IDE Controllers (The definitive Thread )

[celeb]

I am using the ITE 8212 controller (non raid version) updating to latest drivers was ok,
but I cannot update to the latest bios
Problems I have is that although my DVD-Rom that I have attached to it performs ok,
it is not recognised at boot up,
also I have no way of knowing if it is in PIO or DMA mode as it doesnt show this setting in device manager
or in Nero info tool
I am running XP PRO

I am guessing it is in DMA as it it working well ,but I'd like to know

[tariffff]

Ahoy. I've been searching far and wide for one of those recommended ITE-based IDE controller boards; they are the only solution that can both boot from an optical drive and run HDDs at acceptable speeds (at least according to this thread). But they are very difficult to find in the US. Does anyone know of a vendor offering either an IT8211F or a reprogrammable IT8212F? I'm willing to order from a page written in any language.

I already purchased an IT8212F (the RAID version) from globe2000* but am having the same problem as celeb; i'm unable to flash it with the ATAPI BIOS necessary for ODD boot (no reprogrammable ROM?***). I emailed CMS** and their IT8212F also cannot be flashed with a new BIOS. I can't find it anywhere else on the internet. I know a few people here are using the card, please help? Thanks for reading.

* http://store.yahoo.com/glob2000/itata133ider.html

** http://www.cms-computers.co.uk/produ...roup=IO&brand=

*** http://img148.exs.cx/img148/7786/flashbios003qk.jpg

[Parato Optimal]

Tariffff,
4linkcomm.com has an IT8212 based board at ...
http://store.4linkcomm.com/syulata133id.html

I was going to go with an ITE based board but almost all of my research and everyone's advice to me point to getting a Silicon Image based board ... That is in this cheap price range.

[celeb]

I got my card from ebuyer and theres a comment by someone who seems to know his stuff
goes like this

Be aware that innovision did not used a onboard flash memory chip for the bios. Instead they used a pin compatible PROM chip that can only be programmed by emprom programmer. Not only that they hard soldered the chip to the board.

Innovision used PROM Pm37LV512 (spec sheet \"http://www.pmcflash.com/resource_center/docs/Pm37LV512 V1.3.pdf\") instead of pin compatible Flash Memory Pm39LV512 (spec sheet \"http://www.pmcflash.com/resource_center/docs/Pm39LV512-010-020-040 V1.3.pdf\")

This means you are stuck with buggy bios ver. 1.3.1.0

The bios and drivers can be obtained on ITE\'s website (http://www.ite.com.tw/). The Bios revision history clearly states some fairly major bug fixes.

1.3.1.0 -- Date: 02/18/’03
--- 1. First release
1.3.1.1 -- Date: 03/26/’03
--- 1. Set feature and get proper timing for all the storage devices on IT8212.
--- 2. Bug fix for Acer 40x CDROM.
--- 3. Bug fixed: INT13h can’t be hooked on one Compaq PC.
--- 4. If error bit still on after drive select, send command anyway.
--- 5. Add 4 seconds delay before first time access HDDs.
1.4.1.2 -- Date: 06/09/’03
--- 1. Bug fixed: the drive letters of same channel’s master and slave drives are exchanged.
--- 2. Return ax=110h instead of 100h when leaving BIOS initial routine.
--- 3. Modify cable type detection.
--- 4. Bug fixed: DMA transfer failure on certain main boards.
1.4.1.3 -- Date: 07/22/’03
--- 1. Always boot from 8212 HDD when using Phoenix BIOS
1.5.1.3 -- Date: 10/01/’03
--- 1. No change
1.6.1.41 -- Date: 02/25/’04
--- 1. Bug fixed: for Gigabyte VIA chipset MB, fail to boot from secondary HDD.
--- 2. Bug fixed: bootable CD cannot boot on some main boards and CD-ROMs.
1.7.1.51 -- Date: 06/02/’04
--- 1. Shorten devices scan time.
--- 2. Hard disks attached on IT8212 can be shown in system BIOS’s hard disk boot priority list.

