Need motherboard recommendation

Hello Everyone,

I just purchased an Intel D865PERLL motherboard because I had heard they
made the most reliable and compatible boards on the market (but definitely
not the fastest!). However, to my surprise I have found that they do not
support drives over 137GB, even on the SATA-150 channels (unless I'm missing
something). So, I will return it.

I would like some recommendations from people based upon their experiences
if you don't mind. I'm not a gamer and the most important consideration is
stability and compatibility rather than blinding speed and tweakability. I
already have an Intel P4 2.8C processor, 2ea. 512MB matched DDR-400s, and a
WD 200GB SATA-150 HD. The following are my requirements, which I believe
are fairly standard:

1. Intel chipset - 865 or later
2. 800MHz FSB
3. Dual channel DDR-400
4. BIOS support for 200MB/250MB SATA and ATA drives
5. 5ea PCI slots
6. 1ea 4X-8X AGP slot
7. On board LAN and USB

Of course, I would welcome additional on board peripherals such as firewire
(but on board video is not a plus for me since I plan to use a separate
2-head nVidia AGP card and nVidia PCI video card for 3-monitor support).

Thanks for your help,
Ray Mitchell

In article . net,
says...
Hello Everyone,

I just purchased an Intel D865PERLL motherboard because I had heard they
made the most reliable and compatible boards on the market (but definitely
not the fastest!). However, to my surprise I have found that they do not
support drives over 137GB, even on the SATA-150 channels (unless I'm missing
something). So, I will return it.

I would like some recommendations from people based upon their experiences
if you don't mind. I'm not a gamer and the most important consideration is
stability and compatibility rather than blinding speed and tweakability. I
already have an Intel P4 2.8C processor, 2ea. 512MB matched DDR-400s, and a
WD 200GB SATA-150 HD. The following are my requirements, which I believe
are fairly standard:

SNIP

Asus P4C800-E Deluxe;

http://uk.asus.com/prog/spec.asp?m=P...eluxe&langs=11

HTH

Kenchie.

If you are running XP you need SP1 to use the full size of a hard drive over
137 gig.


"Ray Mitchell" wrote in message
ink.net...
Hello Everyone,

I just purchased an Intel D865PERLL motherboard because I had heard they
made the most reliable and compatible boards on the market (but definitely
not the fastest!). However, to my surprise I have found that they do not
support drives over 137GB, even on the SATA-150 channels (unless I'm
missing
something). So, I will return it.

I would like some recommendations from people based upon their experiences
if you don't mind. I'm not a gamer and the most important consideration
is
stability and compatibility rather than blinding speed and tweakability.
I
already have an Intel P4 2.8C processor, 2ea. 512MB matched DDR-400s, and
a
WD 200GB SATA-150 HD. The following are my requirements, which I believe
are fairly standard:

1. Intel chipset - 865 or later
2. 800MHz FSB
3. Dual channel DDR-400
4. BIOS support for 200MB/250MB SATA and ATA drives
5. 5ea PCI slots
6. 1ea 4X-8X AGP slot
7. On board LAN and USB

Of course, I would welcome additional on board peripherals such as
firewire
(but on board video is not a plus for me since I plan to use a separate
2-head nVidia AGP card and nVidia PCI video card for 3-monitor support).

Thanks for your help,
Ray Mitchell

Thanks for the suggestion. However, I tried it with both XP SP1 and W2K
SP4. Unless I'm missing something there must be more to it than that. The
funny thing is that Intel says it will work if I use their Accelerator
application for Windows. However, they also say that the application is
only compatible with their older chipsets. Now there's a switch, their new
chipsets can't support big drives but their older ones could. Go figure!


"RonK" wrote in message
...
If you are running XP you need SP1 to use the full size of a hard drive
over
137 gig.


