Just a guess but the Promise manual is copyright 2000, so the card could be PCI spec 2.1 (1995) or 2.2 (1998) where as the motherboards PCI may be PCI 2.0 (1993). Another issue could be plain BIOS or chipset incompatibility.

Horun wrote on 2020-07-18, 15:22:

Just a guess but the Promise manual is copyright 2000, so the card could be PCI spec 2.1 (1995) or 2.2 (1998) where as the motherboards PCI may be PCI 2.0 (1993). Another issue could be plain BIOS or chipset incompatibility.

Thanks for the reply! I've never really experienced problems with different PCI cards before. Isn't PCI backwards compatible?

As for my problem. I've ditched the ULTRA100 controller card and went back to getting the onboard IDE to work. It seems to be able to detect more modern disks (8gb and 80gb) but you have to go into the BIOS: Advanced Setup and disable IDE block mode, Primary IDE 21 bit transfer, Master LBA Mode and Slave LBA mode. The onboard IDE only seems to support up to 500mb, though. Although that's enough for now.

Hezus wrote on 2020-07-19, 13:42:

Horun wrote on 2020-07-18, 15:22:

Just a guess but the Promise manual is copyright 2000, so the card could be PCI spec 2.1 (1995) or 2.2 (1998) where as the motherboards PCI may be PCI 2.0 (1993). Another issue could be plain BIOS or chipset incompatibility.

Thanks for the reply! I've never really experienced problems with different PCI cards before. Isn't PCI backwards compatible?

As for my problem. I've ditched the ULTRA100 controller card and went back to getting the onboard IDE to work. It seems to be able to detect more modern disks (8gb and 80gb) but you have to go into the BIOS: Advanced Setup and disable IDE block mode, Primary IDE 21 bit transfer, Master LBA Mode and Slave LBA mode. The onboard IDE only seems to support up to 500mb, though. Although that's enough for now.

An XTIDE BIOS on a an ISA network card would be an option, if you ever need more space recognized on the drive(s) .

darry wrote on 2020-07-19, 13:47:

An XTIDE BIOS on a an ISA network card would be an option, if you ever need more space recognized on the drive(s) .

Don't you mean controller card?

Hezus wrote on 2020-07-19, 19:33:

darry wrote on 2020-07-19, 13:47:

An XTIDE BIOS on a an ISA network card would be an option, if you ever need more space recognized on the drive(s) .

Don't you mean controller card?

No, I actually meant just an ISA card with what is called an option ROM . One way is to use an ISA network card with a ROM socket and an EPROM or EEPROM containing the XTIDE BIOS plugged in .

The XTIDE BIOS takes over the original motherboard's BIOS hard drive initialization functionality and lets you use the integrated IDE port(s) with bigger capacity drives .

darry wrote on 2020-07-19, 23:21:

Hezus wrote on 2020-07-19, 19:33:

darry wrote on 2020-07-19, 13:47:

An XTIDE BIOS on a an ISA network card would be an option, if you ever need more space recognized on the drive(s) .

Don't you mean controller card?

No, I actually meant just an ISA card with what is called an option ROM . One way is to use an ISA network card with a ROM socket and an EPROM or EEPROM containing the XTIDE BIOS plugged in .

The XTIDE BIOS takes over the original motherboard's BIOS hard drive initialization functionality and lets you use the integrated IDE port(s) with bigger capacity drives .

That's an interesting suggestion! I do have a 3c509b etherlink III card in there. I looks like it has a boot rom socket.

I do not know much about EPROM flashing, but I guess there are tutorials for that.

Let's hope that works. I have the feeling that the current AMI bios isn't the original, since there is clearly a Phoenix chip in there. So that might also contribute to this weirdness.

Update:
I've used OnTrack Disc Manager to unlock the full 8gb of the HDD. Now LBA and 32 bit transfer mode works too. It's a fantastic program:
https://www.philscomputerlab.com/ontrack-disk-manager.html

Yea the promise card is incompatible, try a promise ata33 card that would work

I've actually had an even newer Promise SATA 150 TX2 working in a 486. I recall it took some magic combination of BIOS settings to get it recognized however. It was a MSI 4144 board with SiS 496/497. The BIOS had various settings for IDE cards. Maybe IRQ associations too.

I would definitely search the forum.

swaaye wrote on 2020-07-20, 19:14:

I've actually had an even newer Promise SATA 150 TX2 working in a 486. I recall it took some magic combination of BIOS settings to get it recognized however. It was a MSI 4144 board with SiS 496/497. The BIOS had various settings for IDE cards. Maybe IRQ associations too.

I would definitely search the forum.

And I had a strange issue with a Promise Ultra133 causing an Asus P3B-F to not boot from either a connected HD or even a floppy drive . A newer Promise SATA 150 TX2 worked fine in the same board as did a generic Silicon Image SIL3114 based card. There are sometimes some strange incompatibilities .

darry wrote on 2020-07-20, 19:25:

And I had a strange issue with a Promise Ultra133 causing an Asus P3B-F to not boot from either a connected HD or even a floppy drive . A newer Promise SATA 150 TX2 worked fine in the same board as did a generic Silicon Image SIL3114 based card. There are sometimes some strange incompatibilities .

Yeah now that you mention that, I remember Ultra66 can be troublesome with 440BX. Though sometimes it's just about the PCI card order. I like to keep things as simple as possible with most setups because PCI cards and their 3rd party VXD drivers are recipes for trouble.

I tried different PCI slots for the Ultra100 but that didn't help. There are PCI IRQ settings in this BIOS that might help but I fear it's not going to do much.

I hoped these things to be more compatible, but it seems you just got to have the magic combination...