P2B-F doesn't see add-on disc controller

[Nil]

I bought an Adaptec ASH-1233 Ultra ATA/133 PCI disc controller card so
I could utilize the whole capacity of a couple of large hard discs I
have. The P2B-F with the newest BIOS (1014 beta something) can only see
up to 130 GB. However, the motherboard does not see the card at all, no
matter which PCI slot it's in. The card seems to be good, because I put
it in another old P2 clunker I have around, and the Adaptec card shows
a message during POST. No such message is displayed when the ASUS
computer boots up, and the operating system doesn't see it.

Can anyone suggest what's wrong? Might I get better results with
another brand of controller?

 

[Thomas Jahns]

I bought an Adaptec ASH-1233 Ultra ATA/133 PCI disc controller card so
I could utilize the whole capacity of a couple of large hard discs I
have. The P2B-F with the newest BIOS (1014 beta something) can only see
up to 130 GB. However, the motherboard does not see the card at all, no

Do you really need the BIOS support for more than 128GiB? When you put
XP or Linux in a boot partition that is fully contained in the first
128GiB it should be able to see and use the rest of the disk (this
requires Windows XP SP1 and later, Linux 2.4.19+ and I think Windows
2000 SP4 and later would also work).

matter which PCI slot it's in. The card seems to be good, because I put
it in another old P2 clunker I have around, and the Adaptec card shows
a message during POST. No such message is displayed when the ASUS
computer boots up, and the operating system doesn't see it.

If the card has a 16k BIOS you might not have enough free address space
in the 640k-1024k area.

Can anyone suggest what's wrong? Might I get better results with
another brand of controller?

I had a PCI0680 from Silicon Image working here on a P2B-F. But it uses
memory mapped dma, so it was slower than the on-board busmaster DMA IDE.

Thomas Jahns

 

[Nil]

Do you really need the BIOS support for more than 128GiB?

I thought I did, but I guess I should research this a little to make
sure. I'm using Windows 2000 SP3, and I remember I had to get past SP 1
or SP2 in order to see over 30-some-odd gigs. If going to SP4 would do
it, that would be a compelling reason to do what I've been avoiding.

If the card has a 16k BIOS you might not have enough free address
space in the 640k-1024k area.

How can I tell if it's a 16k BIOS? Is that in the specs or the manual?
Are there any BIOS settings that can help this? I recall seeing
something there about opening memory holes in selected areas, and
another one about shadow ROM. I don't think that's pertinent, but is
it?

I had a PCI0680 from Silicon Image working here on a P2B-F. But it
uses memory mapped dma, so it was slower than the on-board
busmaster DMA IDE.

Well, I wouldn't want that, then. I know Promise has one, but I was
surprised to find that they are uncommon in retail stores in my area,
wheras the Adaptec is pretty widely available.

Thanks very much for your thoughts on this.

 

[Thomas Jahns]

I thought I did, but I guess I should research this a little to make
sure. I'm using Windows 2000 SP3, and I remember I had to get past SP 1
or SP2 in order to see over 30-some-odd gigs. If going to SP4 would do
it, that would be a compelling reason to do what I've been avoiding.

You should definitely verify this then, I'm pretty sure in the case of
XP and Linux because I've tried both, but I don't have too much 2000
experience since I migrated directly from NT 4 to XP.

How can I tell if it's a 16k BIOS? Is that in the specs or the manual?

That's a resource dynamically allocated by the mainboard PCI BIOS at
boot up. I don't know right now wether it appears in Windows device
manager (and I won't boot Windows just to find out). Linux lspci at
least seems to not provide this information.

Are there any BIOS settings that can help this? I recall seeing
something there about opening memory holes in selected areas, and
another one about shadow ROM. I don't think that's pertinent, but is
it?

I'm just speculating there. It seems pretty unusual that the controller
BIOS doesn't execute and that was the only explanation I could think
of. It would apply if you had reserved a huge chunk of the beyond-640k
memory for ISA adapters and also other cards (SCSI, bootable network
card etc.) are fighting for space there. It was just an idea that a
large controller BIOS just might not fit anymore. Perhaps someone else
here can find a more plausible explanation.

