TUV4X/Promise IDE/Patch/George?

[jsmiddleton4]

TUV4X/Promise IDE/Patch/George?

[jsmiddleton4]

George,

I have a Promise IDE ATA100 PCI controller.  Windows 98SE.  Two drives attached to the Promise.  Two CD-roms, one a cdrw one a dvd, attached to the MB IDE ports.

With the Soyo 6VCA at 733mhz I never needed your patch.  Installed it to play but system was stable without it.

With the Asus TUV4X at 933 and the Promise IDE PCI controller, I NEED YOUR PATCH.  It won't run without it.  Without the patch I get data corruption up the yahoo.

Its almost like encoding instead of corruption.  Its strange.

Anyway, what is it with the 694T and an add in PCI IDE controller?

Are you using only the MB IDE ports on your MSI 694T Pro?

With your patch, I a stable as can be.

Jim

[jsmiddleton4]

Ok, more info.

Since my Soyo 6VCA is a via 694 based motherboard, albeit ata66, and since the Promise IDE controller card always worked flawlessly with it, and since the other cards in the new ASUS TUV4X are the same as in the 6VCA (3com NIC, Geoforce2 TI, Pinnacle DC10, Turtle Beach Montego II) I'm going to take a leap here and say it IS possible for VIA to get it right.  (I have read a couple of posts about the 3com nic card causing problems when byte merge is enabled.  I found no difference.)

Is it the case, and after poking around here and other sites, that VIA in order to address issues with data corruption has over prioritized the built-in IDE controllers which sacrifices the attention paid to other PCI devices?

The DC10 requires attention as well.  Nothing like ignoring a video capture device causing dropped frames!  With The Patch, as I've come to call it, all cards work properly.  Without the patch and when I can get the ASUS to boot, many things do not work properly.  Even the data I write while non-patched is different.  It can be read when non-patched.  But if I load the patch and try to read that very same data that was able to be read non-patched, Windows can't read it.  That's why I said its like encoding instead of corruption.  Hard to figure out.  And no way am I technical enough nor do I have the testing equipment to figure it out.

Primary symptoms:  Data corruption and registry corruption.  One leading to the other.  The registry is not really corrupted.  It just can't be read without the patch.  Timing issue getting data off the hard drive?

Not today as its Sunday, computer about to go off and pay attention to my family about to go on, I will probably move the hard drives to the motherboard IDE ports to play.

However, since its a real pain to restore and fix the corrupted registry when not using the patch I'm a little hesitant to move slots, move drives just to play.

Also should have my VCM memory this week.

So the chicken egg debate is still unclear.

Is VIA able to get it right or is the hardware limited and it can't be done correctly.

Since previous 694 worked, I'm not ready to say its hardware.  I know, revisions, chipset changes, etc., make it not apples to apples.  But it DID work on a VIA based 694 system.

Jim

Needless to say.  THANK-YOU GEORGE.

[jsmiddleton4]

OK, one more thing.  Is the problem people are having with their embedded RAID controllers basically the same issue as I'm having with the addin PCI card?

I know, seems obvious.

But RAID adds additional issues above the PCI issue so that's why I'm asking.


Jim

[GeorgeBreese]

Um, for the record, I'm not using an MSI 694T. I don't have any 694T in my collection.

I had corruption on a FastTrak66 in a similar environment, but it was limited to the one card. I moved the drives to a FastTrak100 and the corruption disappeared.

The DC10+ needs lots of PCI bandwidth, and I've already heard from a few users with happy results from using the patch.

I'm hoping to be left alone at home long enough to test ATA133 with some hardware that I received before Christmas. My programming contract, consulting business, and baby preparations are all interfering.

Right now, I doubt your problem is the same as the ATA133 RAID issue. The issue on the ATA133 RAID is about performance; yours, on the other hand, is about stability.

As long as the patch works, enjoy it.

[jsmiddleton4]

My mistake George.  Now that I think about it may be Crosscourt that is using the MSI 694T Pro.  My apologies.

Thanks for the reply.

If you have time I was wondering about something regarding this.

In your humble opinion is it the case that VIA "over fixed" the complaints regarding data corruption and the symptom of the "over fix" is the problems with the PCI bus or is the case that it can't be fixed and the best we can hope for is to patch the symptoms by changing performance/system parameters?

I'm using the Ultra100.  Plain jane ATA100 PCI card.  Could this be a Promise problem?

I'm going to reset master/slave on the drives and CDRW/DVD and get all four on the MB IDE controller to see the impact.

Jim

[jsmiddleton4]

There's a beta bios 1004_005 for the TUV4X.  Tried it.  No difference.  Still need patch.

Jim

[crosscourt]

Hey JS,that was me with the Msi 694Tpro mobo and Ive used a velocd cdrw on the system and do use only the onboard ide and never had any problems and dont use Georges patch.Im with George also I think your problem isnt related to the pci issue but may be a driver or bios issue with the Promise controller.I dont like addon controllers they tend to cause more problems then they help and would only suggest it to possible raid or scsi users otherwise not worth the hassle.Good luck,with your problems,CC

[jsmiddleton4]

Promise controller out.

Patch out.

No problems.

BUT, HD performance is also down some.

Will play a bit more later.

Jim

[jsmiddleton4]

Patch out.

Video capture no dropped frames, no problems with the PCI analogue video capture device.

So what variables do I need to explore?

The Promise card was in a bus mastering slot and bus mastering was enabled.

I'll be emailing Promise.

Did work though with the Soyo 6VCA/694A.

Jim

[crosscourt]

The 694t/686b probably needs some changes in the promise drivers versus your other 694x/686a soyo mobo but ive always found the onboard ide works best and in particular put the hardrive on ide 0 which for some strange reason always performs better on 686b mobos,good luck,CC

[jsmiddleton4]

Cross,

Thanks.

I used the Promise controller with the 6VCA because the Soyo board was not ATA100.  It is ATA66.  Plus I have cdrw and a dvd and two hard drives.  When video capturing its better to have the capture drive on its own channel.

So now I have hd/cd as master/slave on both channels.  Had to move a hard drive up and add rails to put in a 5 1/4 space so the cables would reach.  Nothing like tight.

HDTach reports are very good.  SiSandra shows the slow down.  

So I'm not so sure there actually is a slow down in performance.  Feels about the same so if there is a slow down, its not noticable.

I wonder if part of the problem is two ata100 controllers and the Promise card loading its bios conflicts?  But the patch made it work.  

Who knows any more?

I don't really have any answers.  I do think this may fall into the PCI bus matter and a timing issue given that The Patch made a difference.

Jim