Secondary IDE channel

[Guest]

Hi,

Sorry for being ignorant about this, but I read that the Primary IDE channel
and the Secondary IDE channel should be included in the XPE image to avoid 7B
error.

My image didn't have the secondary IDE channel, and it has worked so far
(except with that horrible USB thumbdrive problem which till now we still
can't understand). Should I include in the secondary IDE channel? What is
this component for?

If I boot up in XP Pro using the same machine and look under Device Manager,
the Primary IDE channel is there, and the Secondary IDE channel is not
listed. Similarly, when I run TAP on XP Pro, this component didn't seem
required after I imported the pmq file.

Lastly, is it alright to put in more drivers like the pci bridge and ultra
ATA storage components? I mean, if they are not used, they just take up space
and shouldn't cause too much damage, right? (I hope)

Thanks!

 

[zen master]

"but I read that the Primary IDE channel
and the Secondary IDE channel should be included in the XPE image to
avoid 7B
error"

Where did you read this? What board are you using? The best way to find
out is to build a simple image and test it on the target.

 

[Sean Liming \(eMVP\)]

The Secondary IDE channel is only needed if you are booting off the Second
IDE port. Some systems that have an IDE slot CF is tied to the Second
Channel. If you don't have a secondary IDE channel than you don't need the
component. If you run TAP on the system, you have all the components to boot
the XPe image. No extra ATA storage or PCI bridge chips are needed. The
biggest cause of STOP 7B is using the output from TA.EXE to build up an
image. Per the white paper that is floating out there, TA.EXE doesn't bring
in all the necessary components so there is a small list of components to
try.

As far as USB flash, XP/XPe doesn't support booting from USB devices out of
the box. Some developers and companies have come up with solutions to move
the USB drivers up in the boot process. M-Systems with the uDOC and
Dietmar's USB flash key solution.

Regards,

Sean Liming
www.sjjmicro.com / www.seanliming.com
XP Embedded Book Author - XP Embedded Advanced, XP Embedded Supplemental
Toolkit.

 

[Guest]

Hi,

I am not using a USB thumbdrive to boot into XPE. My image is on an IDE
flash disk, and the thumbdrive is just there to transfer data (or to
faciliate booting into DOS).

I do have a PCMCIA card slot, and I think it's tied to the IDE channel as
well. Maybe I should add in the second IDE channel. (Though in Windows, I do
see the PCMCIA controller coming up with I plug in the card.)

The thing is, the 7B error didn't occur during first boot or during FBA. In
fact, the image is working fine. However, randomly, if I reboot the unit with
a USB thumbdrive plugged in, the 7B error occurred. The thumbdrive is
formatted to boot up from DOS, and is recognized as a hard disk in the BIOS.
It appears that either Windows is trying to boot from the USB drive (who
knows why?!) or maybe it failed to initialize the drive somehow?

The randomness is what is worrying. We can't find the trigger, and it
doesn't seem to be some missing components either. I did run TAP.exe on XP
Pro and made a comparison, and that was when I noticed that the original
image were using some other PCI bridge component. I didn't build the original
image, so I had no idea why they used different components.

We tried to compare registries, but didn't seem to work even after trying to
delete some keys.