M3A and ATAPI

Rhino wrote:
I'm trying to install the latest IDE drivers for an M3A motherboard but I'm
not finding them on the ASUS site. Can anyone point me in the right
direction?

--

Here's some background.

I'm having a strange issue with regards to the ATAPI settings in my
computer. I'm running a 2.5 year old ASUS M3A and Windows XP SP2.

My basic issue is that I can't turn on the DMA on my LiteOn DVD burner
(model DH20A4H). I've never been able to get the DMA to work since my friend
built the computer for me. It works fine except for the DMA issue but I
thought I'd finally see if I could resolve the problem so that my DVDs could
be burned more quickly.

I've been working with the LiteOn folks and, following some instructions
they gave me, discovered that Device Manager is showing TWO Primary IDE
Controllers and TWO Secondary IDE Controllers; the settings on the two
Primary Controllers differ which may be why I'm having the problem with the
DMA. The LiteOn people recommend updating the IDE drivers to see if that
helps.

I found the M3A downloads page easily enough -
http://ca.asus.com/en/Motherboards/A.../M3A/#download -
but I'm darned if I can find IDE drivers there. I've looked in all of the
categories. I'm not seeing IDE mentioned in any of the descriptions but they
are very brief. I'm guessing that IDE drivers are included in at least one
of the different downloads; I'm just not sure which one....

--
Rhino

Not to spoil your fun or anything.

I tried downloading the AMD chipset drivers from the M3A support.asus.com
download page.

http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mis..._V51010007.zip

Next, I use 7ZIP to open the ZIP and navigate around.

I look at atihdc.inf and it says:

[ati_pciide_Inst]
Include=mshdc.inf

What that means, is the installer calls the standard Microsoft driver.
It's just a wrapper for the standard Microsoft installer.

It does do a few more things. For example, I see a "TransferModeTiming"
registry entry, but haven't a clue what it does.

So the driver isn't exactly "brimming with custom goodness". It
doesn't seem to be installing code for IDE.

*******

What happens if you use an 80 wire cable, between the optical drive and
the motherboard IDE connector ? Do things change for you ?

I tried a few utilities I have here, and so far, haven't succeeded in
verifying my own IDE optical drive transfer rate. So I can't help you there.
Maybe someone else has a solution for that. I'd prefer to see a separate
utility, verify the transfer mode.

In Device Manager (on my quite different motherboard), I have one
Primary IDE Channel entry in the IDE/ATA/ATAPI controllers section.
There is room for "Device 0" and "Device 1", but I only have
one IDE device on the ribbon cable, and that is Device 0.
Transfer mode status says "DMA if available" and the
Current Transfer Mode says "Ultra DMA Mode 2". I presume
that is a 33MB/sec UDMA mode. I'm using an 80 wire cable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UDMA

Paul

"Paul" wrote in message
...
Rhino wrote:
I'm trying to install the latest IDE drivers for an M3A motherboard but
I'm not finding them on the ASUS site. Can anyone point me in the right
direction?

--

Here's some background.

I'm having a strange issue with regards to the ATAPI settings in my
computer. I'm running a 2.5 year old ASUS M3A and Windows XP SP2.

My basic issue is that I can't turn on the DMA on my LiteOn DVD burner
(model DH20A4H). I've never been able to get the DMA to work since my
friend built the computer for me. It works fine except for the DMA issue
but I thought I'd finally see if I could resolve the problem so that my
DVDs could be burned more quickly.

I've been working with the LiteOn folks and, following some instructions
they gave me, discovered that Device Manager is showing TWO Primary IDE
Controllers and TWO Secondary IDE Controllers; the settings on the two
Primary Controllers differ which may be why I'm having the problem with
the DMA. The LiteOn people recommend updating the IDE drivers to see if
that helps.

I found the M3A downloads page easily enough -
http://ca.asus.com/en/Motherboards/A.../M3A/#download -
but I'm darned if I can find IDE drivers there. I've looked in all of the
categories. I'm not seeing IDE mentioned in any of the descriptions but
they are very brief. I'm guessing that IDE drivers are included in at
least one of the different downloads; I'm just not sure which one....

--
Rhino

Not to spoil your fun or anything.

I tried downloading the AMD chipset drivers from the M3A support.asus.com
download page.

http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mis..._V51010007.zip

Next, I use 7ZIP to open the ZIP and navigate around.

I look at atihdc.inf and it says:

[ati_pciide_Inst]
Include=mshdc.inf

What that means, is the installer calls the standard Microsoft driver.
It's just a wrapper for the standard Microsoft installer.

According to Device Manager, the driver on the both instances of the Primary
IDE Controller and both instances of the Secondary IDE Controller have a
date of 2001-07-01 (Version 5.1.2600.2180). Is it just me or does that seem
really old? That's just days shy of 10 years old. I would have thought these
drivers would change periodically....

For what it's worth, the ATI IDE Controller has an ATI driver dated
2006-01-22 (Version 5.0.0.3).

It does do a few more things. For example, I see a "TransferModeTiming"
registry entry, but haven't a clue what it does.

So the driver isn't exactly "brimming with custom goodness". It
doesn't seem to be installing code for IDE.

Updating that seems pointless then....

*******

What happens if you use an 80 wire cable, between the optical drive and
the motherboard IDE connector ? Do things change for you ?

Sorry, I'm a software guy, not a hardware guy. I literally haven't had the
case open since I got the computer and reinstalled the cooler.

Is an 80 wire cable what I should have had from the beginning?

If multiple cables are possible here, could you possibly point me to
pictures of what each of those cables looks like, especially the ends. Then
I can open the case and see what I've actually got and compare it to what I
should have.

I tried a few utilities I have here, and so far, haven't succeeded in
verifying my own IDE optical drive transfer rate. So I can't help you
there.
Maybe someone else has a solution for that. I'd prefer to see a separate
utility, verify the transfer mode.

In Device Manager (on my quite different motherboard), I have one
Primary IDE Channel entry in the IDE/ATA/ATAPI controllers section.
There is room for "Device 0" and "Device 1", but I only have
one IDE device on the ribbon cable, and that is Device 0.
Transfer mode status says "DMA if available" and the
Current Transfer Mode says "Ultra DMA Mode 2". I presume
that is a 33MB/sec UDMA mode. I'm using an 80 wire cable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UDMA

Each of my four instances (2 Primary IDE and 2 Secondary IDE) has a Device 0
and a Device 1 in the Advanced Settings but I'm not 100% sure how to tell if
there are actually 2 devices visible to the system in each instance. I've
done screen caps of the Advanced Settings for each of the four instances
which I'd be happy to share but I'm not sure where I can put them so that
you can see them. I've never seen anyone put attachments on a newsgroup post
;-)

Hmm, maybe I'll just describe them and hope that my description is as clear
as a picture would be....

Primary IDE Controller (1st Instance):
Device 0 Device Type: greyed out but set to Auto Detection
Device 0 Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Device 0 Current Transfer Mode: PIO Mode
Device 1 Device Type: Auto Detection
Device 1 Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Device 1 Current Transfer Mode: Not applicable

Primary IDE Controller (2nd Instance):
Device 0 Device Type: greyed out but set to Auto Detection
Device 0 Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Device 0 Current Transfer Mode: Ultra DMA Mode 6
Device 1 Device Type: Auto Detection
Device 1 Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Device 1 Current Transfer Mode: Not applicable

Secondary IDE Controller (1st Instance):
Device 0 Device Type: Auto Detection
Device 0 Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Device 0 Current Transfer Mode: Not applicable
Device 1 Device Type: Auto Detection
Device 1 Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Device 1 Current Transfer Mode: Not applicable

Secondary IDE Controller (2nd Instance):
Device 0 Device Type: greyed out but set to Auto Detection
Device 0 Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Device 0 Current Transfer Mode: Ultra DMA Mode 6
Device 1 Device Type: Auto Detection
Device 1 Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Device 1 Current Transfer Mode: Not applicable

Why do I have two instances of each the Primary IDE Controller and the
Secondary IDE Controller? I'm really not clear if that is a problem or if it
is perfectly fine.

I should point out that I have two hard drives. Does that explain the extra
instances of Primary and Secondary IDE Controllers?

--
Rhino

Rhino wrote:
"Paul" wrote in message
...
Rhino wrote:
I'm trying to install the latest IDE drivers for an M3A motherboard but
I'm not finding them on the ASUS site. Can anyone point me in the right
direction?

--

Here's some background.

