Should I be seeing a "SATA Controller" in device manager?

[98 Guy]

Summary:

The Intel ICH5R controller hub contains a SATA controller with limited RAID functionality. I want to understand more about the Win-98 compatibility of this SATA controller and how to obtain the correct functionality of SATA drives running under Win-98.

Details:

Motherboard is Gigabyte 8KNXP with the following:

- Intel 875P chipset (ICH5R controller hub)

- IT8712F I/O controller

- Silicon Image SATALink SiL3112ACT144 SATA controller

- ITE GigaRaid IT8212F

There are 2 SATA ports controlled by the ICH5R chip, and 2 more that are controlled by the Silicon Image Sil3112. I have disabled the ITE Giga-raid and the SI SATA controller in the BIOS for now.

I have 1 conventional ATA (IDE) drive connected to the standard IDE connector as the primary/master drive. I have 1 SATA drive (160 gb) connected to the ICH5R SATA-0 port. I'm booting from the IDE drive.

The ICH5R is also a RAID controller, but only seems to have RAID-0 (striping). According to the gigabyte manual, this RAID-0 capability is only supported in Windows-XP (can anyone confirm this?)

There are 2 standard IDE ports controlled by the ICH5R, and 2 more controlled by the GigaRAID IT8212F which can be used in RAID mode, JBOD, or ATA133 (with extended int-13 drive translation on controller onboard bios). My questions (for now) do not pertain to the GigaRAID or Silicon Image controllers.

In the BIOS, I have the "On-Chip SATA" set to MANUAL, and SATA PORT-0 configured at SATA PORT-0 (as opposed to some IDE port). I have SATA RAID function set to ENABLED.

When windows is starting, before I get the desktop, the Add New Hardware wizard comes up and says that it's detecting a "PCI RAID Controller". I've been trying to point it into a variety of directories but can't find anything it will take. (I get this message even if I disconnect the SATA drive).

I've re-installed the version 6.3.0.1008 Intel Chipset drivers, but that doesn't help.

It's interesting that the 160 gb SATA drive does appear in explorer as the D drive, but it doesn't appear anywhere in the device manager. Under the performance tab in device manager, it says that the D drive is using MS-DOS compatibility mode.

In the BIOS, when I disable the SATA RAID function, windows does not boot (it re-boots itself before it gets to the desktop). In this situation, a look at the very end of the bootlog.txt shows 3 successive instances of initiation esdi_506.pdr. The first 2 are successful, while the bootlog ends right after the third initiation attempt. I belive that by turning off the SATA RAID function, my SATA drive now appears as if it's attached to a third master IDE channel, hence the third instance of esdi_506.

I replaced ESDI_506.PDR it with vertion 4.10.2225 dated July 20, 2006, but that did not help (it failed at the same place as indicated by the bootlog). As a last attempt, I removed (renamed) the esdi_506 files so they wouldn't be available during startup, and in this mode the system did come up, and as expected the Primary and Secondary IDE controllers were running in 16-bit compatibility mode.

So if I disable the SATA RAID function, I can't operate the system unless all the drives are in DOS compatibility mode. It I enable SATA RAID, Windows is always looking for a RAID driver upon startup, and the ATA drives use real mode drivers while the SATA drive is stuck in DOS compatiblity mode.

Should I be seeing a SATA controller in the device manager?

So basically I want to understand more about the Win-98 compatibility of this SATA controller that is part of the ICH5R and how to obtain the correct functionality of SATA drives running under Win-98.

[98 Guy]

What - am I the first person to use Win-98 with a SATA drive?

If all this is too complicated, then try this:

I'm seeing win-98 hang when it tries to load the third instance of ESDI_506.PDR.

It's loading it 3 times because if I de-activate the RAID function of the ICH5R, then it maps SATA drives as ATA drives connected on a third controller channel. Apparently Win-98 loads ESDI_506.PDR once for every ATA controller channel. Normally there are only 2 ATA channels (primary and secondary).

There is something that just doesn't work right with ESDI_506.PDR and the ICH5R - am I the first to notice this, or has it been mentioned here before?

Does ME or 2K have their own ESDI_506.PDR? I know that XP doesn't...

You guys were working on that ESDI_506 fix a few months ago - any ideas what the problem is here?

[halohalo]

I will suggest you trying SiL3112 instead of ICH5R for Win98se SATA support, or remapping SATA port 0 to other IDE channel in BIOS.

You can also enable both PATA and SATA in ICH5R, then let WinXP handle SATA HDD with NTFS format.

Win98se may not be compatible with Enhanced mode(allowing 4 PATA devices and 2 SATA devices to be used) in ICH5R.

http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/manuals/25267102.pdf