TmEE Posted September 23, 2011 Share Posted September 23, 2011 I recently got a new motherboard, the BC875PLG which has i875P chipset and ISA slot (which is a requirement for me) and that board also has 2x SATA connectors. I have installed intel drivers and everything works really well except the SATA ports.I have set SATA to "enchanced" config with IDE compatibility, so those drives appear as 3rd IDE controller to the OS. Mobo detects my 2x SATA drives and allows me to do fun on them with no issues in DOS, but in windows the drives are accessed in DOS compatibility mode and in device manager there are yellow signs on the added IDE controller entries. When I remove the drives then the signs disappear.What could be a solution to the problem ? It does seem to be a driver issue than anything else...There is one other problem too, around ISA, which is ISA being too fast and I/O recovery time too short but it seems the mobo disables Winbond PCI to ISA bridge configuration so it does not appear in any PCI device detection. Datasheets of the bridge chips show that they are a standard PCI device and can be configured accordingly... the defaults of the bridge are 8.3MHz ISA, but the BIOS configures it to give 11MHz ISA and possibly pushes IO recovery time to max too, so most of my cards struggle on the bus, my Yamaha which is main reason for ISA makes crackly sound mostly and sometimes outright static. BIOS offers absolutely no options around that part. I will modify the board a little tonight so that ID strobe will always get passed to the bridge if it isn't yet so it should become visible again, and then I can write a small program that will adjust the speed parameters before windows boots. I looked at the possibility of hacking the BIOS but it looks like it is compressed and that makes it more headache than its worth but ultimately it will be the only option when hardware+adjustment approach fails. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rjecina Posted September 23, 2011 Share Posted September 23, 2011 There is no need for me to write again about this so it will be easiest for you to read about new windows installation on Intel 865 chipset MBO, because there is no practical difference between this 2 chipsets for us.You can read my comments and solutions of your SATA problem on this MSFN place Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TmEE Posted September 23, 2011 Author Share Posted September 23, 2011 I have been through that thread and its not covering anything of interest in my case. The drives are all in IDE mode, and SATA appears as a 3rd IDE controller to the OS. None of my drives are 4K and they both are 250GB and work perfectly with my PCI RAID card (but the card started acting up), the RAID card however presents the drives as SCSI to the OS. In any case there is no native SATA happening. I can select options that make SATA natively available in which case OS sees nothing useful or make SATA replace one of the 2 IDE controllers which is not an option.I will look up some more talk around i865 chipset. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rjecina Posted September 23, 2011 Share Posted September 23, 2011 (edited) Maybe I am wrong, but you are having possible chipset conflict.On your place if it is possible I will try different tests.1)Try to start Windows 98 without ISA card only to test if Windows will work OK2) Try to start without PCI RAID card and connect your hard disk to SATA slots on MBOPoint of this 2 tests is only to see what is creating your Windows problems Edited September 23, 2011 by Rjecina Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rloew Posted September 23, 2011 Share Posted September 23, 2011 I have been through that thread and its not covering anything of interest in my case. The drives are all in IDE mode, and SATA appears as a 3rd IDE controller to the OS. None of my drives are 4K and they both are 250GB and work perfectly with my PCI RAID card (but the card started acting up), the RAID card however presents the drives as SCSI to the OS. In any case there is no native SATA happening. I can select options that make SATA natively available in which case OS sees nothing useful or make SATA replace one of the 2 IDE controllers which is not an option.I will look up some more talk around i865 chipset.To run in Native (IDE) Mode, you need my SATA Patch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TmEE Posted September 23, 2011 Author Share Posted September 23, 2011 You want money for your patch and I cannot blame you for that, but currently my financial situation does not allow for "convenience" expenses... I have to use my RAID card anyway, and it has 2x SATA ports that worked nicely (I think I have a bad SATA cable...)Can you shed any light on the problem ? Just bad driver coding or Win98 thinks it should do something in a "better" way...?Regarding ISA, I may have to hack the BIOS afterall... making the ISA bridge appear on a different ID upset the BIOS. I still have not verified whether there are any access signals that are masked. There has to be something that is masked, you just cannot make a device disappear, especially since the bridge does not support "hide" function... I hate x86... 68K is so much nicer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rloew Posted September 23, 2011 Share Posted September 23, 2011 You want money for your patch and I cannot blame you for that, but currently my financial situation does not allow for "convenience" expenses... I have to use my RAID card anyway, and it has 2x SATA ports that worked nicely (I think I have a bad SATA cable...)Can you shed any light on the problem ? Just bad driver coding or Win98 thinks it should do something in a "better" way...?Native Mode and Legacy Mode handle Interrupts differently, and there are Drive Enumeration problems. The unpatched default driver fails and drops out or crashes. The alternative is to run in Raid mode with an appropriate driver, or use a separate card with it's own driver.Regarding ISA, I may have to hack the BIOS afterall... making the ISA bridge appear on a different ID upset the BIOS. I still have not verified whether there are any access signals that are masked. There has to be something that is masked, you just cannot make a device disappear, especially since the bridge does not support "hide" function... I hate x86... 68K is so much nicer I prefer the 68K too. It was a lot easier to Program and Debug on my Amiga. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TmEE Posted September 24, 2011 Author Share Posted September 24, 2011 That is good to know on the drives part...And I managed to get the ISA bridge show up and I configured it for maximum delays and it made no difference... seems that all I/O operations are fine and dandy but only DMAs are affected which seems to make them uneven or too fast etc. DOS games seem to play nicely and have very minimal cracks and pops in the sound, but in windows with WSS part I get nice playback then all of a sudden I get a ton of static, and then card stops working... much like when I make the SB part play way too high sample rates.... and during the experiment one wire nicely touched something it shouldn't and now the bridge chip is dead, and BIOS seemingly hangs, but after about 5 minutes it boots and everything runs nicely, with the exception of missing ISA...I don't have an Amiga (unless CD32 counts but I never programmed anything on it plus its got some chipset damage... coloful screens on boot), but I am messing with Sega Mega Drive / Genesis, and I am building a 68K based computer ^^ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rjecina Posted September 24, 2011 Share Posted September 24, 2011 Guys I am now in depression.We are all computer pensioners.....ps. I am having Amiga Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TmEE Posted September 24, 2011 Author Share Posted September 24, 2011 (edited) I'm too young to be a computer pensioner, maybe after 19 years when I am 40 I have removed the ISA bridge chip from the board and now the board boots up instantly every time... makes me think the bridge chip was damaged form the beginning, especially since there is NO pins masked off, it just sits on the PCI bus like every other device... except it was not visible, though I got it visible few times... in any case I ordered replacement chips ^^I am experimenting with RAID mode, I've got to find some drivers first, I'll report if there's any success or not Edited September 24, 2011 by TmEE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TmEE Posted October 6, 2011 Author Share Posted October 6, 2011 sorry for double post...In any case I have the ISA bridge fixed and also came out that my sound card just cannot get along with this bridge, several other cards worked fine though there was one that crapped out too but not as bad. Luckily YMF718 works perfectly, but YMF719 fails for some probably timing quirk it does not quite like. I will investigate it a bit further in future, probably I can fix it with some R+C stuff but who knows.SATA stuff will not work in any favorable case and for some reason the dead SATA port on my PCI RAID card popped back to life so for now I am leaving onboard SATA alone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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