Optical Drive IDE Controllers Compatibility Thread.

[crossg]

At the request of of some of our members this thread has been created to add your findings on IDE controller compatibility with "optical drives only". Our IDE Controllers (The definitive Thread ) has become cluttered with hard drive and optical drive compatibility. Someone looking for information has to read through multiple pages to find information concerning IDE controller compatiblity with optical drives. With the new trend of Motherboards supplying only one P ATA IDE controller and S ATA controllers that are sometimes incompatible with optical drives it becomes necassary for people to purchase add on IDE controllers or find Motherboards with controllers that work. Your input here will help others. So if your Motherboard IDE or add on contollers work or don't work please list your findings here. Example: Manufacturer, model number Firmware/Drivers and maybe a link to where you purchased your Motherboard/add on controller.

[zevia]

PCI IDE controller: SIIG SC-PE4B12 [Sil0680 chip]
link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815150022

BIOS 3.2.20 does not work (will not get UDMA2) with:

• Older Plextor drives: PX-712A
• NEC drives (tested 3540A, 4570A)
• Older BenQ drives (DW1620, DW1640)

BIOS 3.2.20/3.2.24 works with most newer drives:

• Plextor PX-716A etc
• Lite-On drives (5S, 6S)
• Pioneer DVR-111
• BenQ DW1650, DW1655, DW1670
• Sony DRU-820A, DRU-830A

[kingair]

I have been using an ACARD AEC6280 with excellent results for several weeks now. The manufacturer claims its compatibility with most CD writers. Works perfect with my TEAC 512WE

This is running in a Dell Dimension 9200 running XP SP2 , 512Mb and 80GB SATA drive. No problems with the installation whatsoever. I highly recommend it.

[steve b]

I appreciate the info here.

I'm still sceptical about how well these controllers work.

I have a Promise SATAII150 TX2plus PCI controller, no longer being made. It has the latest BIOS revision, later than any on the Promise website (unless they number their revisions backwards . Promise doesn't reply to my enquiries.

This controller "works" with my Lite-on attached to the controller's IDE port. I have it attached there now.

But, there are limitations.

1. It won't burn a virgin DVD+RW because it won't allow it to be formatted.

2. It will boot and load the XP install CD, but it crashes soon after, when it says "Starting Windows". (Maybe I need a stoopid floppy?)

3. It will boot my live Linux (Beatrix) but it only runs in a crippled mode without x-windows.

The good news is, it will boot and run DOS diagnostic programs and it will boot and run the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows (basically BartPE on steroids).

[steve b]

I just got the Rosewill RC-209 PCI to SATA board. This has the SiI 3114. It works well with my Liteon and with a hard drive. Apparently this board and the included driver handle all the commands for optical drives and for hard drives too.

Installation would have been easy except the enclosed booklet didn't apply to the BIOS that came with the board. It didn't help that the enclosed CD was unreadable, but Rosewill had the driver on their website.

The booklet says if I don't set up RAID in the controller's BIOS, it will show up in Device Manager as a non-raid controller and I can install the non-raid driver. Not so. It always shows up as RAID and requires the RAID driver, but it handles non-RAID devices anyway.

[xante]

I use a promise 100tx2 (i think or it's the 133tx2) for my burner (MicroAdvantage flashed to AOpen DUW1608). It seems to be doing ok for me, my only gripe is sometimes on boot it will hang at the detecting hardware portion of the promise card loading screen.

Right now I'm looking at updating my less than stellar power house to a newer faster burning/gaming machine

[steve b]

I never want to see any Promise stuff again. I pulled an old tx2plus PCI to SATA&PATA board out of my computer. It worked okay but it wouldn't allow me to format a new DVD+RW and it wouldn't allow me to access the S.M.A.R.T. on my hard drives. No support either. They had only the original drivers on their web site.