"Ray Mitchell" wrote in message
ink.net...
Hello Everyone,

I just purchased an Intel D865PERLL motherboard because I had heard they
made the most reliable and compatible boards on the market (but
definitely
not the fastest!). However, to my surprise I have found that they do
not
support drives over 137GB, even on the SATA-150 channels (unless I'm
missing
something). So, I will return it.

I would like some recommendations from people based upon their
experiences
if you don't mind. I'm not a gamer and the most important consideration
is
stability and compatibility rather than blinding speed and tweakability.
I
already have an Intel P4 2.8C processor, 2ea. 512MB matched DDR-400s,
and
a
WD 200GB SATA-150 HD. The following are my requirements, which I
believe
are fairly standard:

1. Intel chipset - 865 or later
2. 800MHz FSB
3. Dual channel DDR-400
4. BIOS support for 200MB/250MB SATA and ATA drives
5. 5ea PCI slots
6. 1ea 4X-8X AGP slot
7. On board LAN and USB

Of course, I would welcome additional on board peripherals such as
firewire
(but on board video is not a plus for me since I plan to use a separate
2-head nVidia AGP card and nVidia PCI video card for 3-monitor support).

Thanks for your help,
Ray Mitchell

In article . net, "Ray
Mitchell" wrote:

Thanks for the suggestion. However, I tried it with both XP SP1 and W2K
SP4. Unless I'm missing something there must be more to it than that. The
funny thing is that Intel says it will work if I use their Accelerator
application for Windows. However, they also say that the application is
only compatible with their older chipsets. Now there's a switch, their new
chipsets can't support big drives but their older ones could. Go figure!

A point you might be missing, is that, for a given chipset, the drivers
are provided by the manufacturer of the chipset. So, whether your
motherboard is made by Asus, Gigabyte, or Abit, they will all be shipping
the same Intel chipset installer to you. Swapping motherboards won't
fix anything, if they all have an 865PE/ICH5R on them.

Granted, different motherboards will have different peripherals on them.
So, if one board had a Via RAID, and another had a Promise RAID chip,
then sure, swapping boards would get you a different RAID chip with a
different set of issues. The Via drivers will be written by Via, and the
Promise drivers by Promise, so again, the manufacturer of the board
doesn't matter, in terms of driver quality.

As for IAA, there are two entirely different versions. Intel would
have been smart to come up with another marketing name, so it is
their loss. IAA, as far as I know, was written back when bus mastering
was introduced. The Microsoft OS at the time, knew nothing about
the DMA transfer of disk data, and the inherently higher performance it
offers. To support the feature until the OS situation improved, Intel
wrote a driver, to be used to get bus mastering to work. That became
the Intel Application Accelerator, a driver for a vanilla IDE interface
that allowed bus mastering to work.

Much time has passed since it was introduced. Now, we have Microsoft
OSes that have bus master support built in, meaning the default driver
is every bit as good as IAA from Intel. So, on the one hand, Intel can
afford to stop supporting IAA, as the market for it is effective zero.

The second thing that happened, is Intel has added RAID to the
Southbridge. No Microsoft OS knows about such a beast (in hardware),
so Intel wrote IAAR for the ICH5R Southbridge and WinXP OS. If not
doing RAID, the ports in question can still be used for stand alone
disk drives, so all Microsoft OSes can get some use from those ports.
(That is where the "Enhanced" and "Compatible" settings for the ports
come into play, in the BIOS. Your choice between the two settings,
is determined by which OS you plan on using.)

In terms of the Intel drivers, whether IAA/IAAR, you should be using
the latest one you can find, as earlier versions didn't properly
support 48bit addressing. In this case, I don't see a need for
either driver, as you are going to be using this disk as a vanilla
drive.

In terms of support, here is the official position of Asus:

http://www.asus.it/support/english/t...hdd/index.aspx

"Model manufactured after 1st January, 2003 will all support
48bit HDD (137 GB HDD)."

Manufacturers that use the same chips as Asus, will end up with
the same level of compatibility (they all rely on the same
BIOS providers, like Award or AMI).

