ISA HDD EIDE controller cannot find HDD \ VOGONS

ISA HDD EIDE controller cannot find HDD

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First post, by retro games 100

Posted on 2011-02-10, 22:09

retro games 100 Offline

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I've got 2 Promise EIDE ISA controller cards. One works, while the other doesn't. The one that doesn't work can be seen here -

http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-disk-floppy- … -drives-62.html

It's a simple card. It only supports 2 HDDs. I've tried:

* 2 new IDE cables, one 40-wire, the other 80-wire
* 3 HDDs: namely, 2 CFs and 1 HDD
* All 4 base memory address jumper selections on the card

Every time I boot up the system, the controller's BIOS says that it cannot find the HDD. Strangely, it always says that it will use IRQ 15 for the secondary IDE, even though this value can be set using a jumper, and I have tried other values, such as 14.

If I remove this controller card, and try the other Promise controller card (a different model), it works without any problem. Any ideas please people? Thanks a lot for any suggestions.

Reply 1 of 7, by Amigaz

Posted on 2011-02-11, 06:50

Amigaz Offline

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Don't know the exact problem but I can tell you that these Promise controllers are picky as hell, the one I'm using in my Asus ISA-386C machine had this problem...it finally accepted a 20gig HDD I had jumpered to act as a 2gig drive...it couldn't "see" other HDD's I've tried or it just locked up during boot if it didn't like the HDD.
Do you have anything else hooked up like a cd-rom drive?

Reply 2 of 7, by retro games 100

Posted on 2011-02-11, 07:51

retro games 100 Offline

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Amigaz wrote:
Don't know the exact problem but I can tell you that these Promise controllers are picky as hell, the one I'm using in my Asus ISA-386C machine had this problem...it finally accepted a 20gig HDD I had jumpered to act as a 2gig drive...it couldn't "see" other HDD's I've tried or it just locked up during boot if it didn't like the HDD.
Do you have anything else hooked up like a cd-rom drive?

Interesting. I don't have a CD-ROM drive hooked up as a slave drive. I might try the controller in another mobo, because I've run out of CF/HDDs to try!

Reply 3 of 7, by retro games 100

Posted on 2011-02-11, 09:12

retro games 100 Offline

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I tried something else. It didn't fix the problem, but the results seem unusual. I put a CF device directly on to the controller IDE pins, so no IDE cable was used. The BIOS POST screen was full of garbage characters. I tried various CF units, and also various controller card jumper settings. I got the same result each time: the BIOS POST screen was corrupted.

Reply 4 of 7, by Amigaz

Posted on 2011-02-11, 11:47

Amigaz Offline

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Try with a real harddrive jumpered as master on the IDE ribbon cable middle connector and with a CD-ROM set as slave on the end connector

Reply 5 of 7, by retro games 100

Posted on 2011-02-11, 12:11

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Yes, I'm sure that combo would work. Unfortunately, ATM I don't have a real old HDD to hand. All I've got is modern 80GB HDDs, and CFs. Oh well. I've got another Promise controller, with extra features such as a 2nd ATAPI compliant IDE interface. That's quite useful, and it works! I just wanted to see if I could get this other, more simple controller to work. I'll put it aside, and when I dig through my boxes of bits, I'll see if I can spot a real old HDD. 😀

Reply 6 of 7, by sprcorreia

Posted on 2011-02-11, 17:07

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retro games 100 wrote:
Yes, I'm sure that combo would work. Unfortunately, ATM I don't have a real old HDD to hand.(...) I'll put it aside, and when I dig through my boxes of bits, I'll see if I can spot a real old HDD. 😀

If you are interested i have many old HDD for sale. Please check my list. Thanks.

Reply 7 of 7, by retro games 100

Posted on 2011-02-11, 17:12

retro games 100 Offline

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sprcorreia wrote:
retro games 100 wrote:
Yes, I'm sure that combo would work. Unfortunately, ATM I don't have a real old HDD to hand.(...) I'll put it aside, and when I dig through my boxes of bits, I'll see if I can spot a real old HDD. 😀

If you are interested i have many old HDD for sale. Please check my list. Thanks.

Somewhere, I have a box of them. Somewhere! 🤣

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