I have two Asus mobos with Promise tx2plus controllers on board driving two SATA ports and an IDE port. I can't use the SATA ports because they are RAID only. If I could figure out how to hook up two DVD drives in a RAID config, I'd have it made. Well if history is any guide they wouldn't work right anyway.

[mciahel]

Here we go

Promise PDC 20579 (Onboard version of SataII 150 Plus) on MSI K8T Neo2-FIR.
BIOS: 1.00.0.27, driver version: 1.00.0.25

Drive: Samsung SH-S182D SB04
Simulated burn with CD-Speed up to 18x: Smooth curve up to 18x, but can't keep the speed on the last few MB.
Simulated burn with CD-Speed up to 16x: Smooth curve up to 16x, no problem
Drive can't handle brand new DVD+RW (see post #4). No problems with used DVD+RW discs.

Drive: Benq DW 1650 BCIC
Simulated burn with CD-Speed up to 16x: Smooth curve up to 15x, drops down to 8-9x. Crash when writing Lead-In/Lead-Out - all drives connected to the controller are disconnected
Same with Philips DVDR 1660 P1.6
(I have the feeling that the Benq was better with fw BCDC, but I didn't test the drive like above, and I am too lazy to repeat)

I can also confirm the statements 2. and 3. in post #4, this might be due to the fact that a driver is needed.

All DVD writers tested were connected as master with a Liteon SOHR-5239V as slave. No problem with that drive at all.

Michael

[maxknott]

in the process of experimenting with various cards... so far the only one i have found is a ST-labs A-150
ITE chipset
it8212f
expensive though @$55au

[Joe_Dirt]

I bought a Promise Ultra 133 TX2, used off e-bay, hoping to be able to run optical drives on it, and I too have had problems. I've only tried an NEC 3540 on the controller, and have not been able to get it out of PIO mode. Simulated burn with CD-Speed yeilds what you'd expect. It bumps along at 16X trying to write a 52X cd at 48X. (Didn't try a DVD, sorry, but you know what it'll do anyway.) I finaly just set up the 3500 that's in this machine as the primary master, the 3540 as the secondary master, and moved the two hard disks over to the promise controller. It works, but I have to set the boot device to SCSI in the bios, and it always boots, "Primary slave failure, <F1> to continue or <DEL> to enter setup." I press F1 and it boots.

The Machine is Celeron 2.4 Ghz chip on a cheapy ECS L4VXA2 mobo with latest bios, latest bios on the Promise Ultra 133 TX. I don't have the driver disk, and the crap on Promises' site is no help. (That or I'm missing something.)

FWIW, that 3540 doesn't burn Ritek CD-R worth a tinker's damn. Awful scans. I'm looking for a couple cheap CD writers that write Ritek and CMC disks well.

JD

[zebadee]

Hi
Sil0680 chip with the latest BASE bios (not raid). Will work with all the ODDs I have tried. Which is all that are currently available (except the ASUS).
The same applies to the Sil3*** series chip.

[Joe_Dirt]

Originally Posted by zebadee

Hi
Sil0680 chip with the latest BASE bios (not raid). Will work with all the ODDs I have tried. Which is all that are currently available (except the ASUS).
The same applies to the Sil3*** series chip.

I'm curious to know, can a Silicon Image RAID card be set up non RAID for ODDs? Newegg has a Rosewill RC-200 that's based on the Sil0680 chip for just $10. I'm thinking about buying one or three of them. But it says it's RAID. ??? Any help?

JD

[Joe_Dirt]

PS, here's a link to the actual card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816132004

[_chef_]

Originally Posted by Joe_Dirt

I'm curious to know, can a Silicon Image RAID card be set up non RAID for ODDs? Newegg has a Rosewill RC-200 that's based on the Sil0680 chip for just $10. I'm thinking about buying one or three of them. But it says it's RAID. ??? Any help?

JD

ALL info is in the quote!!

BASE BIOS!!

