UDMA133 on a 5 year old PC?

[Tony]

Hiya,

Just purchased a Maxtor 6Y080L0 drive (80gb 7200rpm UDMA133).

Have installed it into a (circa 1999/2000) Dell Precision Workstation
410MT, using a 40 pin / 80 connector cable.

It works, but only comes up at UDMA33... ("kernel: hda: 160086528
sectors (81964 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=65535/16/63, UDMA(33)")

Is it theoretically possible that this PC will support faster than
UDMA33?

I've read the user manual for the PC
(http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/deqkmt/23205a00.pdf &
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/deqkmt/0655cbk7.pdf --
snipet pasted below), but I can't see any mention of UDMA.

Is it worth pursuing or is UDMA133 only supported by recent
motherboards?

Thanks!

TC

---------------------------------------------

Bus types: PCI, ISA, and AGP

Bus speed: PCI: 33.3 MHz
ISA: 8.33 MHz
AGP: 66.6 MHz (2X-capable)

Internally accessible:
EIDE drive: two 40-pin connectors on PCI local bus
Primary SCSI channel: one 68-pin Ultra2/Wide SCSI connector
Secondary SCSI channel: one internal 50-pin Narrow SCSI connector

The enhanced dual-interface EIDE subsystem supports two EIDE
interfaces
(primary and secondary), each of which can support up to two EIDE
devices.
The EIDE controller resides on the high-speed PCI bus. The primary
EIDE interface (IDE1) supports up to two high-performance EIDE
devices. The computer's boot drive should be connected to the primary
EIDE interface. The secondary EIDE interface (IDE2) also supports up
to two high performance
EIDE devices, typically EIDE tape drives or CD-ROM drives.

 

[Peter]

440BX chipset can support UDMA mode 2 which is ATA66 but I'm not sure if it
was implemented on this motherboard. At least WinXP reports UDMA mode 2.

 

[Egil Solberg]

440BX chipset can support UDMA mode 2 which is ATA66

It is ATA33. ATA66 is UDMA4.

 

[Egil Solberg]

Is it theoretically possible that this PC will support faster than
UDMA33?

Not as is. You need an additional add on PCI IDE controller. Don't know if
it's worth it to you.

 

[Peter]

Yes, you are right. No ATA66 with Precision 410 motherboard IDE. It also has
only one IDE channel.
Sorry, I misunderstood the following statement:
"In addition, the 440BX AGPset can interface with ATA/66 HDD in UDMA mode 2"
from:
http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/440bx/

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Just purchased a Maxtor 6Y080L0 drive (80gb 7200rpm UDMA133).

Have installed it into a (circa 1999/2000) Dell Precision Workstation
410MT, using a 40 pin / 80 connector cable.

It works, but only comes up at UDMA33... ("kernel: hda: 160086528
sectors (81964 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=65535/16/63, UDMA(33)")

Is it theoretically possible that this PC will support faster than
UDMA33?

My Dimension XPS-R450 (circa Jan '99) runs UDMA133 fine -
with a SIIG PCI Ultra ATA controller card. Check it out at
http://siig.com/product.asp?pid=437. About 14 months ago the lowest
price that I could find with a Google search was about $35 or $40 from
Dell online sales.
I use "round" IDE cables with aluminum braid shields for my two
Maxtor 6Y060P0 HDs (DiamondMax Plus 9s), and the cables seem
to work fine - maybe because they're shorter than the standard ribbon
cables.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Tony]

Since the motherboard isn't equiped to handle such fast data rates,
does it actually make sense to add a modern IDE controller card?

Will it result in faster disks/higher throughput, or will it just move
the bottleneck to a different place?

(Thanks for the help so far everyone!)

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Since the motherboard isn't equiped to handle such fast data rates,
does it actually make sense to add a modern IDE controller card?

You just answered your own question.

 

[Egil Solberg]

Since the motherboard isn't equiped to handle such fast data rates,
does it actually make sense to add a modern IDE controller card?

The motherboard can. Your present IDE controller can't.

Will it result in faster disks/higher throughput, or will it just move
the bottleneck to a different place?

Seek time should not better with this new controller, but it will allow for
more disk throughput.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Since the motherboard isn't equiped to handle such fast data rates,
does it actually make sense to add a modern IDE controller card?

ATA/133 has virtually the same data rate as the PCI buss. If your
PC can handle PCI, it can handle ATA/133 through PCI. Just put in
a new controller card. You'll love it.

BTW, the SIIG controller has FIFO buffers twice the size of the
Promise controller's, and the Diamondmax Plus 9s model nos. ending
with "P0" have 8MB caches, while the ones ending with "L0" have
2MB caches. These, of course, are insignificant unless you're in love
with numbers. With a 5-yr old machine, you might as well base
your choices on price.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Tony]

Okay, thank you all!