Issues installing/running WinXP on Advantech POC-174 with UDMA5 active

[Comos]

Hello,

 

I have made a HDD upgrade from a classic IDE 44pin to a SSD in mSATA in 2.5"" drive enclosure with 44 pin IDE.Installation & running WinXP was okay,sometimes happen that after shutdown and startup that the registry was corrupted for a unknown reason.Besides that I have noticed that the SSD is running only on UDMA2 mode due to the 44pin ribbon cable.

I have checked the manual, the Intel 845GV is capable of UltraATA100, but in the manual,the 44 IDE connector layout shown the 34 pin PDIAG not used.The only way was to test it.I made a test cable with 80 ribbon cable and run a hdd diag utility under DOS.There I was able to see,that the UDMA5 was now active,so the 34 pin is connected,but not documented.

I tried to start WinXP in this mod,but they got stuck during bootup.I though that this could be caused by the cable.Next round was to get a 44IDE to SATA bridge (JMICRON chipset) and a 2.5" SATA to mSATA enclosure.Now I went to reinstall the WinXP completely,because the previous installation didn't start at all.In first attempt I got in the installer a BSOD with Page fault in nonpaged area,which I guess is related to a memory problem, in next phase a succeed to send phase of the installer where the system was installing the drivers and I got a BSOD with no specific error message.Now the question is, is this problem is reffered to a memory issue or this UDMA5 mode? Maybe the shutdown problem with corrupted registry already indicated some issue,but Im not sure if this is related to these IDE to SSD bridges & WinXP.

 

Any hints please?

 

link to POC-174 manual:

 

http://downloadt.advantech.com/download/downloadsr.aspx?File_Id=1-JU6RT

[jaclaz]

We do have a thread where reports about this kind of bridges/adapters/converters are given, I don' think that any (older) BIOS or OS (2K or XP) have any way to "distinguish" a SSD from a "normal" hard disk, at least for "normal" 2.5" SSD's:
http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/152483-sata-to-ide-adapters-whichwhatwhy/

See particularly this report of success from Tomasz86
http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/152483-sata-to-ide-adapters-whichwhatwhy/?p=982862

Unless the mSATA ones have something different.

@Comos
If I were you I would try the 44 pin to SATA adapter with a conventional 2.5" SATA hard disk first.
This way you take out of the equation - temporarily - the SATA to mSATA adapter, though that should be I believe a totally passive adapter, and the SSD.

 

Still just like it is unfortunately common enough with SATA cables, the SATA/msata adapter may be part of the problem.

About the IDE interface, it is entirely possible that Pin 34 for *whatever* reasons is intended to be (as originally was) not connected, and the problem is due to that.
The Pin 34 is connected to ground (but not connected to any wire) inside the BLUE connector of a 80 wire cable (the connector that is inserted on the motherboard) :

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/confCable80-c.html

it is used as a sort of "enabler" for any Ultra DMA mode above 2.

 

As well it is possible that the IDE 44 pin cable you are using has simply not the "quality" needed for faster Ultra Dma.

If there is the space , you could try something like this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sintech-SATA-to-44pin-mini-IDE-adapter-5CM-44pin-IDE-cable-SATA-22pin-cable-M-F-/320999150606?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4abd0a540e

where the 44 pin cable is very short.

 

Check also the IDE/SATA adapter settings (if any) to those apply the same kind of issues about master/slave vs. cable select that have populated our nightmares in the good ol' times of IDE....

 

jaclaz

[Comos]

We do have a thread where reports about this kind of bridges/adapters/converters are given, I don' think that any (older) BIOS or OS (2K or XP) have any way to "distinguish" a SSD from a "normal" hard disk, at least for "normal" 2.5" SSD's:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/152483-sata-to-ide-adapters-whichwhatwhy/

See particularly this report of success from Tomasz86

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/152483-sata-to-ide-adapters-whichwhatwhy/?p=982862

Unless the mSATA ones have something different.

@Comos

If I were you I would try the 44 pin to SATA adapter with a conventional 2.5" SATA hard disk first.

This way you take out of the equation - temporarily - the SATA to mSATA adapter, though that should be I believe a totally passive adapter, and the SSD.