I wish I could offer you a simple recipe, guaranteed to get the
job done - perhaps there are better news groups for that than
this one. I would recommend a WinXP install disk that already
has SP1 built into it, as if you are trying to install the OS
on a large disk, that would be the way to go. If the big disk
is being used as a data only disk, then you could install SP1
on the boot disk first, then add the big disk and go from there.

If you don't have a WinXP+SP1 install disk, you can make your
own with an original WinXP disk and a process called
"slipstreaming". These are some links I was given when the
topic came up before (thanks, Tim).

http://www.winnetmag.com/Article/Art...619/38619.html (slipstream)
http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8892 (adding drivers?)
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=XP...am+SP1+Drivers

Microsoft's answer is here, now more easy to understand after
it was rewritten:

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;303013

This thread seems to suggest you can install the OS on the big
disk, if the OS is kept below 137GB. Maybe slipstreaming SP1
or using a WinXP+SP1 install disk removes that limit.

http://groups.google.com/groups?thre...0hot mail.com

Before putting live data on the disk, try copying large test files
until you get past the 137GB mark. If 48bit support isn't working
properly, the file system will be corrupted instantly when passing
that mark. That is due to the modulo rollover of the disk address,
and the resultant writing near the beginning of the disk, when your
request meant to write at a 137+ GB location.

My contribution in this post, is to not give up on the motherboard
you've got - the problems won't get easier by changing motherboards.
If you want to "dodge the bullet", swap the drive for some smaller
ones :-)

Paul



"RonK" wrote in message
...
If you are running XP you need SP1 to use the full size of a hard
drive over 137 gig.


"Ray Mitchell" wrote in message
ink.net...
Hello Everyone,

I just purchased an Intel D865PERLL motherboard because I had heard they
made the most reliable and compatible boards on the market (but
definitely not the fastest!). However, to my surprise I have
found that they do not support drives over 137GB, even on the
SATA-150 channels (unless I'm missing something). So, I will
return it.

I would like some recommendations from people based upon
their experiences if you don't mind. I'm not a gamer and the
most important consideration is stability and compatibility rather
than blinding speed and tweakability. I already have an Intel P4
2.8C processor, 2ea. 512MB matched DDR-400s, and a WD 200GB
SATA-150 HD. The following are my requirements, which I believe
are fairly standard:

1. Intel chipset - 865 or later
2. 800MHz FSB
3. Dual channel DDR-400
4. BIOS support for 200MB/250MB SATA and ATA drives
5. 5ea PCI slots
6. 1ea 4X-8X AGP slot
7. On board LAN and USB

Of course, I would welcome additional on board peripherals such
as firewire (but on board video is not a plus for me since I plan
to use a separate 2-head nVidia AGP card and nVidia PCI video card
for 3-monitor support).

Thanks for your help,
Ray Mitchell

The Microsoft IDE drivers have supported DMA going back to Windows 3.1.
It's off by default, but it's supported. In 3.1, you had to manually
add some lines to System.INI to turn it on. Since Windows 95, it's been
a "check box" burried in device manager, but it's always been there.
The Intel drivers have never been necessary to enable DMA.

While you are correct that Intel supplies the chipset drivers for all
motherboards, for support of IDE drives over 137 gigs, BIOS support is
required, which still comes from the motherboard makers, not Intel.
However, I know of know motherboard made in the past 2 years that
doesn't have this support in recent versions of the bios. In addition
to the chipset drivers and BIOS support, there are three other
requirements: Support in the hard drive itself, Windows XP with SP1
installed, and an entry in the registry that is not present by default,
even with SP1 installed.