I'm having a strange issue with regards to the ATAPI settings in my
computer. I'm running a 2.5 year old ASUS M3A and Windows XP SP2.

My basic issue is that I can't turn on the DMA on my LiteOn DVD burner
(model DH20A4H). I've never been able to get the DMA to work since my
friend built the computer for me. It works fine except for the DMA issue
but I thought I'd finally see if I could resolve the problem so that my
DVDs could be burned more quickly.

I've been working with the LiteOn folks and, following some instructions
they gave me, discovered that Device Manager is showing TWO Primary IDE
Controllers and TWO Secondary IDE Controllers; the settings on the two
Primary Controllers differ which may be why I'm having the problem with
the DMA. The LiteOn people recommend updating the IDE drivers to see if
that helps.

I found the M3A downloads page easily enough -
http://ca.asus.com/en/Motherboards/A.../M3A/#download -
but I'm darned if I can find IDE drivers there. I've looked in all of the
categories. I'm not seeing IDE mentioned in any of the descriptions but
they are very brief. I'm guessing that IDE drivers are included in at
least one of the different downloads; I'm just not sure which one....

--
Rhino
Not to spoil your fun or anything.

I tried downloading the AMD chipset drivers from the M3A support.asus.com
download page.

http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mis..._V51010007.zip

Next, I use 7ZIP to open the ZIP and navigate around.

I look at atihdc.inf and it says:

[ati_pciide_Inst]
Include=mshdc.inf

What that means, is the installer calls the standard Microsoft driver.
It's just a wrapper for the standard Microsoft installer.

According to Device Manager, the driver on the both instances of the Primary
IDE Controller and both instances of the Secondary IDE Controller have a
date of 2001-07-01 (Version 5.1.2600.2180). Is it just me or does that seem
really old? That's just days shy of 10 years old. I would have thought these
drivers would change periodically....

For what it's worth, the ATI IDE Controller has an ATI driver dated
2006-01-22 (Version 5.0.0.3).

It does do a few more things. For example, I see a "TransferModeTiming"
registry entry, but haven't a clue what it does.

So the driver isn't exactly "brimming with custom goodness". It
doesn't seem to be installing code for IDE.

Updating that seems pointless then....

*******

What happens if you use an 80 wire cable, between the optical drive and
the motherboard IDE connector ? Do things change for you ?

Sorry, I'm a software guy, not a hardware guy. I literally haven't had the
case open since I got the computer and reinstalled the cooler.

Is an 80 wire cable what I should have had from the beginning?

If multiple cables are possible here, could you possibly point me to
pictures of what each of those cables looks like, especially the ends. Then
I can open the case and see what I've actually got and compare it to what I
should have.

I tried a few utilities I have here, and so far, haven't succeeded in
verifying my own IDE optical drive transfer rate. So I can't help you
there.
Maybe someone else has a solution for that. I'd prefer to see a separate
utility, verify the transfer mode.

In Device Manager (on my quite different motherboard), I have one
Primary IDE Channel entry in the IDE/ATA/ATAPI controllers section.
There is room for "Device 0" and "Device 1", but I only have
one IDE device on the ribbon cable, and that is Device 0.
Transfer mode status says "DMA if available" and the
Current Transfer Mode says "Ultra DMA Mode 2". I presume
that is a 33MB/sec UDMA mode. I'm using an 80 wire cable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UDMA

Each of my four instances (2 Primary IDE and 2 Secondary IDE) has a Device 0
and a Device 1 in the Advanced Settings but I'm not 100% sure how to tell if
there are actually 2 devices visible to the system in each instance. I've
done screen caps of the Advanced Settings for each of the four instances
which I'd be happy to share but I'm not sure where I can put them so that
you can see them. I've never seen anyone put attachments on a newsgroup post
;-)

Hmm, maybe I'll just describe them and hope that my description is as clear
as a picture would be....

Primary IDE Controller (1st Instance):
Device 0 Device Type: greyed out but set to Auto Detection
Device 0 Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Device 0 Current Transfer Mode: PIO Mode
Device 1 Device Type: Auto Detection
Device 1 Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Device 1 Current Transfer Mode: Not applicable

Primary IDE Controller (2nd Instance):
Device 0 Device Type: greyed out but set to Auto Detection
Device 0 Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Device 0 Current Transfer Mode: Ultra DMA Mode 6
Device 1 Device Type: Auto Detection
Device 1 Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Device 1 Current Transfer Mode: Not applicable

Secondary IDE Controller (1st Instance):
Device 0 Device Type: Auto Detection
Device 0 Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Device 0 Current Transfer Mode: Not applicable
Device 1 Device Type: Auto Detection
Device 1 Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Device 1 Current Transfer Mode: Not applicable

Secondary IDE Controller (2nd Instance):
Device 0 Device Type: greyed out but set to Auto Detection
Device 0 Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Device 0 Current Transfer Mode: Ultra DMA Mode 6
Device 1 Device Type: Auto Detection
Device 1 Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Device 1 Current Transfer Mode: Not applicable

Why do I have two instances of each the Primary IDE Controller and the
Secondary IDE Controller? I'm really not clear if that is a problem or if it
is perfectly fine.

I should point out that I have two hard drives. Does that explain the extra
instances of Primary and Secondary IDE Controllers?

--
Rhino

The wire question is a pretty simple one. There are two flavors of IDE ribbon
cable. The original kind, has 40 pin connectors and 40 wires. You simply count
the wires across the width of the cable.

Later, they invented the 80 wire cable. The wires are thinner and there are
twice as many across the width of the cable. Some motherboard boxes bundled
a 40 wire and an 80 wire cable, with the intention the 40 wire be used
with optical drives, the 80 wire on hard drives. But I see no reason to
use anything other than 80 wire cables. (The 80 wire cable still has 40 pin
connectors, and is compatible at the connector level.)

The thing is, the 80 wire cable has every second wire grounded. This improves
the transmission line qualities of the cable, allowing up to UDMA133. The
driver is supposed to be able to detect cable type (according to the t13.org
standard "most of the time"). If you change cables, the driver should
automatically see the improvement, from a status bit point of view.

The Windows driver can get "stuck in PIO mode". This happens if too many CRC
errors are detected. So there is a situation where slow storage device performance
is due to the cranking down of the speed, by the driver. The driver needs to be
beaten with a stick, to get back the full rate. (See workaround section)

"IDE ATA and ATAPI disks use PIO mode after multiple time-out or CRC errors occur"

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;817472

So PIO mode can come from driver crankdown. Driver crankdown to PIO speeds,
is an "innovation" copied from Unix boxes (I had to battle this on a Sun box,
on SCSI bus).

*******

You can share images, if you use a photo hosting site.

On my motherboard, I'll confess that I can't explain the number of entries
I've got. I should have six SATA and two entries for my single IDE ribbon
cable. This is what mine looks like.

http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/6797/sataandide.gif

I think your two "Ultra DMA Mode 6", could be SATA hard drives, but there
is nothing in the text to confirm that. It's just a guess. SATA drives
aren't actually limited to that speed, and that is just a placeholder. On
Intel chipsets, typically that bogus string says "Ultra DMA Mode 5",
as it is an Intel tradition, to limit their disk interfaces to
100MB/sec, to separate themselves from the "133MB/sec crowd". Other
brands use the "Mode 6" in theirs, but the actual SATA cable speed
can be higher than that, and is not tied to "multiples of 33". SATA
rates come in 150/300/600 minus overhead.

Your PIO is the suspicious one. It could be a ribbon cable thing, which
might improve with a different (80 wire) cable. Or, it could be
the driver cranked it down, and you need to follow the Microsoft
workaround suggestion in the KB article above. Fixing the PIO
issue won't last, if there are still CRC transmission errors present.
But if the cable is good, and you use the workaround, the improvement
should "stick".

Paul

"Paul" wrote in message
...
Rhino wrote:
"Paul" wrote in message
...
Rhino wrote:
I'm trying to install the latest IDE drivers for an M3A motherboard but
I'm not finding them on the ASUS site. Can anyone point me in the right
direction?

--

Here's some background.

I'm having a strange issue with regards to the ATAPI settings in my
computer. I'm running a 2.5 year old ASUS M3A and Windows XP SP2.

My basic issue is that I can't turn on the DMA on my LiteOn DVD burner
(model DH20A4H). I've never been able to get the DMA to work since my
friend built the computer for me. It works fine except for the DMA
issue but I thought I'd finally see if I could resolve the problem so
that my DVDs could be burned more quickly.

