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From: pucicu on 14 Sep 2009 04:26

sorry for double posting - but the forum server was just offline and
confused me.


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From: Chuck on 14 Sep 2009 05:21
There are a bunch of caveats concerning flashing your MBD bios.
That aside, it sounds like the currenty installed BIOS version does not
incorporate SATA support, since you have indicated that the BIOS SATA
options are missing.
BIOS versions after 1003 supposedly support SATA. Current Bios Version is
1009 (ASUS support web site.)

"pucicu" <pucicu.3yhuvb(a)DoNotSpam.com> wrote in message
news:pucicu.3yhuvb(a)DoNotSpam.com...
>
> Dear all,
>
> I have an ASUS A7V600-X board with Award Bios (updated to the latest
> available version), and with VT8377/VT8237 North- and Southbridge.
>
> Now I would like to use a SATA II harddrive. It is a Hitachi 500 GB
> drive: HI T7K500 500 SA. I know that VT8237 may have problems with SATA
> II. But at the moment, even windows XP is not correctly starting the VIA
> Raid/SCSI device. I have tried to install different versions of the
> corresponding VIA drivers for VT8237. But in Windows device manager, I
> see that it is not started but failed. In the readme.txt of the driver,
> I found in a folder BIOS two rom files (e.g. 6420R230.rom), and a note
> that it is a SATA RAID BIOS. Later it in this file I found
>
> "Make sure VT6420 BIOS is executed by the system BIOS when POST."
>
> But I don't know (1) how to check that this BIOS is executed and if
> not, (2) how to tell the BIOS that it should execute this.
>
> Moreover, in the BIOS I cannot find any settings releated to the
> onboard SATA interface.
>
> Does anyone have an idea, how I can get access to the SATA II drive?
>
> Thank you very!
> Best regards
> Pucicu
>
>
> --
> pucicu
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> pucicu's Profile: http://forums.techarena.in/members/135120.htm
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>
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>


From: Paul on 14 Sep 2009 07:09
pucicu wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I have an ASUS A7V600-X board with Award Bios (updated to the latest
> available version), and with VT8377/VT8237 North- and Southbridge.
>
> Now I would like to use a SATA II harddrive. It is a Hitachi 500 GB
> drive: HI T7K500 500 SA. I know that VT8237 may have problems with SATA
> II. But at the moment, even windows XP is not correctly starting the VIA
> Raid/SCSI device. I have tried to install different versions of the
> corresponding VIA drivers for VT8237. But in Windows device manager, I
> see that it is not started but failed. In the readme.txt of the driver,
> I found in a folder BIOS two rom files (e.g. 6420R230.rom), and a note
> that it is a SATA RAID BIOS. Later it in this file I found
>
> "Make sure VT6420 BIOS is executed by the system BIOS when POST."
>
> But I don't know (1) how to check that this BIOS is executed and if
> not, (2) how to tell the BIOS that it should execute this.
>
> Moreover, in the BIOS I cannot find any settings releated to the
> onboard SATA interface.
>
> Does anyone have an idea, how I can get access to the SATA II drive?
>
> Thank you very!
> Best regards
> Pucicu
>

The Option ROM mentioned in the BIOS.txt file, is integrated inside
the motherboard BIOS chip. The motherboard BIOS is 256KB, and the
option ROM is one of the files inside the main BIOS. This is a listing
of which option ROM is included in each BIOS Asus offers for A7V600-X.

A7v6x002 6420R201.ROM
A7v6x003 6420R231.ROM
A7v6x004 6420R231.ROM
A7v6x005 6420R231.ROM
A7v6x006 6420R231.ROM
A7v6x007 6420R231.ROM
A7v6x008 6420R231.ROM
A7v6x009 6420R231.ROM

To enable the option ROM, find the "Onboard ATA Boot ROM" entry in
the BIOS, and make sure it is set to [Enabled]. The Asus manual says
that setting is for "Onboard Serial ATA Controller boot rom". And
that is the 6420R2xx file referenced above. That file provided
Extended INT 0x13 boot services. It is possible, that part of the
code in that module, sets a subsystem bit that allows the
RAID driver to identify that the RAID controller is present.
The BIOS default for the setting is [Enabled], so it should
have been working already.

One thread I was just reading, mentioned that the addition of
a PCI SCSI card, can prevent the 6420R2xx option ROM from
loading. There is limited space in low memory, for option ROMs,
and it is not uncommon for some of the option ROMs to fail
to load, due to no space to put them in memory. So if the computer
has add-in cards, that is a potential reason for the option
ROM to not load.

This manual for 6420, says that a single drive should work.
So I don't think the loading failure, is due to the driver
or the BIOS looking for two drives and not finding them.

http://support.asus.com/technicaldocuments/VT6420.pdf

"Using Hard Drives as Non-RAID
Drives connected to the VIA RAID connectors do not have to be set up in a RAID array in
order for them to work. By simply not assigning them to an array, they can be used like
any other drive connected to the board�s main IDE connectors."