Support for large drives over 137 gigs is also available in Windows 2000
with the latest service packs installed and the necessary registry
entries. Such support is not available in any Windows 9X operating
system. However, you can use an OS that doesn't support drives over 137
gigs with such drives as long as you do not try to access any part of
the drive beyond the 137 gig boundary. In my case, my system has a 200
gig drive and is dual boot 98SE/XP. The last partition ("H:") is 80
gigs in size and encompasses all of the portion of the drive beyond 137
gigs, so it's imperative that no attempt be made to write to this
partition from Windows 98SE. However, since that partition is NTFS,
Windows 9x can't see it anyway. The rest of the drive is FAT32.





Paul wrote:

In article . net, "Ray
Mitchell" wrote:


Thanks for the suggestion. However, I tried it with both XP SP1 and W2K
SP4. Unless I'm missing something there must be more to it than that. The
funny thing is that Intel says it will work if I use their Accelerator
application for Windows. However, they also say that the application is
only compatible with their older chipsets. Now there's a switch, their new
chipsets can't support big drives but their older ones could. Go figure!


A point you might be missing, is that, for a given chipset, the drivers
are provided by the manufacturer of the chipset. So, whether your
motherboard is made by Asus, Gigabyte, or Abit, they will all be shipping
the same Intel chipset installer to you. Swapping motherboards won'tThe
fix anything, if they all have an 865PE/ICH5R on them.

Granted, different motherboards will have different peripherals on them.
So, if one board had a Via RAID, and another had a Promise RAID chip,
then sure, swapping boards would get you a different RAID chip with a
different set of issues. The Via drivers will be written by Via, and the
Promise drivers by Promise, so again, the manufacturer of the board
doesn't matter, in terms of driver quality.

As for IAA, there are two entirely different versions. Intel would
have been smart to come up with another marketing name, so it is
their loss. IAA, as far as I know, was written back when bus mastering
was introduced. The Microsoft OS at the time, knew nothing about
the DMA transfer of disk data, and the inherently higher performance it
offers. To support the feature until the OS situation improved, Intel
wrote a driver, to be used to get bus mastering to work. That became
the Intel Application Accelerator, a driver for a vanilla IDE interface
that allowed bus mastering to work.

Much time has passed since it was introduced. Now, we have Microsoft
OSes that have bus master support built in, meaning the default driver
is every bit as good as IAA from Intel. So, on the one hand, Intel can
afford to stop supporting IAA, as the market for it is effective zero.

The second thing that happened, is Intel has added RAID to the
Southbridge. No Microsoft OS knows about such a beast (in hardware),
so Intel wrote IAAR for the ICH5R Southbridge and WinXP OS. If not
doing RAID, the ports in question can still be used for stand alone
disk drives, so all Microsoft OSes can get some use from those ports.
(That is where the "Enhanced" and "Compatible" settings for the ports
come into play, in the BIOS. Your choice between the two settings,
is determined by which OS you plan on using.)

In terms of the Intel drivers, whether IAA/IAAR, you should be using
the latest one you can find, as earlier versions didn't properly
support 48bit addressing. In this case, I don't see a need for
either driver, as you are going to be using this disk as a vanilla
drive.

In terms of support, here is the official position of Asus:

http://www.asus.it/support/english/t...hdd/index.aspx

"Model manufactured after 1st January, 2003 will all support
48bit HDD (137 GB HDD)."

Manufacturers that use the same chips as Asus, will end up with
the same level of compatibility (they all rely on the same
BIOS providers, like Award or AMI).

I wish I could offer you a simple recipe, guaranteed to get the
job done - perhaps there are better news groups for that than
this one. I would recommend a WinXP install disk that already
has SP1 built into it, as if you are trying to install the OS
on a large disk, that would be the way to go. If the big disk
is being used as a data only disk, then you could install SP1
on the boot disk first, then add the big disk and go from there.