I've been working with the LiteOn folks and, following some
instructions they gave me, discovered that Device Manager is showing
TWO Primary IDE Controllers and TWO Secondary IDE Controllers; the
settings on the two Primary Controllers differ which may be why I'm
having the problem with the DMA. The LiteOn people recommend updating
the IDE drivers to see if that helps.

I found the M3A downloads page easily enough -
http://ca.asus.com/en/Motherboards/A.../M3A/#download -
but I'm darned if I can find IDE drivers there. I've looked in all of
the categories. I'm not seeing IDE mentioned in any of the descriptions
but they are very brief. I'm guessing that IDE drivers are included in
at least one of the different downloads; I'm just not sure which
one....

--
Rhino
Not to spoil your fun or anything.

I tried downloading the AMD chipset drivers from the M3A
support.asus.com
download page.

http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mis..._V51010007.zip

Next, I use 7ZIP to open the ZIP and navigate around.

I look at atihdc.inf and it says:

[ati_pciide_Inst]
Include=mshdc.inf

What that means, is the installer calls the standard Microsoft driver.
It's just a wrapper for the standard Microsoft installer.

According to Device Manager, the driver on the both instances of the
Primary IDE Controller and both instances of the Secondary IDE Controller
have a date of 2001-07-01 (Version 5.1.2600.2180). Is it just me or does
that seem really old? That's just days shy of 10 years old. I would have
thought these drivers would change periodically....

For what it's worth, the ATI IDE Controller has an ATI driver dated
2006-01-22 (Version 5.0.0.3).

It does do a few more things. For example, I see a "TransferModeTiming"
registry entry, but haven't a clue what it does.

So the driver isn't exactly "brimming with custom goodness". It
doesn't seem to be installing code for IDE.

Updating that seems pointless then....

*******

What happens if you use an 80 wire cable, between the optical drive and
the motherboard IDE connector ? Do things change for you ?

Sorry, I'm a software guy, not a hardware guy. I literally haven't had
the case open since I got the computer and reinstalled the cooler.

Is an 80 wire cable what I should have had from the beginning?

If multiple cables are possible here, could you possibly point me to
pictures of what each of those cables looks like, especially the ends.
Then I can open the case and see what I've actually got and compare it to
what I should have.

I tried a few utilities I have here, and so far, haven't succeeded in
verifying my own IDE optical drive transfer rate. So I can't help you
there.
Maybe someone else has a solution for that. I'd prefer to see a separate
utility, verify the transfer mode.

In Device Manager (on my quite different motherboard), I have one
Primary IDE Channel entry in the IDE/ATA/ATAPI controllers section.
There is room for "Device 0" and "Device 1", but I only have
one IDE device on the ribbon cable, and that is Device 0.
Transfer mode status says "DMA if available" and the
Current Transfer Mode says "Ultra DMA Mode 2". I presume
that is a 33MB/sec UDMA mode. I'm using an 80 wire cable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UDMA

Each of my four instances (2 Primary IDE and 2 Secondary IDE) has a
Device 0 and a Device 1 in the Advanced Settings but I'm not 100% sure
how to tell if there are actually 2 devices visible to the system in each
instance. I've done screen caps of the Advanced Settings for each of the
four instances which I'd be happy to share but I'm not sure where I can
put them so that you can see them. I've never seen anyone put attachments
on a newsgroup post ;-)

Hmm, maybe I'll just describe them and hope that my description is as
clear as a picture would be....

Primary IDE Controller (1st Instance):
Device 0 Device Type: greyed out but set to Auto Detection
Device 0 Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Device 0 Current Transfer Mode: PIO Mode
Device 1 Device Type: Auto Detection
Device 1 Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Device 1 Current Transfer Mode: Not applicable

Primary IDE Controller (2nd Instance):
Device 0 Device Type: greyed out but set to Auto Detection
Device 0 Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Device 0 Current Transfer Mode: Ultra DMA Mode 6
Device 1 Device Type: Auto Detection
Device 1 Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Device 1 Current Transfer Mode: Not applicable

Secondary IDE Controller (1st Instance):
Device 0 Device Type: Auto Detection
Device 0 Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Device 0 Current Transfer Mode: Not applicable
Device 1 Device Type: Auto Detection
Device 1 Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Device 1 Current Transfer Mode: Not applicable

Secondary IDE Controller (2nd Instance):
Device 0 Device Type: greyed out but set to Auto Detection
Device 0 Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Device 0 Current Transfer Mode: Ultra DMA Mode 6
Device 1 Device Type: Auto Detection
Device 1 Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Device 1 Current Transfer Mode: Not applicable

Why do I have two instances of each the Primary IDE Controller and the
Secondary IDE Controller? I'm really not clear if that is a problem or if
it is perfectly fine.

I should point out that I have two hard drives. Does that explain the
extra instances of Primary and Secondary IDE Controllers?

--
Rhino

The wire question is a pretty simple one. There are two flavors of IDE
ribbon
cable. The original kind, has 40 pin connectors and 40 wires. You simply
count
the wires across the width of the cable.

Later, they invented the 80 wire cable. The wires are thinner and there
are
twice as many across the width of the cable. Some motherboard boxes
bundled
a 40 wire and an 80 wire cable, with the intention the 40 wire be used
with optical drives, the 80 wire on hard drives. But I see no reason to
use anything other than 80 wire cables. (The 80 wire cable still has 40
pin
connectors, and is compatible at the connector level.)

The thing is, the 80 wire cable has every second wire grounded. This
improves
the transmission line qualities of the cable, allowing up to UDMA133. The
driver is supposed to be able to detect cable type (according to the
t13.org
standard "most of the time"). If you change cables, the driver should
automatically see the improvement, from a status bit point of view.


I spent some time this afternoon looking around inside the computer. I did
my best to determine if I had a 40 or 80 wire cable and I _think_ I have an
80 wire cable.

I wish I could say that with certainty but counting the wires was harder
than you might think: I have cataracts in both eyes that aren't operable yet
and I had a _heck_ of a time getting enough light on the cable - and holding
a magnifier over it so that I had some hope of seeing well enough - to count
the wires. The connectors had 40 square holes at each end (well, one
connector was actually 39 since the middle one on one row was blocked off);
I'm quite certain of that. The cable seemed to be exactly 2 inches wide and
I measured a quarter of an inch with an accurate ruler. As best I could
tell, there were 10 wires in that quarter of an inch, not 5, so that makes
80 wires in two inches.

Still, just as a precaution, I took some photos - subject to the same
limitations - and put them in a public area of my Flickr account. Here's the
URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/5688581...7627007235956/

There are several pictures of the same wire; hopefully they will help you
satisfy yourself that it is an 80-wire cable. If it isn't, please tell me
so! As you can tell by now, my eyesight is not very good. Also, I have
several lenses for my camera but none of them seems to let me get really
close and zoom in on that wire to make it really big.

I've also put the screen caps from Device Manager in that set of photos.

While I had the case apart, I removed the burner from its position and
disconnected all of the cables. I took a couple of pictures of the back of
the burner to show its exact layout as well as to show that the only jumper
is set to Master.

I also had a look at the hard drives and found that there are absolutely no
jumpers on them but I didn't take any pictures of the hard drives.

By the way, on the off chance that disconnecting and reconnecting the cable
to the burner fixed something, I checked Device Manager after I'd put
everything back together again and found that everything was exactly the
same. I also started Nero and it again complained that the burner was not in
DMA mode.


The Windows driver can get "stuck in PIO mode". This happens if too many
CRC
errors are detected. So there is a situation where slow storage device
performance
is due to the cranking down of the speed, by the driver. The driver needs
to be
beaten with a stick, to get back the full rate. (See workaround section)

"IDE ATA and ATAPI disks use PIO mode after multiple time-out or CRC
errors occur"

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;817472


I tried the workaround and it worked!! At least I think it did. The Primary
IDE controller that was set to PIO mode now says "Ultra DMA mode 4". Also,
Nero no longer complains that I'm not in DMA mode. I haven't actually tried
burning a CD or DVD but I'm cautiously optimistic that it will be faster
than it used to be, which is all I really wanted. I'm not sure if I'll get
the maximum possible speed or if I'll be running in some kind of reduced
speed but I'll probably be able to live with whatever I get; it's bound to
be better than the previous speed, right?

I've added a screen cap of the new version of the first instance of the
Primary IDE Controller to the Flickr photos.

So PIO mode can come from driver crankdown. Driver crankdown to PIO
speeds,
is an "innovation" copied from Unix boxes (I had to battle this on a Sun
box,
on SCSI bus).