The Hitachi drives don't generally have a jumper to set the speed.
You need the Hitachi Feature Tool, and a non-VIA chipset
motherboard, to use the Tool to change the drive interface speed.
You would use that tool to set or to verify the interface speed
is set to SATA 150MB/sec. Once that is done, the drive can be
plugged into a VT8237 motherboard. So if you're the owner of a
VIA chipset motherboard, chances are you'll need a SATA port
on some other motherboard, to be able to talk to the Hitachi
drive, and change the setting. (My motherboard has a VT8237S, and
as far as I know, that is the only VIA Southbridge, where the
SATA issue has been fixed. My chipset runs at 150 or 300, without
any help.)

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#FeatureTool

At this point, I don't see a reason to be flashing the BIOS.

Paul
From: pucicu on 14 Sep 2009 06:40

Thanks, Chuck.

As I wrote in my first post, I updated already to the latest Bios
(which is indeed rev. 1009). Thus, there must be another problem.


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From: Bob Harris on 14 Sep 2009 18:10
I have an ASUS P4S8X and at first it could not see my SATA drives either.

The problem was not really a BIOS setting, although I did need to enable
on-board ATA device enabled and on-board ATA device first, which are BIOS
settings. But, I had to do more than that.

The key to my success was to realize that besides the overall motherboard
BIOS, there was a second BIOS, or BIOS-like entity, that handled the SATA
controllers. This would have been more obvious, if the controllers were on
a separate PCI card. But, since there are part of the motherboard, I missed
that nuance. Anyway, after most of the BIOS checks are completed my PC
flashes a message about press CTRL-F for the Fastrack controller. (Fastrack
is specific to the Promise controllers. If you have some other controller,
then its name is probably a different.)

Once inside the software, called FastBuild, I had to create some RAID
arrays. I chose to create two independent disks, or two arrarys of one
physical disk each. It was only after I did this that the main BIOS listed
the hard drives, showed their capacity, etc. Note that at this point the
drives had not yet been partitioned nor formatted, but the BIOS could see
them.

At was after this point that booting from a CD of disk tool, downloaded form
the disk manufacture's website, permitted me to partition and format.
Previously the disk tools showed no hard drives. I then installed XP using
its bootable CD. Of course, you could also do partitioning from the XP CD.

Some years later I swapped these disks for larger ones. Once again my PC
could not see any disks. So, I went back into the FastBuild program and
discovered that it kept track of disks by some internal ID, and knew that I
had changed them. Thus, I had to remove the original RAID arrays and make
new ones. I did this one at a time, since I wanted to clone my old disks to
my new disks, and that required the BIOS to be able to see one old and one
new at the same time. But, in the end, I had completely new disks, in
completely new RAID arrays (still one disk per array).

Beyond the BIOS and the SATA contoller, there is XP. But, there is no hope
for XP, until after the BIOS can see the disk.

Note: The drivers required by XP are associated with the controller on the
motherboard, not with the hard drive. As such they come form the
motherboard maker. However, these are not required for the BIOS to see the
hard drive. In fact, the BIOS has no way to read an XP-type driver.

Good luck.


"pucicu" <pucicu.3yhuvb(a)DoNotSpam.com> wrote in message
news:pucicu.3yhuvb(a)DoNotSpam.com...
>
> Dear all,
>
> I have an ASUS A7V600-X board with Award Bios (updated to the latest
> available version), and with VT8377/VT8237 North- and Southbridge.
>
> Now I would like to use a SATA II harddrive. It is a Hitachi 500 GB
> drive: HI T7K500 500 SA. I know that VT8237 may have problems with SATA
> II. But at the moment, even windows XP is not correctly starting the VIA
> Raid/SCSI device. I have tried to install different versions of the
> corresponding VIA drivers for VT8237. But in Windows device manager, I
> see that it is not started but failed. In the readme.txt of the driver,
> I found in a folder BIOS two rom files (e.g. 6420R230.rom), and a note
> that it is a SATA RAID BIOS. Later it in this file I found
>
> "Make sure VT6420 BIOS is executed by the system BIOS when POST."
>
> But I don't know (1) how to check that this BIOS is executed and if
> not, (2) how to tell the BIOS that it should execute this.
>
> Moreover, in the BIOS I cannot find any settings releated to the
> onboard SATA interface.
>
> Does anyone have an idea, how I can get access to the SATA II drive?
>
> Thank you very!
> Best regards
> Pucicu
>
>
> --
> pucicu
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> pucicu's Profile: http://forums.techarena.in/members/135120.htm
> View this thread: http://forums.techarena.in/xp-hardware/1246404.htm
>
> http://forums.techarena.in
>


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