If you don't have a WinXP+SP1 install disk, you can make your
own with an original WinXP disk and a process called
"slipstreaming". These are some links I was given when the
topic came up before (thanks, Tim).

http://www.winnetmag.com/Article/Art...619/38619.html (slipstream)
http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8892 (adding drivers?)
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=XP...am+SP1+Drivers

Microsoft's answer is here, now more easy to understand after
it was rewritten:

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;303013

This thread seems to suggest you can install the OS on the big
disk, if the OS is kept below 137GB. Maybe slipstreaming SP1
or using a WinXP+SP1 install disk removes that limit.

http://groups.google.com/groups?thre...0hot mail.com

Before putting live data on the disk, try copying large test files
until you get past the 137GB mark. If 48bit support isn't working
properly, the file system will be corrupted instantly when passing
that mark. That is due to the modulo rollover of the disk address,
and the resultant writing near the beginning of the disk, when your
request meant to write at a 137+ GB location.

My contribution in this post, is to not give up on the motherboard
you've got - the problems won't get easier by changing motherboards.
If you want to "dodge the bullet", swap the drive for some smaller
ones :-)

Paul



"RonK" wrote in message
om...

If you are running XP you need SP1 to use the full size of a hard
drive over 137 gig.


"Ray Mitchell" wrote in message
thlink.net...

Hello Everyone,

I just purchased an Intel D865PERLL motherboard because I had heard they
made the most reliable and compatible boards on the market (but
definitely not the fastest!). However, to my surprise I have
found that they do not support drives over 137GB, even on the
SATA-150 channels (unless I'm missing something). So, I will
return it.

I would like some recommendations from people based upon
their experiences if you don't mind. I'm not a gamer and the
most important consideration is stability and compatibility rather
than blinding speed and tweakability. I already have an Intel P4
2.8C processor, 2ea. 512MB matched DDR-400s, and a WD 200GB
SATA-150 HD. The following are my requirements, which I believe
are fairly standard:

1. Intel chipset - 865 or later
2. 800MHz FSB
3. Dual channel DDR-400
4. BIOS support for 200MB/250MB SATA and ATA drives
5. 5ea PCI slots
6. 1ea 4X-8X AGP slot
7. On board LAN and USB

Of course, I would welcome additional on board peripherals such
as firewire (but on board video is not a plus for me since I plan
to use a separate 2-head nVidia AGP card and nVidia PCI video card
for 3-monitor support).

Thanks for your help,
Ray Mitchell

Ray,

Paul and Ron are both right on this.

You have several options of which I will mention only 2.

1st. Create your C drive with a size of less than the limit EG 32 GB and
create whatever partitions you want to utilize the remaining space. My
preference is to segregate System from Data so with XP C gets 16 to 32 GB,
and other partitions are created for whatever purposes are appropriate.

2nd. If you have to have C drive cover the entire disc, then create a 32 GB
partition to install XP on, then as soon as you have all motherboard and
essential drivers installed, install XP SP1a - this will give native XP
support for partitions beyond the original XP limit. Then take a look at the
DISKPART command in the Help on the Start menu. With this you can extend a
partition into contiguous free space - which will exist since you will have
only C drive in a partition occupying the first 32GB on the disc.

HTH
- Tim





"Ray Mitchell" wrote in message
ink.net...

Thanks for the suggestion. However, I tried it with both XP SP1 and W2K
SP4. Unless I'm missing something there must be more to it than that.
The
funny thing is that Intel says it will work if I use their Accelerator
application for Windows. However, they also say that the application is
only compatible with their older chipsets. Now there's a switch, their
new
chipsets can't support big drives but their older ones could. Go figure!


"RonK" wrote in message
...
If you are running XP you need SP1 to use the full size of a hard drive
over
137 gig.


"Ray Mitchell" wrote in message
ink.net...
Hello Everyone,

I just purchased an Intel D865PERLL motherboard because I had heard
they
made the most reliable and compatible boards on the market (but
definitely
not the fastest!). However, to my surprise I have found that they do
not
support drives over 137GB, even on the SATA-150 channels (unless I'm
missing
something). So, I will return it.