*******

You can share images, if you use a photo hosting site.

On my motherboard, I'll confess that I can't explain the number of entries
I've got. I should have six SATA and two entries for my single IDE ribbon
cable. This is what mine looks like.

http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/6797/sataandide.gif

I think your two "Ultra DMA Mode 6", could be SATA hard drives, but there
is nothing in the text to confirm that. It's just a guess. SATA drives
aren't actually limited to that speed, and that is just a placeholder. On
Intel chipsets, typically that bogus string says "Ultra DMA Mode 5",
as it is an Intel tradition, to limit their disk interfaces to
100MB/sec, to separate themselves from the "133MB/sec crowd". Other
brands use the "Mode 6" in theirs, but the actual SATA cable speed
can be higher than that, and is not tied to "multiples of 33". SATA
rates come in 150/300/600 minus overhead.


My two hard drives are model Seagate ST3750630AS; the Seagate website says
they use the SATA 3 Gb/s interface. (I have an ancient copy of Everest Home
Edition, Version 2.2.405, which says the drives are ATA but I'm guessing
that's because SATA wasn't fully formalized when that version of Everest was
written.)

Your PIO is the suspicious one. It could be a ribbon cable thing, which
might improve with a different (80 wire) cable. Or, it could be
the driver cranked it down, and you need to follow the Microsoft
workaround suggestion in the KB article above. Fixing the PIO
issue won't last, if there are still CRC transmission errors present.
But if the cable is good, and you use the workaround, the improvement
should "stick".

I've got my fingers crossed that this workaround solved the problem or at
least improved things dramatically. Let's see how long it lasts....

Thank you VERY much for your assistance Paul! I think I've given you way too
much information in this email so forgive me for that. I'm just trying to
explain myself clearly so that you can catch any errors I've made through my
own inexperience with hardware issues.

--
Rhino

Rhino wrote:


I spent some time this afternoon looking around inside the computer. I did
my best to determine if I had a 40 or 80 wire cable and I _think_ I have an
80 wire cable.

I wish I could say that with certainty but counting the wires was harder
than you might think: I have cataracts in both eyes that aren't operable yet
and I had a _heck_ of a time getting enough light on the cable - and holding
a magnifier over it so that I had some hope of seeing well enough - to count
the wires. The connectors had 40 square holes at each end (well, one
connector was actually 39 since the middle one on one row was blocked off);
I'm quite certain of that. The cable seemed to be exactly 2 inches wide and
I measured a quarter of an inch with an accurate ruler. As best I could
tell, there were 10 wires in that quarter of an inch, not 5, so that makes
80 wires in two inches.

Still, just as a precaution, I took some photos - subject to the same
limitations - and put them in a public area of my Flickr account. Here's the
URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/5688581...7627007235956/

There are several pictures of the same wire; hopefully they will help you
satisfy yourself that it is an 80-wire cable. If it isn't, please tell me
so! As you can tell by now, my eyesight is not very good. Also, I have
several lenses for my camera but none of them seems to let me get really
close and zoom in on that wire to make it really big.

I've also put the screen caps from Device Manager in that set of photos.

While I had the case apart, I removed the burner from its position and
disconnected all of the cables. I took a couple of pictures of the back of
the burner to show its exact layout as well as to show that the only jumper
is set to Master.

I also had a look at the hard drives and found that there are absolutely no
jumpers on them but I didn't take any pictures of the hard drives.

By the way, on the off chance that disconnecting and reconnecting the cable
to the burner fixed something, I checked Device Manager after I'd put
everything back together again and found that everything was exactly the
same. I also started Nero and it again complained that the burner was not in
DMA mode.


I tried the workaround and it worked!! At least I think it did. The Primary
IDE controller that was set to PIO mode now says "Ultra DMA mode 4". Also,
Nero no longer complains that I'm not in DMA mode. I haven't actually tried
burning a CD or DVD but I'm cautiously optimistic that it will be faster
than it used to be, which is all I really wanted. I'm not sure if I'll get
the maximum possible speed or if I'll be running in some kind of reduced
speed but I'll probably be able to live with whatever I get; it's bound to
be better than the previous speed, right?

I've added a screen cap of the new version of the first instance of the
Primary IDE Controller to the Flickr photos.


My two hard drives are model Seagate ST3750630AS; the Seagate website says
they use the SATA 3 Gb/s interface. (I have an ancient copy of Everest Home
Edition, Version 2.2.405, which says the drives are ATA but I'm guessing
that's because SATA wasn't fully formalized when that version of Everest was
written.)



I've got my fingers crossed that this workaround solved the problem or at
least improved things dramatically. Let's see how long it lasts....

Thank you VERY much for your assistance Paul! I think I've given you way too
much information in this email so forgive me for that. I'm just trying to
explain myself clearly so that you can catch any errors I've made through my
own inexperience with hardware issues.

--
Rhino

I used the first photo in your Flickr, and counted 10 wires, then estimated
how many groups of 10 I could fit, and I got 80. So the first picture
is of an 80 wire cable. I could kinda tell, from the tiny gauge of each
wire that it was an 80, but I used the guesstimate method to verify wire
count.

If you're visually impaired, you have the option of using a blunt object
(don't poke holes in the cable) to "ride" over the ridges of each wire and
count the ridges.

As long as the Microsoft workaround "sticks", you're done. If the cabling
continues to cause CRC errors, you could be back in PIO mode a week from now.
So time will tell whether this is good enough. I've run into people, who
have done the workaround over and over again.

If cabling a single drive to an IDE cable, the first drive goes on the end.

Mobo ------------X------X IDE ribbon cabling
|
First
Drive

Doing so, gives excellent signal integrity and no CRC errors.

If you do a single drive like this, this is *not* good. The portion
of cable to the right, is termed a "stub" and causes reflections.
If you cable this way, be prepared for "PIO Mode" as your reward.
And the PIO mode will keep coming back.

Mobo ------------X------X IDE ribbon cabling
|
Unhappy
Drive

Obviously, this configuration also works. There wouldn't be two
connectors if it didn't work :-)

Mobo ------------X------X IDE ribbon cabling
| |
Second First
Drive Drive

So if you've wired your optical drive, like in the "Unhappy Drive"
picture, that would explain your CRC errors.

You can do UDMA133 with two drives like in the last diagram.
You can mix a UDMA33 optical drive, on the same cable as a UDMA133
hard drive, and it should all work. Long long ago, there may have
been interaction issues, but with modern hardware, they seem to
behave independently and don't interfere with one another.
Each can use a different rate when operating.

Paul

"Paul" wrote in message
...
Rhino wrote:


I spent some time this afternoon looking around inside the computer. I
did
my best to determine if I had a 40 or 80 wire cable and I _think_ I have
an
80 wire cable.

I wish I could say that with certainty but counting the wires was harder
than you might think: I have cataracts in both eyes that aren't operable
yet
and I had a _heck_ of a time getting enough light on the cable - and
holding
a magnifier over it so that I had some hope of seeing well enough - to
count
the wires. The connectors had 40 square holes at each end (well, one
connector was actually 39 since the middle one on one row was blocked
off);
I'm quite certain of that. The cable seemed to be exactly 2 inches wide
and
I measured a quarter of an inch with an accurate ruler. As best I could
tell, there were 10 wires in that quarter of an inch, not 5, so that
makes
80 wires in two inches.

Still, just as a precaution, I took some photos - subject to the same
limitations - and put them in a public area of my Flickr account. Here's
the
URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/5688581...7627007235956/

There are several pictures of the same wire; hopefully they will help you
satisfy yourself that it is an 80-wire cable. If it isn't, please tell me
so! As you can tell by now, my eyesight is not very good. Also, I have
several lenses for my camera but none of them seems to let me get really
close and zoom in on that wire to make it really big.

I've also put the screen caps from Device Manager in that set of photos.

While I had the case apart, I removed the burner from its position and
disconnected all of the cables. I took a couple of pictures of the back
of
the burner to show its exact layout as well as to show that the only
jumper
is set to Master.

I also had a look at the hard drives and found that there are absolutely
no
jumpers on them but I didn't take any pictures of the hard drives.

By the way, on the off chance that disconnecting and reconnecting the
cable to the burner fixed something, I checked Device Manager after I'd
put everything back together again and found that everything was exactly
the same. I also started Nero and it again complained that the burner was
not in DMA mode.