[zebadee]

Hi
AFAIK all SiliconImage chipsets have flashable bios.
When using these cards in a non-raid setup, all you need is the BASE BIOS.
If wishing to use with ODD's, then all the cards I have come across have suitable drivers for this purpose.
See here for an example.
This is what I use use for Vista Ultimate 64 bit.
Just flash bios 1st, then update the driver.

[cobraxus]

I've installed the Sil0680 ATA/133I non-RAID IDE Controller card on my PC(WinXP Home SP2/ASUS P5GZ-MX/Intel Celeron D 3.06GHz)and attached my DVSKOREA DVD-ROM DSR1600H to it.my computer doesn't detect the DVD-ROM but recognizes the Sil0680.At start-up I get Press F3 to enter Configuration Utility>Press F1 to assign first(HDD)set>it identifies the DVD-ROM as Drive Number 1(BOOT DEVICE PRIORITY identifies it as Number 3).the computer won't let me make the DVD-ROM the boot device and Sil0680 won't let me assign it a different number.

[Joe_Dirt]

Originally Posted by cobraxus

I've installed the Sil0680 ATA/133I non-RAID IDE Controller card on my PC(WinXP Home SP2/ASUS P5GZ-MX/Intel Celeron D 3.06GHz)and attached my DVSKOREA DVD-ROM DSR1600H to it.my computer doesn't detect the DVD-ROM but recognizes the Sil0680.At start-up I get Press F3 to enter Configuration Utility>Press F1 to assign first(HDD)set>it identifies the DVD-ROM as Drive Number 1(BOOT DEVICE PRIORITY identifies it as Number 3).the computer won't let me make the DVD-ROM the boot device and Sil0680 won't let me assign it a different number.

If I understand this correctly, you should not have hit F3 at all. The card should have recognized the drive all by itself. Sopmeone correct me if I'm wrong. My two Rosewill Sil0680 based RAID cards will be comming later today and I'll certainly post my results here.

JD

[KTL]

Like DVD burners, there are no guarantees that a DVD-ROM drive will be properly recognized using a SiI-based controller card, whether going through F3 configuration or not during its POST. If it doesn't work, then the on-board IDE will need to be used. I'm currently using an AOpen DVD-1648 AAP/Pro (DVD-ROM) on a SiI controller and it actually works fine, no need to go through any configuration. It IS a UDMA-4 device, which, in general, seems to have the best compatibility with off-board PCI controller cards. My AOpen DVD-1648 AAP (UDMA-2) never worked with the SiI card.

[Joe_Dirt]

Well, here's how things went.

I pulled the Promoise TX133 Ultra card I had the two HDDs on. I was having problems with it anyway. The thruput would drop on the drives to 1-5 MB/sec. I pulled the three ODD cables from the mothboard headder and put the two HDD's on the Primary Master channel. (Older board with no SATA and two PATA headders.) Rebooted and checked the drives performance with HD Tach to ensure the performance issue had been the controler and not the drives of cables. Was the controler apparently.

Installed the two Rosewill RC-200's and booted the machine again. Drivers installed from the supplied floppy disk as all ODDs were unplugged at that moment. No problems. (Note, I did NOT hit F3 as it came up for each card!)

Ran the SiFlashTool from a windows command prompt and it said there were no Silicon Image controlers present. Rebooted. Now the controlers show up, but upon trying to verify the BIOS revision, it says unknown, and the Silicon Image BASE drivers will not install either.

Ok, so I went ahead and shut down again, connected the three ODDs (NEC 3500 & 3540, and a Litey 160P6S). Booted back up and all drives are found. (Though the RC-200 BIOS is VERY SLOW.)

Last thing to report. Did a quick burn using all three recorders loaded with Taiyo Yuden G03's simultaniously throttled back to 8X and wrote all three disks just fine in roughly 15 minutes.

One down side is this. My first boot device is still floppy, second used to be CD-ROM, and third was SCSI to get a HDD boot from the Promise controller. Now the ODD's are on the above board controllers and I can't get them to boot from CD no matter what I set the SYSTEM BIOS to. Set to CD-Rom it does nothing to try to boot from the drives, and set to SCSI the system just hangs. What I may do is move one ODD to the secondary onboard controller.

