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From: Bird Janitor� on 11 Aug 2007 18:44
Patty wrote:
|
| So, JMicron must be part of the chipset drivers? I think that Abit kind
| of messed up here when they put in an IDE controller that wouldn't work
| on the basic Windows IDE controller. I have an Asus board right now
| that may have the opposite effect. When you upgrade to the chipset
| IDE drivers things may not work properly and you have to go back to
| the regular XP drivers for the IDE (although mine has worked fine except
| for the most recent driver update).
|
| The same for my NF7-S board, now that I think about it. I updated the
| chipset drivers to the most recent right after installing XP and my
| CD-ROMS would no longer be recognized and I had to go back to the
| previous version driver.
|
| At least being able to work off the basic XP IDE drivers would be best
| though, especially for install. I agree, there may not be anything wrong
| with the board, but just a quirk of the drivers.
|

Hi Patty -

I had a similar problem with my old NF7-M with the nForce software IDE
driver. My CD-RW drive would work fine and dandy, but my DVD-ROM drive
would go missing from Device Manager until I rolled back to Microsoft's
default IDE driver. My situation seemed to have been sorted out by one of
the later driver releases, as both optical drives began behaving themselves.

I'm beginning to think that some optical drives will work fine with the
JMicron controller, while others won't, not particularly because of the
controller but, rather, the drive's firmware.

In the OP's case, the BIOS seemed to recognize the drive just fine .. press
any key to boot from CD-ROM, the drive would spin up for a moment as if
things were going to work and then spin back down, with the machine
ultimately hung in the netherworld. This leads me to believe that it was
the drive having difficulties talking to the controller.

Others seem to have observed this and have found success by booting to DOS
with the JMicron DOS device driver loaded (which appears as "GIGABYTE
OnBoard SATA IDE CD-ROM"). See Q5 at the following link .. the driver,
autoexec.bat and config.sys items are all included in the .zip file:

http://www.jmicron.com/Support_FAQ.html

Perhaps this driver is embedded in Abit's AB9 CD .. which is why I suggested
booting to the CD (or browsing it) to see what's being loaded. If this
driver does get loaded from this CD (assuming it's a DOS environment, that
is), swapping out the CD for the Windows install CD and then running
NTSETUP.EXE would start things going.

For reference, NTSETUP.EXE is the DOS-based Windows XP Text Setup Phase
front-end.

The Windows driver diskette will be required in advance, as the driver at
the above link is a 16-bit DOS driver only.

Jef


From: Patty on 12 Aug 2007 10:03
On Sat, 11 Aug 2007 15:44:23 -0700, Bird Janitor� wrote:

> I'm beginning to think that some optical drives will work fine with the
> JMicron controller, while others won't, not particularly because of the
> controller but, rather, the drive's firmware.
>
> In the OP's case, the BIOS seemed to recognize the drive just fine .. press
> any key to boot from CD-ROM, the drive would spin up for a moment as if
> things were going to work and then spin back down, with the machine
> ultimately hung in the netherworld. This leads me to believe that it was
> the drive having difficulties talking to the controller.

Good point, Jef. If the CD-ROM is having a difficult time communicating
with the controller, then even if the BIOS recognizes it and starts it up,
it may not be able to transmit the info on the CD to the system.

> Others seem to have observed this and have found success by booting to DOS
> with the JMicron DOS device driver loaded (which appears as "GIGABYTE
> OnBoard SATA IDE CD-ROM"). See Q5 at the following link .. the driver,
> autoexec.bat and config.sys items are all included in the .zip file:
>
> http://www.jmicron.com/Support_FAQ.html
>
> Perhaps this driver is embedded in Abit's AB9 CD .. which is why I suggested
> booting to the CD (or browsing it) to see what's being loaded. If this
> driver does get loaded from this CD (assuming it's a DOS environment, that
> is), swapping out the CD for the Windows install CD and then running
> NTSETUP.EXE would start things going.
>
> For reference, NTSETUP.EXE is the DOS-based Windows XP Text Setup Phase
> front-end.
>
> The Windows driver diskette will be required in advance, as the driver at
> the above link is a 16-bit DOS driver only.

The DOS install may work, as will the setup XP floppy disks, and those may
be the only options the OP has other than trying to find a CD-ROM that will
play nice with the JMicron controller. From what I can see, the IDE and
the SATA drivers are not separate as they were with the NForce2 boards, but
they appear to be lumped together to control some of the SATA ports as well
as the IDE port.