ITE replied to my emails and sent me various versions of the bios update tool, (which of course did not work thanks to innovision\'s cheap-skate attitude)

Innovision completely IGNORED my emails.

So if you want to upadte you can\'t unless you can source some Pm39LV512\'s chips and/or have reasonable desoldering/resoldering skills, CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED IN ADVANCE, if it works, it works, if it doesn\'t work you are stuffed.

[tariffff]

parato optimal: doh! I noticed you provided that link 6 months ago but only a few hours after posting. should have read it first; sorry about that. laggard be my name...

I too would have gone with Silicon Image but for my new system I want to keep my windows and swap HDDs on separate dedicated motherboard IDE channels to eliminate I/O contention. So I got no other choice but to connect my only optical drive to an add-on controller, and since i'm likely to be restoring ghost images i will need to be able to boot from CD. The ITE chipset seems the only one that can allow me to do this. I realize I could connect the swap drive to the add-on controller instead of the optical drive but my limited understanding of add-on boards tells me they require slightly more CPU work to access a HDD and operating the swap file through them could conceivably slow things down.

celeb: jipped. i hope u were able to return the innovation product. i’m trying to return mine to globe2000. they also ignored my emails and phone calls inquiring about this. I don't know how they can get away with claiming 'Supports ATAPI Devices' when it doesn't out of the box and u can't update the BIOS to make it work.

I emailed syba to make sure their ITE card can accept a BIOS upgrade and their response was positive: "Both of our SIL680 and IT8212 IDE/RAID controller card support on-board BIOS upgrade."

hooray. thanks again all, this forum is great.

[REDBULL2004]

well ive bought a silicon image 0680 controller , it works fine but when i have both my nec 2510 connected and burn to both at 8x with same image it goes so far and the buffers then start to go up and dwn in nero and the green light flashs on and off on both writers , if i only use the one ide then its fine and burns at 8x , so i guess the controller is being pushed when using the both ?

any way around this ?

thanks

[so40]

Just passing along a little info for those hunting a controller with the ITE 8212F chip. I found one at Comp USA under there brand name. It uses the ITE 8212F chip. It is an Ultra ATA 133 PCI card. It has the latest (1.7.1.51) ATAPI bios installed. However, it is $49.00. I bought one and will try it, but this is more than I wanted to spend. If it doesn't work well with ODD's I will take it back.

Mike

[swifty7]

do you guys know what controller does the Abit IS7 motherboards use?

Also are the Belkin controllers any good?

[BeeR_DoG]

My long trusted CMD-0649 IDE controller suddenly let me down last week, so I went out and bought an ITE IT8212 (non raid) IDE controller. I use this controller strictly for optical drives.
The optical drives, which are connected, to the controller all gets recognized as running in UDMA 2 mode during boot. So what’s the problem? Well, all the drives that are connected to the controller, are recognized as SCSI drives in the Windows device manager.
I haven’t noticed any strange behaviour though. Everything seems to work fine, but I find it a bit odd.
Perhaps someone around here has experienced something similar.

The controller has the latest bios and the latest drivers. My OS is XP-Pro sp2.
My MB is a Soltek SL-865Pro2-FGR based on Intel 865PE Chipset.

[Parato Optimal]

I recall reading somewhere, maybe in a thread on CDF, that it's normal for that chipset to display drives as SCSI drives in Device Manager.

I believe I also read that the ITE chipset will allow you to boot from Optical drives connected to the card where as SI based cards may or may not allow boot or wont allow boot at all. Can anyone confirm if the SI based cards allow boot from connected OPtical Drive?

Thanks

[AdriAgri]

Originally Posted by Parato Optimal

I recall reading somewhere, maybe in a thread on CDF, that it's normal for that chipset to display drives as SCSI drives in Device Manager.

