EIDE2300plus Installation Tips (Doc# 2100) FOR DRIVES >528MB USING LBA DRIVE TRANSLATION AND FAT(DOS) INSTALLATION 1) Please backup existing data before installing the controller. 2) Enable LBA translation on EIDE2300plus - Set JP1 to 2-3 position Note: The card is shipped with JP1 set to 1-2. 3) Install the EIDE2300plus 4) In CMOS, set manufacturer drive parameters; do not enable CMOS drive translation. 5) Boot to DOS floppy; Run FDISK Delete former partitions Recreate partitions 6) Reboot to floppy; Format with DOS Format command Sometimes a third party software on floppy accompanies >528 drives IDE hard disks. This disk driver software should NOT be used in conjunction with the EIDE2300plus since it would conflict with its disk drivers. Disk Manager and other such software to support >528 capacity should be removed from the drive since the partitions and disk drivers will conflict with the EIDE2300plus disk drivers. Follow the above steps and remove the drivers. See the below section if there is some difficulty with this process. CANNOT COMPLETELY REMOVE DISK MANAGER FROM BOOT PARTITION Sometimes FDISK cannot delete Disk Manager information from the boot partition. Try running "DMCONFIG /R" from the Ontrack Disk Manager diskette. Also, Note that this should be destructive to the Ontrack made partitions. Another alternative is to run "FDISK /MBR" (Master Boot Record) which is not destructive. If this does not accomplish this, you should take steps to erase the boot sector. One method is to use a debug routine from our 24hr FaxBack Service Doc #2120 . Also with Norton Disk Editor, you could manually erase sectors 0 to 35 by setting the value to 00. Both methods with be destructive to the data. FOR SOUND BLASTER COMPATIBLE DMA CH1 CONFLICTS Set the EIDE2300plus ECP DMA ch to 3 instead of default 1: Set JP10 col 1&2 to 2-3 position PROBLEMS BOOTING WHEN USING "T" URBO SELECTION There is a built in driver in our Controller external BIOS. It is enabled by default but may cause problems booting. Disable the BIOS Driver if causing booting problems since our CONFIG.SYS driver EIDE2300.sys will load and program the speed for the VL-IDE drives. To disable BIOS driver - Set JP4 col 1&2 to 1-2 position. USING EIDE2300PLUS INSTALLATION UTILITY Before running, you must do a clean boot without a CONFIG.SYS OR AUTOEXEC.BAT loading; for DOS6 or above, press to do a clean boot or boot from a bootable floppy. NOTE: This configuration utility tests the speeds of IDE drives on the VL-IDE connector ONLY. There are no performance settings for the ISA-IDE connector. MANUALLY SETTING EIDE2300.SYS SPEED PARAMETERS Only ONE speed setting mode(PIO or DMA) can be enabled per device. On the Device line uses EITHER /D (PIO) or /M (DMA)- NOT both. You may however set one IDE device with PIO and the other with DMA like /D0:_ /M1:_. WHAT ARE PIO/IOCHDRY AND DMA MODES? PIO, or Programmed Input/Output, transfers data in fixed time lengths called cycle times. The shorter the cycle time, the higher the transfer rates. Our PIO speed of 8 is approximately 180ns cycle time which gives an "ideal" transfer rate of 11MB/s when there is no overhead. Variations in Mainboard designs can affect the driver speed settings. IOCHRDY (PIO), or I/O Channel Ready, is a using PIO with a handshaking method to throttle data transfer with drives IOCHRDY signal for optimal performance. This the /D_:A (automatic) setting. DMA, or Multi-word Direct Memory Access, transfers data with a REQ/ACK handshaking method. DMA speed 8 is approximately 150ns cycle time which gives an "ideal" transfer rate of 13MB/s when there is no overhead. Variations in Mainboard designs can affect the driver speed settings. Both PIO and DMA transfers are between the controller and the drive. There are no mainboard DMA channels used during DMA transfer modes since this transfer is NOT through the VLB bus but through the IDE cable. WHAT IS 32-BIT BLOCK MODE(MULTIPLE SECTORED RD/WR)? 