No Boot, using PCI ATA 133 IDE Card

[Meghan]

Hello,
I need some help. I have an ABIT AG8 motherboard, just installed a new
power supply (Enermax 535 W, which is working) and 4 harddrives
connected to a PCI ATA 133 IDE Card since my motherboard only has one
IDE slot (which is connected to my CD-ROM and DVD-RW drives). My
computer will not boot (no system beep, nothing) if all 4 harddrives
are connected. I have gotten it to boot if I only have the boot drive
connected directly to the motherboard. I have also gotten it to boot
with the 2 cd-roms connected to the motherboard and 2 harddrives
connected to the one side of the card (master, slave). Do I have a bad
PCI card? Something else? I'll try anything. Thanks to anyone who can
offer suggestions.

 

[Paul]

Hello,
I need some help. I have an ABIT AG8 motherboard, just installed a new
power supply (Enermax 535 W, which is working) and 4 harddrives
connected to a PCI ATA 133 IDE Card since my motherboard only has one
IDE slot (which is connected to my CD-ROM and DVD-RW drives). My
computer will not boot (no system beep, nothing) if all 4 harddrives
are connected. I have gotten it to boot if I only have the boot drive
connected directly to the motherboard. I have also gotten it to boot
with the 2 cd-roms connected to the motherboard and 2 harddrives
connected to the one side of the card (master, slave). Do I have a bad
PCI card? Something else? I'll try anything. Thanks to anyone who can
offer suggestions.

Take the PCI ATA 133 card, a single IDE cable, a single drive jumpered
to master on the end of the cable, and test one connector on the
PCI ATA card at a time. Do both connectors work ? Is the drive
detected in both cases ?

Now, connect a second drive (slave) to the middle of the cable.
Test one connector on the card and then the other. Are both
drives detected ? And properly on each connector ?

Are you using a 40 pin cable with 80 wires in the cable ? That
kind of cable is what enables the faster transfer rates of
modern disk drives. You might repeat a subset of your tests,
swapping one cable after another and testing that the cables
actually work. (I.e. Repeat a two drive test, and only
check one of the two connectors on the PCI IDE card, using
one of your other cables.)

Maybe that will give you some idea if the card is OK.
Or you've got a bad cable.

With the Enermax 535W, chances are you aren't running out
of amps to spin up the drives. (Something like this should
be printed on the label.)

+3.3V@32A, +5V@32A, +12V1@18A, +12V2@18A, [email protected], [email protected]

The 12V1 rail, at 18A, powers the motherboard, fans, disk
drives, video card (via PCI Express slot connector or via
an AUX power connector connected to the end of the video card).
If you had a high end video card, and enough drives, maybe
you'd get close to the 18A. But I somehow doubt that is the
problem (overloaded when the drives spin up and draw 2 amps
a piece). But without a full hardware inventory, it is hard
to say for sure.

Paul

 

[DustWolf]

Meghan je napisal:

I need some help. I have an ABIT AG8 motherboard, just installed a new
power supply (Enermax 535 W, which is working) and 4 harddrives
connected to a PCI ATA 133 IDE Card since my motherboard only has one
IDE slot (which is connected to my CD-ROM and DVD-RW drives). My
computer will not boot (no system beep, nothing) if all 4 harddrives
are connected. I have gotten it to boot if I only have the boot drive
connected directly to the motherboard. I have also gotten it to boot
with the 2 cd-roms connected to the motherboard and 2 harddrives
connected to the one side of the card (master, slave). Do I have a bad
PCI card? Something else? I'll try anything. Thanks to anyone who can
offer suggestions.

Sounds a lot like a bad PCI card, but considering it could also be a
shortcircut somewhere else (cabling or disk plugs), you might want to
elimintate that possibility first.

Try connecting all drives to the PSU but not with the data cables to
anything and also do not insert the PCI card. If the computer doesn't
work like this, you're looking at a shortcircut or something like that
in one of the disks.

To eliminate the PCI card as a problem, connect only the PCI card and
no harddrives to the computer and attempt boot.

Basically you're looking at trying out all possible combinations and
based on that, figuring out which component is the failing one. If you
want, you can post the results of the testing here and we can help you
figure it out.

 

[Meghan]

Thanks for everyone's replies. After lots of trial and error, it turns
out it was the video card. I unplugged all the drives and it was doing
the same thing (not booting). When I unplugged the video card, it would
boot. I've replaced it with a new one and it is booting fine now!
Thanks again.