I tried the workaround and it worked!! At least I think it did. The
Primary IDE controller that was set to PIO mode now says "Ultra DMA mode
4". Also, Nero no longer complains that I'm not in DMA mode. I haven't
actually tried burning a CD or DVD but I'm cautiously optimistic that it
will be faster than it used to be, which is all I really wanted. I'm not
sure if I'll get the maximum possible speed or if I'll be running in some
kind of reduced speed but I'll probably be able to live with whatever I
get; it's bound to be better than the previous speed, right?

I've added a screen cap of the new version of the first instance of the
Primary IDE Controller to the Flickr photos.


My two hard drives are model Seagate ST3750630AS; the Seagate website
says they use the SATA 3 Gb/s interface. (I have an ancient copy of
Everest Home Edition, Version 2.2.405, which says the drives are ATA but
I'm guessing that's because SATA wasn't fully formalized when that
version of Everest was written.)



I've got my fingers crossed that this workaround solved the problem or at
least improved things dramatically. Let's see how long it lasts....

Thank you VERY much for your assistance Paul! I think I've given you way
too much information in this email so forgive me for that. I'm just
trying to explain myself clearly so that you can catch any errors I've
made through my own inexperience with hardware issues.

--
Rhino

I used the first photo in your Flickr, and counted 10 wires, then
estimated
how many groups of 10 I could fit, and I got 80. So the first picture
is of an 80 wire cable. I could kinda tell, from the tiny gauge of each
wire that it was an 80, but I used the guesstimate method to verify wire
count.

If you're visually impaired, you have the option of using a blunt object
(don't poke holes in the cable) to "ride" over the ridges of each wire and
count the ridges.

As long as the Microsoft workaround "sticks", you're done. If the cabling
continues to cause CRC errors, you could be back in PIO mode a week from
now.
So time will tell whether this is good enough. I've run into people, who
have done the workaround over and over again.

If cabling a single drive to an IDE cable, the first drive goes on the
end.

Mobo ------------X------X IDE ribbon cabling
|
First
Drive

Doing so, gives excellent signal integrity and no CRC errors.


Just to confirm, the diagram above should have the "First Drive" at the X
that is farther from the Mobo, right? I think this part of the note is being
rendered by a proportional font so the vertical bar coming from the First
Drive may be out of position....

If you do a single drive like this, this is *not* good. The portion
of cable to the right, is termed a "stub" and causes reflections.
If you cable this way, be prepared for "PIO Mode" as your reward.
And the PIO mode will keep coming back.

Mobo ------------X------X IDE ribbon cabling
|
Unhappy
Drive

I'll have to double check but I _think_ this is how my cable went. I'm going
to have to go back in there and put the burner on the second connector so
that I stop the reflections. That sounds like it may be my problem right
there!

Should I do the workaround again after changing the cabling? Or is the DMA
mode likely to go to its optimum value immediately (or after the next
reboot) without having to do that?

I was going to open the case up again tomorrow anyway after my hand vac is
fully recharged; I was going to try to suck up some of the dust with it
today but there was only a tiny amount of charge left in it. I'll deal with
the cable then.

Obviously, this configuration also works. There wouldn't be two
connectors if it didn't work :-)

Mobo ------------X------X IDE ribbon cabling
| |
Second First
Drive Drive


The drives you are taking about here are burners and not hard drives, right?

So if you've wired your optical drive, like in the "Unhappy Drive"
picture, that would explain your CRC errors.

You can do UDMA133 with two drives like in the last diagram.
You can mix a UDMA33 optical drive, on the same cable as a UDMA133
hard drive, and it should all work. Long long ago, there may have
been interaction issues, but with modern hardware, they seem to
behave independently and don't interfere with one another.
Each can use a different rate when operating.

That's good to know ;-)

--
Rhino

Rhino wrote:
"Paul" wrote in message
...
Rhino wrote:

I spent some time this afternoon looking around inside the computer. I
did
my best to determine if I had a 40 or 80 wire cable and I _think_ I have
an
80 wire cable.

I wish I could say that with certainty but counting the wires was harder
than you might think: I have cataracts in both eyes that aren't operable
yet
and I had a _heck_ of a time getting enough light on the cable - and
holding
a magnifier over it so that I had some hope of seeing well enough - to
count
the wires. The connectors had 40 square holes at each end (well, one
connector was actually 39 since the middle one on one row was blocked
off);
I'm quite certain of that. The cable seemed to be exactly 2 inches wide
and
I measured a quarter of an inch with an accurate ruler. As best I could
tell, there were 10 wires in that quarter of an inch, not 5, so that
makes
80 wires in two inches.

Still, just as a precaution, I took some photos - subject to the same
limitations - and put them in a public area of my Flickr account. Here's
the
URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/5688581...7627007235956/

There are several pictures of the same wire; hopefully they will help you
satisfy yourself that it is an 80-wire cable. If it isn't, please tell me
so! As you can tell by now, my eyesight is not very good. Also, I have
several lenses for my camera but none of them seems to let me get really
close and zoom in on that wire to make it really big.

I've also put the screen caps from Device Manager in that set of photos.

While I had the case apart, I removed the burner from its position and
disconnected all of the cables. I took a couple of pictures of the back
of
the burner to show its exact layout as well as to show that the only
jumper
is set to Master.

I also had a look at the hard drives and found that there are absolutely
no
jumpers on them but I didn't take any pictures of the hard drives.

By the way, on the off chance that disconnecting and reconnecting the
cable to the burner fixed something, I checked Device Manager after I'd
put everything back together again and found that everything was exactly
the same. I also started Nero and it again complained that the burner was
not in DMA mode.

I tried the workaround and it worked!! At least I think it did. The
Primary IDE controller that was set to PIO mode now says "Ultra DMA mode
4". Also, Nero no longer complains that I'm not in DMA mode. I haven't
actually tried burning a CD or DVD but I'm cautiously optimistic that it
will be faster than it used to be, which is all I really wanted. I'm not
sure if I'll get the maximum possible speed or if I'll be running in some
kind of reduced speed but I'll probably be able to live with whatever I
get; it's bound to be better than the previous speed, right?

I've added a screen cap of the new version of the first instance of the
Primary IDE Controller to the Flickr photos.


My two hard drives are model Seagate ST3750630AS; the Seagate website
says they use the SATA 3 Gb/s interface. (I have an ancient copy of
Everest Home Edition, Version 2.2.405, which says the drives are ATA but
I'm guessing that's because SATA wasn't fully formalized when that
version of Everest was written.)


I've got my fingers crossed that this workaround solved the problem or at
least improved things dramatically. Let's see how long it lasts....

Thank you VERY much for your assistance Paul! I think I've given you way
too much information in this email so forgive me for that. I'm just
trying to explain myself clearly so that you can catch any errors I've
made through my own inexperience with hardware issues.

--
Rhino
I used the first photo in your Flickr, and counted 10 wires, then
estimated
how many groups of 10 I could fit, and I got 80. So the first picture
is of an 80 wire cable. I could kinda tell, from the tiny gauge of each
wire that it was an 80, but I used the guesstimate method to verify wire
count.

If you're visually impaired, you have the option of using a blunt object
(don't poke holes in the cable) to "ride" over the ridges of each wire and
count the ridges.

As long as the Microsoft workaround "sticks", you're done. If the cabling
continues to cause CRC errors, you could be back in PIO mode a week from
now.
So time will tell whether this is good enough. I've run into people, who
have done the workaround over and over again.

If cabling a single drive to an IDE cable, the first drive goes on the
end.

Mobo ------------X------X IDE ribbon cabling
|
First
Drive

Doing so, gives excellent signal integrity and no CRC errors.


Just to confirm, the diagram above should have the "First Drive" at the X
that is farther from the Mobo, right? I think this part of the note is being
rendered by a proportional font so the vertical bar coming from the First
Drive may be out of position....

If you do a single drive like this, this is *not* good. The portion
of cable to the right, is termed a "stub" and causes reflections.
If you cable this way, be prepared for "PIO Mode" as your reward.
And the PIO mode will keep coming back.

Mobo ------------X------X IDE ribbon cabling
|
Unhappy
Drive

I'll have to double check but I _think_ this is how my cable went. I'm going
to have to go back in there and put the burner on the second connector so
that I stop the reflections. That sounds like it may be my problem right
there!

Should I do the workaround again after changing the cabling? Or is the DMA
mode likely to go to its optimum value immediately (or after the next
reboot) without having to do that?

I was going to open the case up again tomorrow anyway after my hand vac is
fully recharged; I was going to try to suck up some of the dust with it
today but there was only a tiny amount of charge left in it. I'll deal with
the cable then.