I believe I also read that the ITE chipset will allow you to boot from Optical drives connected to the card where as SI based cards may or may not allow boot or wont allow boot at all. Can anyone confirm if the SI based cards allow boot from connected OPtical Drive?

Thanks

I have a SIL680 NON RAID rev2 card , i never found a way for boot from opticals connected to it when i had the old system (asus a7v133-c xp1600+)
With my new system (abit Av8 v1.1, A64 3200+) i can't boot the whole system with atapis conected to the sil680
I found a workaround for this "little" problem though...

[BeeR_DoG]

Originally Posted by Parato Optimal

I recall reading somewhere, maybe in a thread on CDF, that it's normal for that chipset to display drives as SCSI drives in Device Manager.

Thanks for the reply Parato. I thought I read something similar around here some time ago, but I wasn’t able to locate the thread.

Today I discovered major problems with Plextools-Pro. Every time I tried to start it, it just froze. I really had a hard time figuring out what was going on. Only yesterday the damn thing worked! I reinstalled windows from an almost clean image, reinstalled the drivers for the controller and Plextools. Plextools still froze, and it didn’t change anything. Then I disconnected the drives from the controller, and all of a sudden Plextools loaded fine.

Suddenly I recalled that I made some test with the drives that are connected to the controller. Those test were read and write test made with DVD Decrypter and Nero, and the discs were still present in the drives. When I ejected those discs, Plextools loaded like a dream, but if I insert them, Plextools freeze immediately.
Fortunately none of my Plextors are connected to the controller, so I’m still able to use them along with Plextools, as long as the drives connected to the controller are empty.

Well…I’d better buy another controller; I don’t think this ‘ITE IT8212’ controller will ever work at a satisfying level on my system.

[Juhuslik]

I have a strange problem with my ITE 8212F. It's integrated on ASUS P4GD1 and everything works when I burn something with NEC ND-3500A or Plextor Premium, but I can't read anything.... Win XP with SP1 or SP2 just freezes. Seagate 60GB IDE HDD work's ok. Can anybody tell me what's the problem is... It has ATAPI BIOS revison 1.7.1.52, but ITE's site gave me latest 1.7.1.51 and I can't flash to that version.

[Juhuslik]

Now stay's SIL680A chip add-on PCI card and everything is working perfectly.
But still can't figure out why with ITE8212F ODD devices won't read, but writing is ok...
If anybody have experience or idea how to solve this, it would be nice to read

[Shadowfax]

Talk about lengthly threads..

I have an interesting problem to pose:

I have a total of three IDE Controller cards, two of them Syba Silicon Image 0680 style RAID controllers, and a Promise Ultra133 TX2 Card, and NO TWO will work together.

The problem: Booting from BIOS up until I get to where it SHOULD say starting Windows 2003, and than the system locks, HARD. I been trying all the PCI slots, and every possible configuration, but I have zero luck getting a boot. The cards themselves can be installed, but when any of the two channels are in use on one card (any), using even one drive on either of the others results in a lockup.

Will two Promise cards do the same? I need to get a system with four additional IDE channels. I WOULD use a 4-channel card, but my system lacks a PCI-x slot, which is quite a downside because I am NOT going to go buy a server board just for this minor setback.

Any solutions? I have 9 drives and another 250 gig coming in the mail, so I need to be able to use the extra ports.


Edit:

Motherboard is an ASUS A7N8X2.0 - NForce2

[BeeR_DoG]

Just thought I’d let you know that the problems with ‘Plextools Pro’, that I described in the post above, seems to disappear if I upgrade to; ‘Plextools Pro XL’

[Xanarax]

Originally Posted by Shadowfax

Talk about lengthly threads..

I have an interesting problem to pose:

I have a total of three IDE Controller cards, two of them Syba Silicon Image 0680 style RAID controllers, and a Promise Ultra133 TX2 Card, and NO TWO will work together.

