T.R | Title | User | Personal Name | Date | Lines |
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2937.1 | | QUARK::LIONEL | Free advice is worth every cent | Mon Mar 03 1997 08:55 | 8 |
| Yes, you need the audio cable to listen to audio CDs.
There is no such thing as "proprietary IDE". As for IDE "addresses", the only
choices are master and slave - be sure that if you have another device on that
IDE connector that one is set to master and the other slave. You want to
avoid having a disk and a CD-ROM sharing the same IDE channel.
Steve
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2937.2 | Why | USDEV::CLEMENT | Smells like Nirvana | Mon Mar 03 1997 13:02 | 4 |
| > You want to
> avoid having a disk and a CD-ROM sharing the same IDE channel.
I have this configuration @ home. Why avoid it? Thanks. Mark
|
2937.3 | | skylab.zko.dec.com::FISHER | Gravity: Not just a good idea. It's the law! | Mon Mar 03 1997 13:09 | 9 |
| The main reason you want to avoid it is because transfer modes that end up being
used is the lowest common denominator of the two devices on the IDE channel.
In addition, some IDE cards think they understand the protocol being used and
intercede to buffer data etc etc. However, the CD uses a different protocol and
it may confuse some of these "think they are smart" IDE cards. I suspect now
that IDE CDs are common this is less of a problem.
Burns
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2937.4 | | USDEV::CLEMENT | Smells like Nirvana | Mon Mar 03 1997 13:24 | 14 |
| >The main reason you want to avoid it is because transfer modes that end up
> being
>used is the lowest common denominator of the two devices on the IDE channel.
ok. I assume this also is true for two hard drives on the same channel?
My new system (1/1/97) came with a 1.0gb HD and 8x CD-ROM connected to
the first EIDE socket on the MB.
I added an older second HD (@ 250mb) to the second EIDE socket.
If I move the two HDs to EIDE socket 0, is it possible to make it even
slower if the older HD has a slower transfer rate than the new CD-ROM?
Thanks.
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2937.5 | Getting beyond me... | skylab.zko.dec.com::FISHER | Gravity: Not just a good idea. It's the law! | Mon Mar 03 1997 14:40 | 16 |
| This is getting out of my depth, but...
I think the "least common denominator" business is not necessarily the actual
bytes/second rate, but rather the "transfer mode". In other words, CDs are not
likely to have the extra transfer modes that make EIDE "E". Thus (my understanding
is that) a disk on the same IDE channel would not use them either. If you put
another disk on the same channel with the first disk, the same thing should be
true. However, then you get into exactly what features (transfer modes etc) the
old disk has versus the CD, and I just can't guess.
Perhaps someone reading has more detailed info...
OTOH, give it a try...if it seems faster stay with the change. If it seems slower,
go back to the old configuration. If you can't tell, who cares?
Burns
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2937.6 | only on some boards | CSC32::J_MANNING | | Mon Mar 03 1997 15:16 | 6 |
|
If this is a Pentium using the 430(FX,HX,VX,TX), then each device on
the EIDE channel can run using a different PIO(or DMA) mode.
John
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2937.7 | 430 VX | USDEV::CLEMENT | Smells like Nirvana | Mon Mar 03 1997 16:40 | 4 |
| Yes, my MB uses the 430 VX chipset. Therefore you are saying it does
not matter where the devices are attached?
Thanks, Mark
|
2937.8 | | WRKSYS::TATOSIAN | The Compleat Tangler | Mon Mar 03 1997 17:16 | 5 |
| re: .6/.7
That's a bios issue. If the mainboard manufacturer Did The Right Thing,
the best PIO mode for each device will be used. Otherwise the slowest
device rules the cable...
|
2937.9 | Yes, it is BIOS. | CSC32::J_MANNING | | Tue Mar 04 1997 09:39 | 8 |
| re: .8
Yes, you are correct. The Award 4.51 BIOS will allow each device on
the EIDE channel to run at the appropriate PIO/DMA mode for best
performance.
John
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2937.10 | what about cdrom on sb sound card and SCSI boot? | SUBSYS::MSOUCY | MentalmETALMike | Tue Mar 04 1997 13:07 | 12 |
|
What about if I am going to use straight SCSI for boot and storage
devices and a DAT on the SCSI and have a 16 bit Sound Card with IDE and
a 12x CDROM on this interface, thus nothing on the MB's EIDE ports.
Will I have to make any changes in the BIOS to see the CDROM or will it
run fine on the sound card? MB will be a Pentium of one form or
another. Not sure what chipset will be there at this time.
Thanks in advance,
Mike
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2937.11 | | WRKSYS::TATOSIAN | The Compleat Tangler | Wed Mar 05 1997 02:31 | 16 |
| The "IDE" interface on the SB card is not controlled by the system
bios. It uses it's own set of drivers, doesn't it (something like
SBIDE.SYS perhaps?) So the procedures are essentially identical with or
without the SB card installed.
You'd tell your system bios to disable both IDE channels (if for no
other reasons than to prevent the bios from spending time scanning for
devices - and to free up an IRQ or two) then install a *real* SCSI host
adapter that has an on-board bios (or if your mainboard bios supports a
bios-less SCSI adapter eg: that has a Symbios 8XX PCI/SCSI chip on it
- you'd just plug that in).
Make sure your boot drive is set for ID 0, then connect up the SCSI
chain and you should be off and running...
/dave
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2937.12 | A real life experience... | NQOS01::tunsrv2-tunnel.imc.das.dec.com::Werner | Still crazy after all these years... | Fri Mar 07 1997 09:13 | 35 |
| I recently struggled through the soundcard with IDE controller issue on my new
system. The system came with two dual EIDE channels, with the 3 GB disk drive on
one and the 12X CD on the other. Cool, as long as I had no sound card. Tried to
put a SB16 PnP card in and got immediate conflicts between the card's IDE
controller and the slave (second set of EIDE controls) EIDE on the MB.
After some putzing I doscvoered where under Device Manager to disable the second
EIDE channel and moved the CDROM over tot he SB IDE control. Worked fine, UNTIL
I decided to run a dual-boot, with WIN95 and Windows NT V4.0. NT doesn't
recognize the CDROM IDE controller, so I couldn't see or use the CDROM - bummer!
After much research I concluded (says so right on the Creative Labs site) there
is no resolution, with the SB cards. When I called the company that made my PC
they indicated that it was a problem with all newer systems that they make and
that they order their Sb cards from Creative with the CDROM conteoller already
disabled.
So I returned the SB16 and got a Turtle Beach 32-voice WaveTable card. Turns out
Turtle Beach still has jumpers on the card that allow you to turn off the card's
IDE control. Since I really only needed the sound capabilities of the card, this
allowed me to turn back on the second EIDE channel, reconnect the CDROM to that
channel and "see" it from both boots. I could not find a utility for SB cards
that would disable the IDE control.
More good news was that the TB card came with the required cable to attached to
the CDROM for musiuc playback, whereas the SB16 came with nothing and required
that I go buy a cable at CompUSA.
Ain't this stuff fun! The reason that Ive switched to NT, BTW, is that my WIN95
setup had become so unstable that it was crashing at least once per day. I will
admit that I run lots of Beta stuff and tons of utilities running in the
background (all the Norton stuff), but that was still indicative of the lack of
OS maturity and stability. NT almost never crashes ( I did say that I have lots
of Beta stuf running, so even NT isn't immune).
Norm
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