I would like some recommendations from people based upon their
experiences
if you don't mind. I'm not a gamer and the most important
consideration
is
stability and compatibility rather than blinding speed and
tweakability.
I
already have an Intel P4 2.8C processor, 2ea. 512MB matched DDR-400s,
and
a
WD 200GB SATA-150 HD. The following are my requirements, which I
believe
are fairly standard:

1. Intel chipset - 865 or later
2. 800MHz FSB
3. Dual channel DDR-400
4. BIOS support for 200MB/250MB SATA and ATA drives
5. 5ea PCI slots
6. 1ea 4X-8X AGP slot
7. On board LAN and USB

Of course, I would welcome additional on board peripherals such as
firewire
(but on board video is not a plus for me since I plan to use a separate
2-head nVidia AGP card and nVidia PCI video card for 3-monitor
support).

Thanks for your help,
Ray Mitchell

You need to manually make a registry entry after installing SP1. SP1 by
itself is not enough. See the Microsoft web site for further information.


Ray Mitchell wrote:

Thanks for the suggestion. However, I tried it with both XP SP1 and W2K
SP4. Unless I'm missing something there must be more to it than that. The
funny thing is that Intel says it will work if I use their Accelerator
application for Windows. However, they also say that the application is
only compatible with their older chipsets. Now there's a switch, their new
chipsets can't support big drives but their older ones could. Go figure!


"RonK" wrote in message
...

If you are running XP you need SP1 to use the full size of a hard drive

over

137 gig.


"Ray Mitchell" wrote in message
hlink.net...

Hello Everyone,

I just purchased an Intel D865PERLL motherboard because I had heard they
made the most reliable and compatible boards on the market (but

definitely

not the fastest!). However, to my surprise I have found that they do

not

support drives over 137GB, even on the SATA-150 channels (unless I'm

missing

something). So, I will return it.

I would like some recommendations from people based upon their

experiences

if you don't mind. I'm not a gamer and the most important consideration

is

stability and compatibility rather than blinding speed and tweakability.

I

already have an Intel P4 2.8C processor, 2ea. 512MB matched DDR-400s,

and

a

WD 200GB SATA-150 HD. The following are my requirements, which I

believe

are fairly standard:

1. Intel chipset - 865 or later
2. 800MHz FSB
3. Dual channel DDR-400
4. BIOS support for 200MB/250MB SATA and ATA drives
5. 5ea PCI slots
6. 1ea 4X-8X AGP slot
7. On board LAN and USB

Of course, I would welcome additional on board peripherals such as

firewire

(but on board video is not a plus for me since I plan to use a separate
2-head nVidia AGP card and nVidia PCI video card for 3-monitor support).

Thanks for your help,
Ray Mitchell

Il Sun, 18 Jul 2004 16:48:21 +0000, Barry Watzman ha scritto:

You need to manually make a registry entry after installing SP1. SP1 by
itself is not enough. See the Microsoft web site for further information.

Who said that? I do have a RAID0 configuration with two SATA 160 drives
(320 GB total raid disk) without any problem with XP SP1 and without had
to made any REG modifications.

I also have a system with a 250 GB SATA Maxtor drive connected to a PCI
Maxtor SATA card controller and it is correctly seen by XP SP1 as a 250 GB
drive.

_P_e_ar_lALegend wrote:
Il Sun, 18 Jul 2004 16:48:21 +0000, Barry Watzman ha scritto:


You need to manually make a registry entry after installing SP1. SP1 by
itself is not enough. See the Microsoft web site for further information.


Who said that? I do have a RAID0 configuration with two SATA 160 drives
(320 GB total raid disk) without any problem with XP SP1 and without had
to made any REG modifications.

I also have a system with a 250 GB SATA Maxtor drive connected to a PCI
Maxtor SATA card controller and it is correctly seen by XP SP1 as a 250 GB
drive.

no problems because your hard drives are connected to sata controlles.
this big hd issue consers systems where hd is connected to regular
southbridge handled pata controller and use then normal ide ata drivers
from microsoft.