Obviously, this configuration also works. There wouldn't be two
connectors if it didn't work :-)

Mobo ------------X------X IDE ribbon cabling
| |
Second First
Drive Drive


The drives you are taking about here are burners and not hard drives, right?

So if you've wired your optical drive, like in the "Unhappy Drive"
picture, that would explain your CRC errors.

You can do UDMA133 with two drives like in the last diagram.
You can mix a UDMA33 optical drive, on the same cable as a UDMA133
hard drive, and it should all work. Long long ago, there may have
been interaction issues, but with modern hardware, they seem to
behave independently and don't interfere with one another.
Each can use a different rate when operating.

That's good to know ;-)

--
Rhino

You should be able to copy the posting into Notepad, apply Courier
font, and the figure should line up. As far as I know, my postings
are text only and there should be no "font hints" in them.

I use a fixed font when I type the posts, to make it easier for
me to make tables or draw stick figures.

With a single drive, the drive goes on the *end* of the cable for
best results.

When I say drive, it can be a hard drive or an optical drive. For
electrical reflections and corrupted data, the drive type doesn't
matter. They both can get corrupted, they both can be subject
to CRC errors.

Whether the workaround is necessary again, depends on whether your transfer
rate has dropped. If it is still at 33MB/sec UDMA mode, then no need to
panic. If it has dropped to some other, inferior rate, then apply the
workaround again. As I understand it, the speed drops in steps,
so doesn't instantly go to the lowest PIO speed when errors are
detected on the cable.

I don't actually know how many CRC errors it takes.

Paul

"Paul" wrote in message
...
Rhino wrote:
"Paul" wrote in message
...
Rhino wrote:

I spent some time this afternoon looking around inside the computer. I
did
my best to determine if I had a 40 or 80 wire cable and I _think_ I
have an
80 wire cable.

I wish I could say that with certainty but counting the wires was
harder
than you might think: I have cataracts in both eyes that aren't
operable yet
and I had a _heck_ of a time getting enough light on the cable - and
holding
a magnifier over it so that I had some hope of seeing well enough - to
count
the wires. The connectors had 40 square holes at each end (well, one
connector was actually 39 since the middle one on one row was blocked
off);
I'm quite certain of that. The cable seemed to be exactly 2 inches wide
and
I measured a quarter of an inch with an accurate ruler. As best I could
tell, there were 10 wires in that quarter of an inch, not 5, so that
makes
80 wires in two inches.

Still, just as a precaution, I took some photos - subject to the same
limitations - and put them in a public area of my Flickr account.
Here's the
URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/5688581...7627007235956/

There are several pictures of the same wire; hopefully they will help
you
satisfy yourself that it is an 80-wire cable. If it isn't, please tell
me
so! As you can tell by now, my eyesight is not very good. Also, I have
several lenses for my camera but none of them seems to let me get
really
close and zoom in on that wire to make it really big.

I've also put the screen caps from Device Manager in that set of
photos.

While I had the case apart, I removed the burner from its position and
disconnected all of the cables. I took a couple of pictures of the back
of
the burner to show its exact layout as well as to show that the only
jumper
is set to Master.

I also had a look at the hard drives and found that there are
absolutely no
jumpers on them but I didn't take any pictures of the hard drives.

By the way, on the off chance that disconnecting and reconnecting the
cable to the burner fixed something, I checked Device Manager after I'd
put everything back together again and found that everything was
exactly the same. I also started Nero and it again complained that the
burner was not in DMA mode.

I tried the workaround and it worked!! At least I think it did. The
Primary IDE controller that was set to PIO mode now says "Ultra DMA
mode 4". Also, Nero no longer complains that I'm not in DMA mode. I
haven't actually tried burning a CD or DVD but I'm cautiously
optimistic that it will be faster than it used to be, which is all I
really wanted. I'm not sure if I'll get the maximum possible speed or
if I'll be running in some kind of reduced speed but I'll probably be
able to live with whatever I get; it's bound to be better than the
previous speed, right?

I've added a screen cap of the new version of the first instance of the
Primary IDE Controller to the Flickr photos.


My two hard drives are model Seagate ST3750630AS; the Seagate website
says they use the SATA 3 Gb/s interface. (I have an ancient copy of
Everest Home Edition, Version 2.2.405, which says the drives are ATA
but I'm guessing that's because SATA wasn't fully formalized when that
version of Everest was written.)


I've got my fingers crossed that this workaround solved the problem or
at least improved things dramatically. Let's see how long it lasts....

Thank you VERY much for your assistance Paul! I think I've given you
way too much information in this email so forgive me for that. I'm just
trying to explain myself clearly so that you can catch any errors I've
made through my own inexperience with hardware issues.

--
Rhino
I used the first photo in your Flickr, and counted 10 wires, then
estimated
how many groups of 10 I could fit, and I got 80. So the first picture
is of an 80 wire cable. I could kinda tell, from the tiny gauge of each
wire that it was an 80, but I used the guesstimate method to verify wire
count.

If you're visually impaired, you have the option of using a blunt object
(don't poke holes in the cable) to "ride" over the ridges of each wire
and
count the ridges.

As long as the Microsoft workaround "sticks", you're done. If the
cabling
continues to cause CRC errors, you could be back in PIO mode a week from
now.
So time will tell whether this is good enough. I've run into people, who
have done the workaround over and over again.

If cabling a single drive to an IDE cable, the first drive goes on the
end.

Mobo ------------X------X IDE ribbon cabling
|
First
Drive

Doing so, gives excellent signal integrity and no CRC errors.


Just to confirm, the diagram above should have the "First Drive" at the X
that is farther from the Mobo, right? I think this part of the note is
being rendered by a proportional font so the vertical bar coming from the
First Drive may be out of position....

If you do a single drive like this, this is *not* good. The portion
of cable to the right, is termed a "stub" and causes reflections.
If you cable this way, be prepared for "PIO Mode" as your reward.
And the PIO mode will keep coming back.

Mobo ------------X------X IDE ribbon cabling
|
Unhappy
Drive

I'll have to double check but I _think_ this is how my cable went. I'm
going to have to go back in there and put the burner on the second
connector so that I stop the reflections. That sounds like it may be my
problem right there!

Should I do the workaround again after changing the cabling? Or is the
DMA mode likely to go to its optimum value immediately (or after the next
reboot) without having to do that?

I was going to open the case up again tomorrow anyway after my hand vac
is fully recharged; I was going to try to suck up some of the dust with
it today but there was only a tiny amount of charge left in it. I'll deal
with the cable then.

Obviously, this configuration also works. There wouldn't be two
connectors if it didn't work :-)

Mobo ------------X------X IDE ribbon cabling
| |
Second First
Drive Drive


The drives you are taking about here are burners and not hard drives,
right?

So if you've wired your optical drive, like in the "Unhappy Drive"
picture, that would explain your CRC errors.

You can do UDMA133 with two drives like in the last diagram.
You can mix a UDMA33 optical drive, on the same cable as a UDMA133
hard drive, and it should all work. Long long ago, there may have
been interaction issues, but with modern hardware, they seem to
behave independently and don't interfere with one another.
Each can use a different rate when operating.

That's good to know ;-)

--
Rhino

You should be able to copy the posting into Notepad, apply Courier
font, and the figure should line up. As far as I know, my postings
are text only and there should be no "font hints" in them.

I use a fixed font when I type the posts, to make it easier for
me to make tables or draw stick figures.


As soon as I put that section of your email into Notepad, the vertical bars
moved to where they were consistent with what you were describing in words.
As I suspected, the first diagram showed the "First Drive" right at the far
end (farthest from the mobo) and the second diagram showed the "Unhappy
Drive" at the connector closer to the mobo.

With a single drive, the drive goes on the *end* of the cable for
best results.

When I say drive, it can be a hard drive or an optical drive. For
electrical reflections and corrupted data, the drive type doesn't
matter. They both can get corrupted, they both can be subject
to CRC errors.


I'm not sure from that whether you're suggesting I do something different in
the way my hard drives are connected. They don't use ribbon cable so I'm not
sure what I could or should do about them.

For what it's worth, I burned a DVD this morning and the process was much
faster than it had been before. It started out somewhat more slowly than I
was used to in the sense that it seemed to linger at 1%, then 3% for longer
than it had in the past but the burn of the disk was over much sooner than
it ever was in the past.

I put nearly 4 GB on this particular DVD-R and I doubt it took more than 10
minutes, although I didn't really watch the time very closely. Previously,
that disk would have taken a good half hour or 40 minutes. (I've never
actually timed burns so this is just a ballpark estimate.)