So, to sum up... with the Rosewill RC-200 Sil0680 based RAID controllers, it is apparently NOT necessary to update any BIOS or drivers. Just plug 'em in, load the stock drivers, shut down and add your ODDs. Perhaps this also smashes the theory that you HAVE to have identical drives with identical firmwares to burn multiple DVD's in every instance. (Not that it's been said here in this thread, but I remember seeing others on 'Freaks theorizing that that is the case, and it is not.)

I don't really want to run a RAID array. I have a 160 gig OS drive and a 400 GB data drive. Mirroring or striping with these two drives just doesn't make sence to me, so they will remain on the motherboard's Primary PATA channel as Master and Slave.

Now I need a decent case with more than 3 5-1/4 bays. :P Oh... and a few more drives.

I hope this helps someone at some point.

JD

[parpi]

Hi experts,

Replacing my Samsung Combo (doesn't burn DVD)
I'm only slightly younger than the Ancient Mariner and have only just
mastered the fax machine, so most of the tech chat is beyond me.

Would like to install new burner myself ( shop charges $100 / hr )but never opened a computer. A beige retail pack would be best for me but most suburban computer shops are selling OEM's.

Main use : Create compilations from CDs, Lps, tapes, music downloads.

Future use : Editing items recorded from Panasonic H.D. DVD TV recorder.

I've found two retail packs available -

Pioneer DVR A12XL and Liteon LH201S.
Neither get much attention from the reviewers / chat folk.

Reliability, high quality read / burn - Most important.
Speed, dual layer, label burn far less important.

Have a SATA H.D. but suspect my Samsung Combo is probably IDE.

* Based on my spec below please advise what optical drive is most
compatible with my M.B / Chipset and applications ?

Regards
Parpi

Specs:
4 year old. P4-3GHZFSB, MB ASUS P4P800, i865 PE CHIPSET,
RAID 0, HT DUAL CHANNEL VIA
RAM. 512 MB. 400 DDR PC 3200 KINGSTON
HD. SEAGATE BARRACUDA SERIAL ATA, 7200RPM, 8M CACHE
GRAPHICS. ATI RADION 9200, 128 MB. DDR.
OLD BURNER. SAMSUNG COMBO

[MacClipper]

Added a generic IT8212 card to my new rig, used the latest card firmware and drivers from the ITE website. Setup is working fine so far.
http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/sh....php?t=1869463

S3 sleep and resume still works fine but resume times are now rather prolonged.

[MacClipper]

S3 resume times are definitely prolonged from the usual 5s to 30s or longer, looks like a possible driver issue. Jmicron had this issue but they fixed it in one of their later driver revisions,
http://www.station-drivers.com/telec...ron/JMB36X.txt

Wonder if ITE would ever get around to fixing theirs since the latest 1.7.2.9 from their webbie is dated 9/2007.

[Halcyon]

Am I reading this right, SIL 680 PCI P-ATA cards will work FULLY with Windows Vista 64-bit using the linked SIL drivers, without fragmenting the memory space and removing a chunk of usable memory?

I have a SIL 680 and I'm moving to Vista 64-bit for memory reasons, so this issue is of particular interest to me.

BTW, to all you who've tried Highpoint or Promise controllers with optical drives: don't. Will not work properly (for all functions). SIL CMD680 is really the only properly working choice in town and has been for years (excl. Intel/AMD chipset integrated controllers).

[zebadee]

Hi
I have/am using SiliconIamge from the 3114 to the 0680.
This has/is with XP Pro (32 bit) & Vista Ultimate (32/64 bit).
I have had no troubles whatsoever. Be it with Raid/Non-raid HDD's or Optical drives.
Their flashable bios/drivers make for the best/most adaptable cards around.
MS has updated the drivers for the whole range only just recently (this month IIRC).