The problem: Booting from BIOS up until I get to where it SHOULD say starting Windows 2003, and than the system locks, HARD. I been trying all the PCI slots, and every possible configuration, but I have zero luck getting a boot. The cards themselves can be installed, but when any of the two channels are in use on one card (any), using even one drive on either of the others results in a lockup.

Will two Promise cards do the same? I need to get a system with four additional IDE channels. I WOULD use a 4-channel card, but my system lacks a PCI-x slot, which is quite a downside because I am NOT going to go buy a server board just for this minor setback.

Any solutions? I have 9 drives and another 250 gig coming in the mail, so I need to be able to use the extra ports.


Edit:

Motherboard is an ASUS A7N8X2.0 - NForce2

I have encountered the same problem - except with two Promise controller cards. Both came from a retail hard drive kit - one is a Maxtor-branded (OEM) Ultra ATA/133 TX2 controller card, and the other is a Ultra ATA/100 TX2 controller card. Any time I have both cards in my system (doesn't matter what PCI slot I put them in; I've rotated them to every slot and combination I can think of), and have at least one drive connected to each, the computer goes through the BIOS of each controller and then right before going to the Windows splash screen, it locks up hard.

I am using an ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe motherboard. I spent countless hours on the phone with Level 1, 2, and even 3 tech support of Promise and Asus, and the end result is that the problem is as a result of a upper memory management issue in the motherboard BIOS. Each of the two controller cards is trying to use the same memory range (I/O), and that's what causes the hangup. The Promise cards are nearly identical (5 digit number on the chip of the card differ by one digit), so they're in the same family of controller cards (except one is a 100 and the other is a 133). I took out the ATA/100 and put in a Promise SATA ATA/150 combo card with an IDE connector and connected a drive to it, and it booted up just fine.

I know what you mean about needing to use the extra ports. I have 10 hard drives in my system... and I'm debating getting another controller card - but I don't want to have to deal with a 15% restocking fee if the card doesn't work. Until I resolve my problem (very similar to yours), I'm dealing with 6 hard drives offline (4 on the one and 2 on the other).

[rdgrimes]

Some MB's will never boot with 2 cards installed, you'll be better off replacing the MB. Trying 2 different brand cards might be the last hope, unless you can find a different BIOS for the MB that fixes this issue.

One possible work-around that has succeeded for some folks is to install a HD on the MB IDE that will be called your boot drive. All that's required on this drive is a very small partition to be your active partition and contain the boot files. You can then install your OS to the controller drive(s). So in BIOS, you will be set to boot from the MB IDE, and conflicts between PCI controllers *might* be avoided.

[nads]

I haven't seen the answer to the question, but was wondering too. Is it normal for the ide drives to show as scsi drives after using the ata 133 controller cards?
Would it be still be capable of using the s.m.a.r.t. feature?

I'm using the (sil0680) Adaptec ultra ata 133 card, which is on sale now at compusa for $25 (regular $50). I used a cheaper one with the sil0680 chipset and raid combo, but didn't seem to work that good, I couldn't install the non-raid driver for some reason. Maybe I'll explain that later.

http://www.shopampm.com/product_info...roducts_id=253 cheap one I bought.

[Parato Optimal]

I've read of more than one Promise controler card not getting along in the same system before. I've read of multiple SI 0680 based cards getting along just fine in the same system. Someone told me that SI makes the controler chip for many MOBOs.

nads,
Did shopampm do right by you? I've read on other forums that there service is so-so. Too many people have received the wrong product from them or been screwed in other ways. They rectified the problem with some people but the majority said to stay away. Every 0680 card I've ever seen required identical drives to RAID. That shopampm url is the only one I've ever seen that specified RAID capable with non-identical HDs.

Can anyone tell me the differences between these two cards ...
$19.99 => http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?inv...CI-A01&cat=CCD
$16.50 => http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=A-142&cat=CCD

Thanks