I'm already very pleased with the improvement. If that improves further when
I move the cable this afternoon, that will be terrific.

Whether the workaround is necessary again, depends on whether your
transfer
rate has dropped. If it is still at 33MB/sec UDMA mode, then no need to
panic. If it has dropped to some other, inferior rate, then apply the
workaround again. As I understand it, the speed drops in steps,
so doesn't instantly go to the lowest PIO speed when errors are
detected on the cable.

I don't actually know how many CRC errors it takes.


How can I measure my real transfer rate (as opposed to determining my
theoretical maximum transfer rate) and count CRC errors? I assume that there
are some freeware utilities out there that will do that - or maybe even some
native Windows utilities - but I'm not familiar with any offhand. If you can
suggest some, I'll take some measurements and see how I'm doing just to make
sure everything is as good as I can make it.

--
Rhino

Rhino wrote:
"Paul" wrote in message
...
Rhino wrote:
"Paul" wrote in message
...
Rhino wrote:

I spent some time this afternoon looking around inside the computer. I
did
my best to determine if I had a 40 or 80 wire cable and I _think_ I
have an
80 wire cable.

I wish I could say that with certainty but counting the wires was
harder
than you might think: I have cataracts in both eyes that aren't
operable yet
and I had a _heck_ of a time getting enough light on the cable - and
holding
a magnifier over it so that I had some hope of seeing well enough - to
count
the wires. The connectors had 40 square holes at each end (well, one
connector was actually 39 since the middle one on one row was blocked
off);
I'm quite certain of that. The cable seemed to be exactly 2 inches wide
and
I measured a quarter of an inch with an accurate ruler. As best I could
tell, there were 10 wires in that quarter of an inch, not 5, so that
makes
80 wires in two inches.

Still, just as a precaution, I took some photos - subject to the same
limitations - and put them in a public area of my Flickr account.
Here's the
URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/5688581...7627007235956/

There are several pictures of the same wire; hopefully they will help
you
satisfy yourself that it is an 80-wire cable. If it isn't, please tell
me
so! As you can tell by now, my eyesight is not very good. Also, I have
several lenses for my camera but none of them seems to let me get
really
close and zoom in on that wire to make it really big.

I've also put the screen caps from Device Manager in that set of
photos.

While I had the case apart, I removed the burner from its position and
disconnected all of the cables. I took a couple of pictures of the back
of
the burner to show its exact layout as well as to show that the only
jumper
is set to Master.

I also had a look at the hard drives and found that there are
absolutely no
jumpers on them but I didn't take any pictures of the hard drives.

By the way, on the off chance that disconnecting and reconnecting the
cable to the burner fixed something, I checked Device Manager after I'd
put everything back together again and found that everything was
exactly the same. I also started Nero and it again complained that the
burner was not in DMA mode.
I tried the workaround and it worked!! At least I think it did. The
Primary IDE controller that was set to PIO mode now says "Ultra DMA
mode 4". Also, Nero no longer complains that I'm not in DMA mode. I
haven't actually tried burning a CD or DVD but I'm cautiously
optimistic that it will be faster than it used to be, which is all I
really wanted. I'm not sure if I'll get the maximum possible speed or
if I'll be running in some kind of reduced speed but I'll probably be
able to live with whatever I get; it's bound to be better than the
previous speed, right?

I've added a screen cap of the new version of the first instance of the
Primary IDE Controller to the Flickr photos.


My two hard drives are model Seagate ST3750630AS; the Seagate website
says they use the SATA 3 Gb/s interface. (I have an ancient copy of
Everest Home Edition, Version 2.2.405, which says the drives are ATA
but I'm guessing that's because SATA wasn't fully formalized when that
version of Everest was written.)

I've got my fingers crossed that this workaround solved the problem or
at least improved things dramatically. Let's see how long it lasts....

Thank you VERY much for your assistance Paul! I think I've given you
way too much information in this email so forgive me for that. I'm just
trying to explain myself clearly so that you can catch any errors I've
made through my own inexperience with hardware issues.

--
Rhino
I used the first photo in your Flickr, and counted 10 wires, then
estimated
how many groups of 10 I could fit, and I got 80. So the first picture
is of an 80 wire cable. I could kinda tell, from the tiny gauge of each
wire that it was an 80, but I used the guesstimate method to verify wire
count.

If you're visually impaired, you have the option of using a blunt object
(don't poke holes in the cable) to "ride" over the ridges of each wire
and
count the ridges.

As long as the Microsoft workaround "sticks", you're done. If the
cabling
continues to cause CRC errors, you could be back in PIO mode a week from
now.
So time will tell whether this is good enough. I've run into people, who
have done the workaround over and over again.

If cabling a single drive to an IDE cable, the first drive goes on the
end.

Mobo ------------X------X IDE ribbon cabling
|
First
Drive

Doing so, gives excellent signal integrity and no CRC errors.

Just to confirm, the diagram above should have the "First Drive" at the X
that is farther from the Mobo, right? I think this part of the note is
being rendered by a proportional font so the vertical bar coming from the
First Drive may be out of position....

If you do a single drive like this, this is *not* good. The portion
of cable to the right, is termed a "stub" and causes reflections.
If you cable this way, be prepared for "PIO Mode" as your reward.
And the PIO mode will keep coming back.

Mobo ------------X------X IDE ribbon cabling
|
Unhappy
Drive

I'll have to double check but I _think_ this is how my cable went. I'm
going to have to go back in there and put the burner on the second
connector so that I stop the reflections. That sounds like it may be my
problem right there!

Should I do the workaround again after changing the cabling? Or is the
DMA mode likely to go to its optimum value immediately (or after the next
reboot) without having to do that?

I was going to open the case up again tomorrow anyway after my hand vac
is fully recharged; I was going to try to suck up some of the dust with
it today but there was only a tiny amount of charge left in it. I'll deal
with the cable then.

Obviously, this configuration also works. There wouldn't be two
connectors if it didn't work :-)

Mobo ------------X------X IDE ribbon cabling
| |
Second First
Drive Drive

The drives you are taking about here are burners and not hard drives,
right?

So if you've wired your optical drive, like in the "Unhappy Drive"
picture, that would explain your CRC errors.

You can do UDMA133 with two drives like in the last diagram.
You can mix a UDMA33 optical drive, on the same cable as a UDMA133
hard drive, and it should all work. Long long ago, there may have
been interaction issues, but with modern hardware, they seem to
behave independently and don't interfere with one another.
Each can use a different rate when operating.

That's good to know ;-)

--
Rhino
You should be able to copy the posting into Notepad, apply Courier
font, and the figure should line up. As far as I know, my postings
are text only and there should be no "font hints" in them.

I use a fixed font when I type the posts, to make it easier for
me to make tables or draw stick figures.


As soon as I put that section of your email into Notepad, the vertical bars
moved to where they were consistent with what you were describing in words.
As I suspected, the first diagram showed the "First Drive" right at the far
end (farthest from the mobo) and the second diagram showed the "Unhappy
Drive" at the connector closer to the mobo.

With a single drive, the drive goes on the *end* of the cable for
best results.

When I say drive, it can be a hard drive or an optical drive. For
electrical reflections and corrupted data, the drive type doesn't
matter. They both can get corrupted, they both can be subject
to CRC errors.


I'm not sure from that whether you're suggesting I do something different in
the way my hard drives are connected. They don't use ribbon cable so I'm not
sure what I could or should do about them.

For what it's worth, I burned a DVD this morning and the process was much
faster than it had been before. It started out somewhat more slowly than I
was used to in the sense that it seemed to linger at 1%, then 3% for longer
than it had in the past but the burn of the disk was over much sooner than
it ever was in the past.

I put nearly 4 GB on this particular DVD-R and I doubt it took more than 10
minutes, although I didn't really watch the time very closely. Previously,
that disk would have taken a good half hour or 40 minutes. (I've never
actually timed burns so this is just a ballpark estimate.)

I'm already very pleased with the improvement. If that improves further when
I move the cable this afternoon, that will be terrific.

Whether the workaround is necessary again, depends on whether your
transfer
rate has dropped. If it is still at 33MB/sec UDMA mode, then no need to
panic. If it has dropped to some other, inferior rate, then apply the
workaround again. As I understand it, the speed drops in steps,
so doesn't instantly go to the lowest PIO speed when errors are
detected on the cable.

I don't actually know how many CRC errors it takes.


