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Controller card problem

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by ogie_2001

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I have a Promise TX2 Ultra 133 controller card that i'm trying to get to work in a P3, 450 Mhz system. The motherboard is a Tekram P6B40-A4X.

I want to setup with a Maxtor 80G hard drive as primary master on the controller and a Maxtor 120G as secondary master on the controller.

I had the 80G with 98se working but when I shut down and connected the 120G I got a message on reboot of "Disk Boot Failure". Sometimes post finds one or both drives, sometimes the controller card finds one or both drives and sometimes neither one of them finds anything. It happens everytime even when other drives are setup as primary master (10g, 60g and another 80g). I've tried every PCI slot available and have removed all other cards (3com network card, Power Color sound card) from the computer except the AGP card (Riva TNT2). I have tried putting both hard drives on the same IDE cable as master and slave as well which didn't work.

The motherboard worked fine before this setup but all of a suddensince attempting this my cd rom drivers (on original 10G drive in system) have been "remmed" out on bootup. Removed the entry to "rem" the cd rom drivers and it worked fine for a few reboots but eventually returned.

I have also been having intermittent problems with the computer being able to access floppy disks (98 boot disk and Maxtor Powermax) and this problem seems to spread to another computer when I attach the drive I?m currently attempting to get setup and run the floppies from there. The PS2 ports for keyboard and mouse also stopped working.

Is it possible I have a virus infecting the bios and is it possible I have transmitted it to the other computer? Any other ideas?

Thanks in advance for any responses.

5 replies

by thechas

1. Did you set the jumpers properly on both drives?

2. For Windows 98 (even W95) you do NOT want the CD Rom driver statements in Autexec.bat or config.sys
These drivers are for DOS mode access to the CD and can cause problems for Windows.
SinceWindows 95, the driver function for ALL CD-ROM drives has been handled by the IDE driver for the chip-set on the motherboard.
The motherboard drivers will most likely correct your floppy drive access problems.

3. How big of a power supply does the system have?
With multiple hard drives, 250 Watts may be marginal. 300 Watts would be better.

4. Were either hard drives set up connected to the motherboard controller and using the setup disk from Maxtor?
If so, the drive may have a drive overlay program installed. Drive overlay programs do not work well with secondary IDE controllers.

5. The most common cause of PS/2 port failures is hot plugging the mouse or keyboard.
If either device is plugged in or unplugged when power is on, the port can be blown.

6. How much RAM is installed?
Windows 98 has a bug that can cause strange problems with more than 511MB of RAM installed.
This bug is VERY configuration dependant.
Adding the PCI card may have been enough to trigger the bug on your system.

7. Yes, a BIOS virus is possible.
Update and run your virus scanner to check.

continued

by thechas

If you used Maxtor's Powermax to set up the drive, I believe that you will need to un-install it.

First, back up any critical files.

Then, install the drives in a PC that can recognize the full capacity of the drives.

You will need to download the new version of fdisk from the link at www.fdisk.com/fdisk
(This version supports larger hard drives)

Boot from a bootable floppy with fdisk on it.

Run the command fdisk /mbr at the DOS prompt.

Run fdisk, and verify that your partition structure is intact.

Shut down, and move the drives back to your system, they should boot up now.

Chas

by ogie_2001

Thanks for the quick reply Chas.
To answer your questions:

Jumpers were set correctly on both drives.

Statements weren?t in config.sys and autoexec.bat they just showed up all of a sudden (I suspect before I made changes. I hadn?t used the machine for about a week, however someone else might have. I removed them and they showed up again soon after.

The 10G was connected with 98se on it and running well on this system before the changes. I changed cases and added the controller card (the only changes).

When trying to install the motherboard drivers the cd said none were needed for 98.

Power supply is 300w.

The 60G and 80G I fdisk and formatted with a 98 boot disk and did a clean install. I only used Powermax to test the drives.

The amount of ram is 384mb.

I can?t run a virus scanner because I am unable to boot to the hard drive now (10G). The 60G is now in another computer and the two 80G are being returned to Maxtor.

If you have any further ideas pleaselet me know.

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