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Intel VS440FX doesn't recognize CD-ROM on POST

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First post, by p6889k

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I have Intel VS440FX and I'm unable to get it to recognize CD-ROM.

I tried two different LG drives from 2000 and 2002, one CD, one DVD, and neither gets recognized by the board during boot and of course the DOS CD driver fails to initialize them. They work fine in other machines with different motherboard.
I tried two older Mitsumi CD drives (pre 2000), both get recognized by BIOS, DOS driver initializes them correctly, I can execute DIR command on them, but CD command fails and no files can be read from it and result in various read errors. The drives work fine in other machines.

I tried using both the primary and secondary channel. CD drives are setup as Master on their own channel. Tried different 40pin and 80pin cables.

The board was originally from Gateway G6-200 PC, I fleshed the BIOS to generic intel 1.00.18.CS1.

HDDs get recognized just fine. I have two of them on the primary channel.

I tried mixing HDD and CD on the same channel, but that didn't help. Same behavior, either LG drives don't get recognized at all or the Mitsumi get recognized, but can't read disks.

I tried adding generic ISA IDE adaptor and connect the CD to it, but the board wouldn't get past the initial POST screen. I tried changing the ISA IDE HDD address and disable FDD, Serial, Parallel, but no change. Not sure how to get this ISA IDE Adaptor to work with the Intel board, which already has build in IDE.

I tried Adaptec AHA-2940UW/B SCSI with NEC SCSI CD-ROM and that worked perfectly. But that's SCSI and I'm tryin to get IDE CD-ROM working.

One last thing I may try is to put XT-IDE Bios on the Network card and see if that helps. Waiting for my XT-IDE chips to arrive, so that it will be few days before I get to that.

Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48k, 48k+, 128k, +2
Amiga 1200, 68030/40mhz
386DX/33, ET4000, SBPro2, MT32
Dual PPro/200, Millennium II, Voodoo 2, AWE32, SC-55
etc.

Reply 1 of 5, by p6889k

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Here's an update in case anyone has this issue in the future. So the culprit turns out to be my Startech IDE2SAT2 IDE to SATA adapter for HDD https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00EOJNGC2

If i connect HDD with the SATA adapter to the motherboard, IDE CD-ROM is either not detected or not readable, depending on which model of CD-ROM I use. It doesn't make a difference if they're both on the same IDE channel or separate channel. The SATA HDD drives themselves are working just fine, I can install on them windows and operate as usual. I tried connecting various different SATA HDDs, SSDs, different sizes with same results - IDE CD ROM not working. The moment i disconnect the SATA adapter and instead connect native IDE HDD or CF-IDE adapter, all the various IDE CD-ROM drives I have work perfectly.

I tried manually changing various BIOS configurations for the IDE channel on which SATA HDD is connected, but that didn't help.

I also tried using XT-IDE BIOS to override the motherboard BIOS, but that didn't help, same problem.

I also tried using a SIL3114 based SATA PCI controller with SATA drives connected to it directly and CD-ROM connected to motherboard IDE; this combination worked perfectly.

The same SATA-IDE adapter works just fine with CD-ROMs on other motherboards.

So the solution is to either:
1) Use PCI SATA controller - Likely what I'll do as that will also give me large HDD support and faster transfer speed.
2) Forget SATA and stick with native IDE or CF-IDE
3) Try different SATA-IDE adapter - I don't think I'll do that.

Last edited by p6889k on 2020-10-11, 11:48. Edited 1 time in total.

Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48k, 48k+, 128k, +2
Amiga 1200, 68030/40mhz
386DX/33, ET4000, SBPro2, MT32
Dual PPro/200, Millennium II, Voodoo 2, AWE32, SC-55
etc.

Reply 2 of 5, by pentiumspeed

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Hi your initial post is not clear:

Were the adapters used on the optical drives only or just using the adapters for these hard drives only?

Cheers,

Great Northern aka Canada.

Reply 3 of 5, by p6889k

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pentiumspeed wrote on 2020-10-10, 18:07:

Hi your initial post is not clear:

Were the adapters used on the optical drives only or just using the adapters for these hard drives only?

Cheers,

Hard drives only, CDROM was native IDE connector.

Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48k, 48k+, 128k, +2
Amiga 1200, 68030/40mhz
386DX/33, ET4000, SBPro2, MT32
Dual PPro/200, Millennium II, Voodoo 2, AWE32, SC-55
etc.

Reply 4 of 5, by pentiumspeed

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Thank you. Interesting. Have the set of two adapter with this marvell chipset, hope that works out for ssd 100 and 120GB drives and I'm using newer board. Can be TX, BX and later, SiS socket 754, P4 boards.

I was trying to avoid using these chinese junk adapters.

Cheers,

Great Northern aka Canada.

Reply 5 of 5, by p6889k

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I have been happy with these adapters on several other motherboards, this Intel VS440FX is the first board where they didn't work right.

Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48k, 48k+, 128k, +2
Amiga 1200, 68030/40mhz
386DX/33, ET4000, SBPro2, MT32
Dual PPro/200, Millennium II, Voodoo 2, AWE32, SC-55
etc.

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