CD in the drive when you used the floppies as you're supposed to? - from what I've heard you can use a non bootable XP CD with those and run Setup and you can get to the Recovery Console fine. Did the drive already have a brand name system software installation on it? If it had no data on it, that's probably the reason you can't get to the Recovery Console - there's supposed to be a previous operating system on the drive. On the other hand, if the drive has no data or no 2000 or XP installation on it, I don't think Recovery Console is available until Windows has been installed. They made the XP floppy set available for those who have really old CD drives that can't boot a bootable CD, or for those with an older bios that can't boot from a bootable CD even if they do have a CD drive that is capable of that, but it also works for use with non-bootable XP CDs. I made a set for 2000 (there is a utility on the 2000 CD (it was full, bootable) that makes the 4? floppy set) for use on a computer with a CD drive that was supposed to but didn't recognize a bootable CD, and I was able to get to the Recovery Console and run Setup fine. I made the same computer's drive a dual boot, also loading OEM XP Home (full, bootable), using the 6 floppy XP set. Recovery Console was available and Setup ran fine. When I later replaced the CD drive, I found the computer recognized a bootable CD fine. "Not many people run OS off the PCI HDD." There are lots of people using them on older mboards to support recognizing a hard drive larger than their mboard bios can recognize. The plain old PCI bus itself is perfectly capable of supporting their max burst speeds if they're IDE.

0

Hi. Been working on using Spinrite to check my HDDs. Not sure I understand you. HDDs are off the motherboard and are attached SCSI to the PCI ATA 133 card. There are no HDD attached to the motherboard, only optical drives. Running Spinrite 6.0 (Smart Monitor), sustained throughput for the UDMA 6 HDD ~ 77 Million vs 5 million for a HDD attached UDMA 4 to the motherboard. I hope this answers your question. Glad to know I am one of many who run OS off a SCSI card to bypass old MBs in order to upgrade performance on old PCs. It's fun.

0

"HDDs are off the motherboard and are attached SCSI to the PCI ATA 133 card. There are no HDD attached to the motherboard, only optical drives." OK, I "get" it. I didn't try connecting an external drive to the mboards I tried a modern enhanced IDE controller card on (they had USB 1.x, too slow for most hard drives to acheive their max burst speed , and no firewire, in any case), but according to my experiences, the max speed should still be limited to the max capabilities of the mboard chipset. "Running Spinrite 6.0 (Smart Monitor), sustained throughput for the UDMA 6 HDD ~ 77 Million vs 5 million for a HDD attached UDMA 4 to the motherboard." Okay, then what I said about whatever controller you connect the drive to being limited by the max capability of the mboard chipset doesn't apply in this case with this mboard, but it DOES apply to a lot of other older mboards. A side note: Spinrite is a very good program but you should never run it on a faulty drive where the drive itself is faulty, and you have to be very careful about making sure you know what you're doing when you try to make any repairs to the data on the drive with it - it may fix problems, but it can also trash the data on the hard drive. E.g. Scott Mueller, who has in the past written many versions of the "Upgrading and Repairing PCs" book series, recommends you don't use it to do data repairs with it at all, and he has seen disasterous results from doing so. "Glad to know I am one of many who run OS off a SCSI card to bypass old MBs in order to upgrade performance on old PCs." Microsoft has had SCSI support in their operating system since Win 95 and probably previously in Win 3.11 (Windows for Workgroups), and previous to that if you used additional SCSI drivers. Added on enhanced IDE or SATA drive controller chipsets are detected and treated as SCSI controllers even if they aren't actually SCSI because it was easier to write drivers that treat them as SCSI and use the support for SCSI controllers already built into the operating system. As I've already said, in my experience an added controller could not run the drives any faster than the mboard chipset would let it - yours apparently can and is an exception to my experienes, but obviously according to my experiences what you say does not apply to all older mboards. As for you not being able to get into Recovery Console, where did you mean? If you get a line while booting or whatever press a key to go to the Recovery Console or simlar as I've seen with some brand name system software installations that may not work if something else is wrong, but you should be able to boot with a regular XP CD and be able to choose to Repair your Windows installation by pressing R, which takes you to the Recovery Console, after the initial Setup files have loaded, on the first screen you see after they have been loaded. I know from previous experience you can't run a Repair Setup (called a Repair Install by many) if you continue onto Setup from that point because the choice isn't there, even if you use a regular XP CD.

0