32-bit Block Mode is used to decrease system overhead during data transfers through the VESA Bus. Several transfers 2 sectors at a time can be transferred on one interrupt. WINDOWS DOES NOT START If Windows does not initialize or you receive "Fatal Error #3" error message, try setting the EIDE2300.386 driver to a lower speed setting. In System.ini [386 Enh], add this line: DisksAccessMode= /D0:2 /D1:2 If Windows succesfully starts, try raising the speed setting number to optimize the performance. The original setting could not be supported by Windows on this Mainboard. WINDOWS REPORTS 32-BIT DISK ACCESS ERROR If Windows reports and error message detailing "...unrecognizable software installed which conflicts with EIDE2300.386..." there maybe some software like Compression, SCSI, or other storage device bios/software installed which conflicts with our Windows driver. Try minimizing the Config.sys and Autoexec.bat and use a clean install of Windows; reinstall individual software to find which is causing this error. Note: There is sometimes misconception on the function of 32-bit Disk Access. It has no association with 32-bit VESA Local Bus and is primarily used to increase Swap file performance. You may find disabling 32-bit Disk Access can increase performance. CANNOT USE 32-BIT FILE ACCESS If Windows reports "...missing IFSHLP.SYS...," first check if device=C:\Windows\IFSHLP.SYS is properly installed into the CONFIG.SYS. 32-bit File Access will not work on drives installed on a the Secondary "ISA-IDE" controller of the EIDE2300plus. WIndows will report that they work in 16-bit mode. There has been no provision from Microsoft yet to provide this support. WINDOWS MOUSE IS ERRATIC Due to the single threaded DOS operations, Windows may have problems dealing with extended BLOCKs from our controller and maintaining mouse operation. Disable these Block mode transfers by adding this line, In the System.ini [386 enh] section: DisksAccessMode=FAST MOUSE DISAPPEARS IN WINDOWS In some configurations, the Mouse would work but later disappear while in Windows. This has been associated to either an IRQ conflict with the Mouse COM port IRQ or a Logictech Mouse driver. Be sure to resolve any IRQ conflicts between the Mouse COM port and another COM port. If you have a Logitech Mouse driver, download the latest update. The "Microsoft Compatible" standard Windows mouse driver has worked. WINDOWS MODEM DOWNLOADS Due to the single threaded DOS operations, Windows may have problems dealing with extended BLOCKs from our controller and maintaining mouse operation. Disable these Block mode transfers by adding this line, In the System.ini [386 enh] section: DisksAccessMode=FAST These are other Windows settings to improve high speed modem transfers. In the System.ini [386] section, experiment with these settings: COMxProtocol=XOFF ;Enable Xon/Xoff Flow control COMxBuffer=1024 ;128 default USING NON-EIDE DRIVES There is no problem using non EIDE drives on the same connector as on the VL-IDE connector. Drives that are not considered by drive manufacturers as Enhanced IDE or Fast ATA can still be installed on the VL-IDE OR the ISA- IDE connector. Promise has designed drivers which independently assign speed settings for each drive. SETTING UP IDE DRIVE ON ISA CONNECTOR If only one drive is installed on the Second connector, it should be jumpered as Master(Single) drive - This is important. If drive contains no data, you may partition this drive with our EIFDISK.EXE utility and then reboot, format the next available drive letter. SETTING VL-IDE AS SECONDARY AND ISA-IDE AS PRIMARY Although there are jumper settings that can configure the VL-IDE connector as Secondary and the ISA- IDE connector as Primary, the Promise Bios and Drivers will NOT recognize this configuration. Do NOT set the controller with this configuration! If for some reason it is necessary to use ISA-IDE controller as Primary, disable the EIDE2300plus BIOS and do NOT load the included driver. It is possible to run the EIDE2300plus in an ISA slot just using the ISA-IDE connector as Primary and the VL-IDE connector disabled. This is at your own risk since the ISA slot cannot seat a VLB card correctly. Disable ISA-IDE "Secondary" Controller driver support FOR DEVICE DRIVER V2.50 AND V2.60: A "/X2" switch has been added to driver 2.50 and 2.60. The addition of the /X2 switch prevents the PROMISE DOS device driver in the CONFIG.SYS from initializing the third and fourth IDE drives. If you DO NOT have drives on the "ISA-IDE" connector, add the /X2 to troubleshoot driver lockup problems and get rid of the "WAITING..." message. To add the switch, edit the CONFIG.SYS and place the switch on the device driver line like such: DEVICE=C:\EIDE2300\EIDE2300.SYS /X2 FOR EIDE2300.SYS DRIVER V2.70: By default, the EIDE2300.SYS driver will NOT load support for Secondary controller the third and fourth IDE hard disks. Add the "/S" to enable the Secondary controller support. To add the switch, edit the CONFIG.SYS and place the switch on the device driver line like such: DEVICE=C:\EIDE2300\EIDE2300.SYS /S IDE CDROM AND OTHER IDE DEVICES Other devices such as IDE CDROM and TAPE MUST support IDE ATAPI interface. The drive manufacturer provides software drivers to attach these drives. Be sure to configure the proper master/slave drive settings. On BOTH PRIMARY and SECONDARY connectors, there is one master and one slave on EACH connector. On either PRIMARY or SECONDARY connector, the other IDE device relies on their supplied drivers. The EIDE2300.SYS driver does not load support for IDE devices besides IDE hard disks. When installed on the PRIMARY connector, set in the Mainboard Bios drive type to "not installed" for the other IDE device and when necessary, indicate the parameters IRQ14 PORT 1F0 for the driver install- ation. NOTE: If you install the CDROM on the PRIMARY connector, Microsoft Windows 32-bit Disk Access will fail when accessing the CDROM drive. This problem is exhibited on standard IDE controllers as well. When installed on the SECONDARY connector, indicate IRQ15 and PORT 170 for the driver installation if necessary. Most CDROM software will autodetect the CDROM when installed on the SECONDARY connector. To troubleshoot CDROM problems, try adding the "/X2" switch to the EIDE2300.SYS driver in the CONFIG.SYS to disable searching for IDE hard disks on the SECONDARY controller. QEMM INT13 ROM HANDLER ERROR With QEMM 7.5+, there is a "Optimize /ST" option to add the proper exclusions. Or on previous revisions of QEMM, you may manually add the "XSTI=13" parameter. FLOPPY DOES NOT WORK The card must be well-seated into the computer. It is possible to have the IDE drives working but the floppy drives have intermittent or total floppy drive failures. FLOPPY TAPE DRIVE WILL NOT RESTORE Set the Promise DOS and Windows drivers to PIO transfer instead of the DMA method. Also be sure to set Buffers=25 if the tape software requires. Sample: In config.sys DEVICE=C:\EIDE2300\EIDE2300.SYS /D0:6 /D1:5 BUFFERS=25 In System.ini [386 Enh], add this line: DisksAccessMode= /D0:6 /D1:5 Also try setting the D3 "Drive Select" jumpers on the tape drive. They are usually labeled D0,D1,D2,D3. DR DOS 6.0 AND LOWER DR DOS partitioning is based on Microsoft DOS 3.3. DR DOS 6.0 would be incompatible with the creation of LBA translated partitions. During the setup, DR DOS complains of no accessible hard disks available. The updated Novell DOS 7 will not have this problem. OS/2 WARP The current OS/2 2.1 EIDE2300.ADD driver will not work on the OS/2 3.0 WARP release. Continue using the IBM driver IBM1s506.ADD driver which normally installs with OS/2 WARP. Drives still can run with our controller Bios EIDE settings through VLB at 16-bit driver with the IBM driver. A new PROMISE driver is in development. OS/2 does not print; DOS does The default printer address of the EIDE2300plus is Port:278 IRQ:7. While DOS does not care what Port LPT1 uses, OS/2 requires a default or Port:378. Set JP10 col. 1&2 to 2-3 for IRQ:7 Port:378. NETWARE WITH 4 IDE DO NOT enable LBA translation. NetWare does not have a >528MB limitation on their drivers. Enabling LBA will cause the system not to boot. To install 4 IDE drives under NetWare, LOAD EIDE31X.DSK PORT=1F0 INT=E LOAD IDEDISK.DSK PORT=170 INT=F AJC-3/2/95