How can I measure my real transfer rate (as opposed to determining my
theoretical maximum transfer rate) and count CRC errors? I assume that there
are some freeware utilities out there that will do that - or maybe even some
native Windows utilities - but I'm not familiar with any offhand. If you can
suggest some, I'll take some measurements and see how I'm doing just to make
sure everything is as good as I can make it.

--
Rhino

On the software utility front, I've got nothing to offer.
I've had poor luck, getting access to the more useful counters.
You can try the Performance plugin, and look at the list of
counters there, but I don't think CRC is there.

The Performance plugin can measure disk read and disk write
rates. I use that all the time for benchmarking. I also add
a couple extra columns to Task Manager, with "read bytes" and
"write bytes", as that allows me to predict when a command
that produces a lot of data, is going to finish. (For example,
if a backup is going to produce a 76GB backup image, I
can watch the backup command produce data until it hits
76GB total. So I can look at the number as a progress
indicator, for commands that lack good visual feedback.)

For SATA cables, those are point to point, and there is no
signal integrity issue with those. (If you pinch the cable,
you can ruin it.) SATA is the thin, typically red colored cable.
It operates at 1.5/3.0/6.0 Gbit/sec and is terminated differentially
at the receiving device. It constitutes about as close to "electrically perfect"
as you can get. The cabling is a bit lossy (but that's to be expected
at such a high frequency), which is why SATA is limited to 3 to 6 feet
of cable. If a SATA hard drive had an issue, all you could do is
try another cable.

The IDE cable on the other hand, is a far from perfect interconnect.
The bus has signal reflections on it. If there were oscilloscope pictures
from it, it would look scary. You'd be saying "that's my data ???".
If the cable was made longer, the reflections would look even worse,
or wouldn't settle in time before the clocking of the data value
occurs.

Optical burners have features such as "Burn Proof", which can compensate
for less than perfect cable transfer rates. For example, by accident,
I started a burn on a USB optical drive, when the drive was running
in USB 1.1 data rate (instead of USB 2.0). The transfer rate in that
case is 1 MB/sec (lower than is needed for a typical burn). The LED
on the burner wouldn't stay constantly lit during the burn, due to
the optical drive "under-running" from data starvation. But due to
Burn Proof, the disc was still good. That's pretty amazing, when they
used to claim a burn had to occur as a continuous spiral to work, and
underrunning would produce a coaster. Somehow, they've got some way
of "splicing" the write so it all works (I don't know the details
on that). It turned out my USB2 driver had gone missing and I
didn't clue in, until I saw the flashing optical drive light
(and Nero said my burn would take several hours to complete :-) ).
The disc was a DVD-9 dual layer.

Paul

[snip]


--
Rhino
You should be able to copy the posting into Notepad, apply Courier
font, and the figure should line up. As far as I know, my postings
are text only and there should be no "font hints" in them.

I use a fixed font when I type the posts, to make it easier for
me to make tables or draw stick figures.


As soon as I put that section of your email into Notepad, the vertical
bars moved to where they were consistent with what you were describing in
words. As I suspected, the first diagram showed the "First Drive" right
at the far end (farthest from the mobo) and the second diagram showed the
"Unhappy Drive" at the connector closer to the mobo.

With a single drive, the drive goes on the *end* of the cable for
best results.

When I say drive, it can be a hard drive or an optical drive. For
electrical reflections and corrupted data, the drive type doesn't
matter. They both can get corrupted, they both can be subject
to CRC errors.


I'm not sure from that whether you're suggesting I do something different
in the way my hard drives are connected. They don't use ribbon cable so
I'm not sure what I could or should do about them.

For what it's worth, I burned a DVD this morning and the process was much
faster than it had been before. It started out somewhat more slowly than
I was used to in the sense that it seemed to linger at 1%, then 3% for
longer than it had in the past but the burn of the disk was over much
sooner than it ever was in the past.

I put nearly 4 GB on this particular DVD-R and I doubt it took more than
10 minutes, although I didn't really watch the time very closely.
Previously, that disk would have taken a good half hour or 40 minutes.
(I've never actually timed burns so this is just a ballpark estimate.)

I'm already very pleased with the improvement. If that improves further
when I move the cable this afternoon, that will be terrific.

Whether the workaround is necessary again, depends on whether your
transfer
rate has dropped. If it is still at 33MB/sec UDMA mode, then no need to
panic. If it has dropped to some other, inferior rate, then apply the
workaround again. As I understand it, the speed drops in steps,
so doesn't instantly go to the lowest PIO speed when errors are
detected on the cable.

I don't actually know how many CRC errors it takes.


How can I measure my real transfer rate (as opposed to determining my
theoretical maximum transfer rate) and count CRC errors? I assume that
there are some freeware utilities out there that will do that - or maybe
even some native Windows utilities - but I'm not familiar with any
offhand. If you can suggest some, I'll take some measurements and see how
I'm doing just to make sure everything is as good as I can make it.

--
Rhino

On the software utility front, I've got nothing to offer.
I've had poor luck, getting access to the more useful counters.
You can try the Performance plugin, and look at the list of
counters there, but I don't think CRC is there.

What's "the Performance plugin" and where can I find it?

The Performance plugin can measure disk read and disk write
rates. I use that all the time for benchmarking. I also add
a couple extra columns to Task Manager, with "read bytes" and
"write bytes", as that allows me to predict when a command
that produces a lot of data, is going to finish. (For example,
if a backup is going to produce a 76GB backup image, I
can watch the backup command produce data until it hits
76GB total. So I can look at the number as a progress
indicator, for commands that lack good visual feedback.)

For SATA cables, those are point to point, and there is no
signal integrity issue with those. (If you pinch the cable,
you can ruin it.) SATA is the thin, typically red colored cable.
It operates at 1.5/3.0/6.0 Gbit/sec and is terminated differentially
at the receiving device. It constitutes about as close to "electrically
perfect"
as you can get. The cabling is a bit lossy (but that's to be expected
at such a high frequency), which is why SATA is limited to 3 to 6 feet
of cable. If a SATA hard drive had an issue, all you could do is
try another cable.

So I don't really need to worry about that then. I'll simply replace the
cable if I get symptoms that the cable is pinched. What symptoms would I
expect then? Writes to the hard drive taking much longer than usual? Or
actual error messages popping up? Or the Blue Screen of Death itself?

The IDE cable on the other hand, is a far from perfect interconnect.
The bus has signal reflections on it. If there were oscilloscope pictures
from it, it would look scary. You'd be saying "that's my data ???".
If the cable was made longer, the reflections would look even worse,
or wouldn't settle in time before the clocking of the data value
occurs.

Sounds like optical burners need to start using the SATA approach ;-)

Optical burners have features such as "Burn Proof", which can compensate
for less than perfect cable transfer rates. For example, by accident,
I started a burn on a USB optical drive, when the drive was running
in USB 1.1 data rate (instead of USB 2.0). The transfer rate in that
case is 1 MB/sec (lower than is needed for a typical burn). The LED
on the burner wouldn't stay constantly lit during the burn, due to
the optical drive "under-running" from data starvation. But due to
Burn Proof, the disc was still good. That's pretty amazing, when they
used to claim a burn had to occur as a continuous spiral to work, and
underrunning would produce a coaster. Somehow, they've got some way
of "splicing" the write so it all works (I don't know the details
on that). It turned out my USB2 driver had gone missing and I
didn't clue in, until I saw the flashing optical drive light
(and Nero said my burn would take several hours to complete :-) ).
The disc was a DVD-9 dual layer.

I'm glad it gave you some clues about why it was misbehaving. Sometimes,
these computers don't give you very obvious clues at all about what's going
wrong on them.

I remember a work computer I had once that kept crashing, probably a couple
of times a week at its worst. It was running OS/2 and when I'd call Help
Desk, they'd advise me to reinstall OS/2. After doing that several times, I
spoke to a technical guy I knew and described my symptoms. He said it
sounded like an I/O Controller issue - this was almost 20 years back so I
may be misremembering the name of the component - and he helped me arrange a
replacement of that component, which completely solved the problem. I was
still just transitioning to PCs at the time so I remember being very
surprised that PCs even had hardware issues; on mainframes, the issues were
almost always software. But it was a handy experience. Not too much later, I
started having some similar symptoms on my home computer and it turned out
to be a problem with the same component as the work computer; replacing that
component fixed my home PC too. But I'm darned if I can remember any obvious
symptoms on either computer that suggested that the I/O Controller had a
problem!

--
Rhino