I got a 80gig, and 100gig hd for xmas, great presents..hehe..here is my question/problem. they are both ATA 100 HDs, which my motherboard doesnt support. I have been searching the forum, and the web, seeing what controllers, will work under linux, and which will not. I see some people get the Maxtor controller to work, and some use the Promise controller, but then I see some dont have any luck getting either controller to work. Now I just read that the newer Promise controllers arent supported under linux yet. So am I stuck with these hds, till drivers come out, or I get a new mobo, or is there a current driver that will work with a 2.4.x kernel?



inv|s|ble

I thought that if your computer couldnt handle the speed (ata100) than it would just run it at the speed it could handle? are you sure that its just to big for your computer to recognize the 80 and 100 gig drives in your bios?

yes, i'm positive, i plugged the 80gig in, and booted, and it wouldnt see more than 32gig worth of it, so i upgraded my bios, to supposedly support larger than 32gig ide devices, and it still would only see 32gig worth. the new promise controller i refered to in the first post is the "Promise Ultra ATA/133PCI Controller" since the ATA100 is supposedly no longer being made, and seems next to impossible to find. i dont really care about the speed, the 80gig is a 5400rpm, and the 100 is a 7200rpm hd, my main drives in the machine are scsi, but scsi being expensive, its hard to get a good amount of storage on a machine with just scsi at a good price. i have tried to contact asus about the bios issue, but never heard anything back from them, a friend of mine said he had the same problem with them, and the bios issue, but he runs windows, so his input really doesnt help me.



inv|s|ble

Please provide the make and model of your motherboard so i can assist you.

it's an asus p2b, with Bios Ver.1012

Oh, then for sure you wont be able to get ATA100 hard disks to work.

What processor u have in it?

P2B is a very old mobo.

If your abolutly broke from buying those large hard disks...pick up a Duron processor and mobo for <100 and a new case & power supply ($50), and some 256 PC133 ram from crucial for about 50 as well and you have yourself a pretty blazing fast pc.

200 is the subtotal, but when you add a heatsink & fan, acessories it'll be around $300. Tell me whatcha think.

Oh btw, Maxtor and many other brands are BACKWARDS compatible to ATA66 & sometimes PIO mode 4. But not sure which mode the P2B supports.

p2 300, 256meg of pc100, adaptec 2940uw controller, 30gig total scsi storage, 1.3gig free, with a powermax 650watt ps(yes i spoiled that machine). i was trying to find a descent barebones system but it seems i would need to get new ram, and what not also just to get a descent system to use my new hds, which i am trying not to spend more than $200 to get these hd's working, and still have a nice linux system. i'm not trying to run m$ and dont need a million dollars worth of hardware just to support the os..hehe..

No if you upgrade to a nice Duron system, you can keep the PC100 ram since some (well actually most) motherboards support PC100 for Duron processors.

There FSB is running at 100Mhz x 2 (double pumped).

Unless of course you still are a Intel fan in which i understand.

When i made the move to amd i never looked back since...but i then again my computer is state of the art:

EPoX 8KHA+ DDR
Athlon XP 1700+ @ 1800+
256Meg DDR
Gainward GeForce3
Maxtor 30GB 7200RPM
Western Digital 15.3GB 7200RPM
Antec SX1030 & a Sparkle 400Watt PSU

that still doesnt really answer my question about the controllers working to fix my problem or not though. a new system would be nice, but it's not really needed since linux, and my current systems seem to handle the loads quite nicely.

With all due respect, that motherboard & processor is generations out of date...the slowest processor anyone should be seen in todays world is a 600Mhz.
Sorry i couldnt help you with the controllers!

yes, but running linux doesnt require the most up to date machine either. that is one of the better points of linux, is it will run well on a lower end machine.

I hate to break it to you, but Asus has long gone discontinued the BIOS updates for that motherboard. I hope someone has figured out a workaround to get your GB's detected correctly!!!!