 

Still just like it is unfortunately common enough with SATA cables, the SATA/msata adapter may be part of the problem.

About the IDE interface, it is entirely possible that Pin 34 for *whatever* reasons is intended to be (as originally was) not connected, and the problem is due to that.

The Pin 34 is connected to ground (but not connected to any wire) inside the BLUE connector of a 80 wire cable (the connector that is inserted on the motherboard) :

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/confCable80-c.html

it is used as a sort of "enabler" for any Ultra DMA mode above 2.

 

As well it is possible that the IDE 44 pin cable you are using has simply not the "quality" needed for faster Ultra Dma.

If there is the space , you could try something like this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sintech-SATA-to-44pin-mini-IDE-adapter-5CM-44pin-IDE-cable-SATA-22pin-cable-M-F-/320999150606?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4abd0a540e

where the 44 pin cable is very short.

 

Check also the IDE/SATA adapter settings (if any) to those apply the same kind of issues about master/slave vs. cable select that have populated our nightmares in the good ol' times of IDE....

 

jaclaz

Hi Jaclaz,

 

to bring more tech info, the 44pin IDE to SATA is exactly the same like Tomasz86 had:

 

http://i.imgur.com/lwtCa.jpg

 

Only what I had to do is to solder out that pin header and solder in a female header mirrored,becase of the different pin orientation on the mobo,so the whole module is plugged directly on mobo.

On this bridge, there's the 34 PDIAG pin not connected to ground.It leads to a not bonded resistor mark,which connects it to ground.So normally with this bridge you'll have only ATA33 speed.3 pieces that I bough were identical.

 

Before this upgrade I was running the mSATA in this Addonics enclousure:

 

http://www.addonics.com/products/adms25ide.php

 

WinXP installation & system running was okay,only got stuck at ATA33 speed.Strange thing was, that when I plug out the drive and connect it back,then the WinXP registry got currupted for a unknown reason.Dunno if that happend during previous shutdown.When made a reinstall and later played with a test adapter and a 80 wire cable to enable the higher UDMA and WinXP didn't boot at all.

 

After to SATA upgrade, Im using this Roline enclousure:

 

http://shop.roline.com/roline-adapter-msata-ssd-to-2-5-sata-22pin/11.03.1567-10.html

 

First of all, I will try now a normal SATA HDD (44pin doesn't make sence in these days) like you recommended.If that will work,then I'll try to get a classic SSD if there will be any difference compared to mSATA SSD.

If everything fails,then I'll be stuck on 44pin IDE @ ATA33

[jaclaz]

Yep that's what I thought was your setup .

 

What I was thinking is that, if I get it right, you have right now:

1. motherboard connected to
2. a "longish" 44 pin IDE cable (the original one possibly not suitable - for *any* reason - for "higher" Ultra Dma mode^[1])
3. on the other side of the cable a "compact set" of :
4. 44 IDE to SATA converter
5. SATAto mSATA adapter
6. mSATA SSD device

Looking at the manual you posted, I cannot say if it possible (due to space requirements, interferences, etc.), but personally I would like better a setup like:

 

1. motherboard connected to
2. an extremely short 44 IDE cable *like* http://www.cablesonline.com/244pinidelap.htmlor even "directly" connected to 
3. 44 IDE to SATA converter connected to
4. a "longish" SATA cable
5. on the other side of the cable a "compact set" of :
6. SATAto mSATA adapter
7. mSATA SSD device

In good ol' times the rule of the thumb whenever a hard disk had issues (since the early SCSI times) was "it can be anything, but you'd better try changing the cable first thing.", those issues went mostly away with IDE, but came back (to a much lesser degree) with Ultra Ata modes and the 80 pin cable, and still go strong with SATA drives.

 

jaclaz

 

^[1]or not capable to fully deliver data reliably in a "higher" DMA mode when "forced" by a fastish SSD device to it's upper limits, or *whatever*

[Comos]

Seems the problem is solved.Today I have tested an installation & run of WinXP on a classic 2.5" SATA 80GB drive (Seagate) and it runs like hell on UDMA5.

So the issue seems to be the mSATA 60GB A-DATA SSD.I'll try to go for a normal SSD 60 or 80GB,but the question is which one will be reliable.