Patty
From: Bird Janitor� on 12 Aug 2007 12:19
Patty wrote:
|
| The DOS install may work, as will the setup XP floppy disks, and those
| may be the only options the OP has other than trying to find a CD-ROM
| that will play nice with the JMicron controller. From what I can see, the
| IDE and the SATA drivers are not separate as they were with the NForce2
| boards, but they appear to be lumped together to control some of the
| SATA ports as well as the IDE port.
|

Hi Patty -

The AB9 Pro has nine SATA ports and one ESATA, on different controllers.
There are Intel and Silicon Image controllers as well as the JMicron
controller (which is connected to SATA8, SATA9 and the IDE1 ports).

As I mentioned before, Intel's 965 chipset doesn't have legacy IDE
controllers embedded and any manufacturer who wanted an IDE controller on
their implementation had to go with a 3rd-party solution.

What's odd to me is that many optical drives won't play nice with the
JMicron controller that Abit used for this functionality. It has made for
some adventures installing Windows.

I'm wondering if JMicron's controller isn't simply a SATA controller with
added hardware circuitry, similar to Abit's Serillel2 adapter, which allowed
PATA drives to be connected to the Silicon Image SATA controller on the
NF7-S. In this example it was necessary to provide the Sil3112 driver with
a PATA drive connected to the SATA controller via the Serillel2 adapter.
The AB9 Series manual is *very* specific about how a Master and Slave drive
are to be connected to the cable (Master=black connector, Slave=gray
connector), regardless of whether the drives are jumpered Master/Slave or
Cable Select.

I must be more bored than usual this weekend to have spent so much time
pondering this. After all ... the OP said he was going to RMA the board and
hasn't been back since.

I think I need to go find something useful to do... ;-}

Jef


From: Patty on 12 Aug 2007 15:02
On Sun, 12 Aug 2007 16:19:26 GMT, Bird Janitor� wrote:

> Patty wrote:
>|
>| The DOS install may work, as will the setup XP floppy disks, and those
>| may be the only options the OP has other than trying to find a CD-ROM
>| that will play nice with the JMicron controller. From what I can see, the
>| IDE and the SATA drivers are not separate as they were with the NForce2
>| boards, but they appear to be lumped together to control some of the
>| SATA ports as well as the IDE port.
>|
>
> Hi Patty -
>
> The AB9 Pro has nine SATA ports and one ESATA, on different controllers.
> There are Intel and Silicon Image controllers as well as the JMicron
> controller (which is connected to SATA8, SATA9 and the IDE1 ports).
>
> As I mentioned before, Intel's 965 chipset doesn't have legacy IDE
> controllers embedded and any manufacturer who wanted an IDE controller on
> their implementation had to go with a 3rd-party solution.
>
> What's odd to me is that many optical drives won't play nice with the
> JMicron controller that Abit used for this functionality. It has made for
> some adventures installing Windows.
>
> I'm wondering if JMicron's controller isn't simply a SATA controller with
> added hardware circuitry, similar to Abit's Serillel2 adapter, which allowed
> PATA drives to be connected to the Silicon Image SATA controller on the
> NF7-S. In this example it was necessary to provide the Sil3112 driver with
> a PATA drive connected to the SATA controller via the Serillel2 adapter.
> The AB9 Series manual is *very* specific about how a Master and Slave drive
> are to be connected to the cable (Master=black connector, Slave=gray
> connector), regardless of whether the drives are jumpered Master/Slave or
> Cable Select.
>
> I must be more bored than usual this weekend to have spent so much time
> pondering this. After all ... the OP said he was going to RMA the board and
> hasn't been back since.
>
> I think I need to go find something useful to do... ;-}
>
> Jef

I know that they included a PATA to SATA adapter with my NF7-S board. I
didn't even install the SATA driver, since I'm not using any SATA drives at
this point, only IDE. I know you can also buy PATA to SATA adapters on the
open market, I didn't think you needed to connect to any particular
controller to use them. Is there an advantage to using the PATA adapter
and connecting to SATA, other than the usual "get rid of the bulky IDE
cable issue"?

Yeah, maybe we both need to find something useful to do. ;)

Patty
From: Bird Janitor� on 12 Aug 2007 18:04
Patty wrote:
|
| Is there an advantage to using the PATA adapter and connecting to
| SATA, other than the usual "get rid of the bulky IDE cable issue"?
|
| Yeah, maybe we both need to find something useful to do. ;)
|

Hi Patty -

Yep, it's that bulky cable thing. You won't get any added speed out of an
ATA100 drive, regardless of whether or not the SATA channel can go faster.
The drive's gonna do what the drive's gonna do.

I've been teasing the birds all afternoon, so I guess I found something else
to do (not that it was really all that useful).

Jef


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