May not solve the problem, but the first thing to try might be an update for the bios - 1002 is the (initial) release bios from April 1998. You can get the boards full bios history and update files here

ftp://ftp.tekwind.co.jp/pub/asustw/mb/slot1/440bx/p2b-ls/

Bios history - ftp://ftp.tekwind.co.jp/pub/asustw/mb/slot1/4 … 2b-ls/index.txt

In the hard disk setup section of your BIOS, try changing both the secondary master and slave to "None" rather than "Auto" (and possibly change your hard drive from Auto to User, as it's faster), in my experience the Award BIOS will detect the drive and print "Found CDROM:..." anyway even if you switch from Auto to None.

In the chipset features, notice there is a global Ultra DMA mode setting as well as the ability to set DMA/PIO modes for each drive. Experiment with setting both secondary drives to a low PIO mode, and with turning Ultra DMA off entirely.
By any chance are you using a SATA to IDE adapter?

Since you're saying that even the power/reset buttons stop working, I wonder if it's a power supply issue as if the drive spins up and the power supply can't handle it.

^ good points ! Reset should always work whether AT or ATX board. I had an issue with a bad CDR causing random lockups and reboot issues when it was slaved to another CDR. I suggest you disconnect all the DVDR and check the front panel connection and make sure RESET works under all conditions first. Then upgrade BIOS and try it all again. Curious if you breadboard tested the P2B outside the case with basic parts first to make sure it actually works propely...

Thanks for the suggestions guys, i appriciate the help.

I'll try them out when I get the chance.

Hasistant to perform any bios updates, incase it fails. As a last resort, perhaps.

Bought this board some 4 years ago but never used it. Don't have any test benches.

Currently installed is an awe64, Voodoo3 3000 and pci network card. Boots to win98 from floppy and I was able to fdisk and format a 20Gb IDE hard drive without any errors.

I tried without hdd, with only one removable storage drive connected to ide and power. It are all native IDE drives, no converters.

However, i do have two SCSI Cd ROM drives and some scsi hard drives. The mobo also has scsi. I always wanted to mess around with it so maybe this would be a good reason to finally put my sci hardware to good use.

Alright, disabling Ultra DMA and setting the PIO mode of both dvd drives to 2/0 makes it post correctly and access the floppy or hard drive.

Unfortunately then it hangs on dos 6.22, win98 boot disks when they try to look for CD controllers.

Setting PIO to 0/0 makes this program go away successfully too, so that works now. Thanks! I installed win 98SE without problems.

I did some quick reading, and there is a speed penalty when disabling Ultra DMA globally, and setting the cd PIO to 0/0.

I did notice Unreal hangs occasionally for half a sec when it tries to load something, and booting is quite slow. Its a realypity...

But none of this should be necessary, right? any other ideas? Bios update worth a shot?

Correct, this shouldn't be necessary.

My only thought is whether you are using 40-conductor or 80-conductor IDE cables, but it's only supposed to be the very fastest UltraDMA mode that need those.

Or, maybe you can get Ultra DMA globally back on and find more aggressive settings that still work. In particular if you could get the DVD drives to DMA disabled, and PIO mode 4. Then perhaps you'd be able to have UltraDMA on the hard drive but not the DVD drives.

Another thing you could try is to leave the BIOS settings as they are on such conservative settings, and try using the Windows 98 device manager to enable Ultra DMA on the hard drive, and then attempt to enable it on the DVD drives one at a time. If this succeeds, it would mean you would be "slow" up to the point where Windows switches into protected mode and begins talking to the IDE controller rather than going through the BIOS, at which point it would be "fast." I don't know what role disabling UltraDMA globally in the BIOS has in blocking Windows 98 from being able to do this, though.

Jake, thanks for the suggestions.

I am using 40pin cables atm, bios says hdds operate at UDMA 2. DVD drives at UDMA 0. I did try 80 pin cable, made no difference.

I looked into what DMA, PIO and such mean, as i never had to mess with it before.

I tried tons of setups, what would boot at all and give me the best speed.

This setup allows me to boot and set one hdd to dma i windows. Unfortinately the bios will only go past dvd drive initilization with PIO mode 0/0.

BIOS:

UDMA:Auto
IDE primary master: auto
Slave: auto
IDE secondary master: PIO 0/0
Slave: PIO 0/0

Windows:
IDE primary master: no DMA.
IDE primary slave: DMA turned on.

IDE secondary both dvd drives DMA turned off.

Turning DMA on on the slave hard drive makes a huge difference, going from 6 mb/s to 20mb/s transfer speed. I tried enabling it on the master (boot/win install) drive too, but the box unchecks itself after every reboot.

Perhaps this is because I Installed Windows with UMDA disabled and PIO set to 0/0? I only found out later I could use the faster settings.

The transferspeed of the DVD drives in PIO 0/0 is max 2.5mb/s. Windows doesnt boot when i check their DMA box, i guess because Pio is set to 0/0 in bios?

The DVD drives are a NEC DVD RW ND 1300A and AOPEN DVD 1648/AAP.

The hard drives are a Samsung SV2044D as master and WDC WD205AA as slave.

I don't know if there are drive specific drivers from the manufacturer, or if there is an updated windows driver for the mobo chipset and controller. I am using win 98 SE.

No great ideas at this point, perhaps boot from Linux floppies or a live CD and mess around with the hdparm utility to experiment with various IDE settings. If nothing else it might help you zero in on exactly what the error is.