[...]

Thomas Jahns

 

[Nil]

I'm just speculating there. It seems pretty unusual that the
controller BIOS doesn't execute and that was the only explanation
I could think of. It would apply if you had reserved a huge chunk
of the beyond-640k memory for ISA adapters and also other cards
(SCSI, bootable network card etc.) are fighting for space there.
It was just an idea that a large controller BIOS just might not
fit anymore. Perhaps someone else here can find a more plausible
explanation.

I do, in fact have one ISA card (a sound card) in this computer, and
that's the only one I didn't remove when trying to get the Adaptec
controller to work. The other cards are a SCSI adapter, nework adapter,
and 2nd sound card. Maybe it was some conflict with the ISA device.

Anyway, I've given up for the moment and returned the disc controller
to the store. Even though I'm not getting full capacity out of the hard
discs in question, I've still got 130 x 2 gigabytes free. I'll think
I'll survive somehow.

I'll look into if/how I can partition and format the discs at their
full capacity. Disc Manager in Windows 2000 won't do it, FDISK in
Windows 98 won't do it. I haven't tried any other tools like Partition
Magic or the like... yet.

I'd still like to understand what the barrier is, so any other
suggestions will be appreciated.

 

[gb]

[deleted for brevity]

I'll look into if/how I can partition and format the discs at their
full capacity. Disc Manager in Windows 2000 won't do it, FDISK in
Windows 98 won't do it. I haven't tried any other tools like Partition
Magic or the like... yet.

I'd still like to understand what the barrier is, so any other
suggestions will be appreciated.

Check out http://www.48bitlba.com/win2Khnb.htm

Over 130g should be an OS [not a bios] issue, in your case. Apparently,
your Windows 2k sp3 does support these big drives but this is NOT enabled by
default. You need to make a registry change.
Hope this helps (and works).

glb

 

[Nil]

Check out http://www.48bitlba.com/win2Khnb.htm

Over 130g should be an OS [not a bios] issue, in your case.
Apparently, your Windows 2k sp3 does support these big drives but
this is NOT enabled by default. You need to make a registry
change. Hope this helps (and works).

This is an excellent site - they are very clear and detailed about what
to do and why and why not. I have to tink about this for a bit and
decide whether I want to go through the process or not - I need to boot
into Windows 98 occasionally, which could be a problem with a large HD
- but I think it can be made to work.

Thank you for the pointer.

 

[Nil]

Check out http://www.48bitlba.com/win2Khnb.htm

Over 130g should be an OS [not a bios] issue, in your case.
Apparently, your Windows 2k sp3 does support these big drives but
this is NOT enabled by default. You need to make a registry
change. Hope this helps (and works).

Well, I went ahead and made the registry change described at the site
you mentioned, and it works! Windows 2000 now sees the full capacity of
my 160 GB and my 200 GB drive, and I assume I could format them as such
if I wanted. I still haven't decided if I want to do it because various
pitfalls the site mentions, but now the possibility is open to me.

Thanks, again.

 

[Thomas Jahns]

I do, in fact have one ISA card (a sound card) in this computer, and
that's the only one I didn't remove when trying to get the Adaptec
controller to work. The other cards are a SCSI adapter, nework adapter,
and 2nd sound card. Maybe it was some conflict with the ISA device.

Anyway, I've given up for the moment and returned the disc controller
to the store. Even though I'm not getting full capacity out of the hard
discs in question, I've still got 130 x 2 gigabytes free. I'll think
I'll survive somehow.

I'll look into if/how I can partition and format the discs at their
full capacity. Disc Manager in Windows 2000 won't do it, FDISK in
Windows 98 won't do it. I haven't tried any other tools like Partition
Magic or the like... yet.

I'd still like to understand what the barrier is, so any other
suggestions will be appreciated.

Did you perhaps create an extended partition that only goes up to
128GiB? Then you couldn't create any logical partition beyond that
barrier. What you would need to do is only create a primary partition on
Win2000 installation and later create an extended partition. Partition
Magic might be able to resize your extended partition as needed.

Perhaps you might post the current partition layout?

Thomas Jahns