Asus Eee PC 901 SATA and IDE ports

[secretsusbcriber]

Hello
I'm trying to repurpose an old netbook, the Asus Eee PC 901 and I've done a bit to upgrade the storage, based on various old forum and blog entries. So I finally got a 32GB kingspec drive and replaced the 4gb main drive. Now, the other two drive ports, IDE2 and IDE3 don't seem to work.
I believe the KingSpec is an SATA Mini PCI-E drive and when I installed it while the original 4GB drive was installed, that 4GB drive would become undetectable.
So my question: Do Sata drives disable all the other ports in the 901?

Thank you

 

[hang-the-9]

I'm a bit confused, what did you do to install the new drive? You said you replaced it then said you installed it with the original one installed as well which is not "replacing" but adding on to. What other ports are not working? There should be nothing connected to the drive connections aside from that mSATA drive, what is connected to the IDE ports that is not working?

 

[secretsusbcriber]

I'm a bit confused, what did you do to install the new drive? You said you replaced it then said you installed it with the original one installed as well which is not "replacing" but adding on to. What other ports are not working? There should be nothing connected to the drive connections aside from that mSATA drive, what is connected to the IDE ports that is not working?

When I first purchased the new drive, the KingSpec, i left the original 4GB drive in and I installed the KingSpec on IDE2. IDE2 is the slot where the extra storage drive was originally installed.
When I did that, the 4GB drive would disappear from the bios.
So I opened the 901 up and replaced the 4GB with the KingSpec.The KingSpec was detected as the Primary Master and worked fine. But when I try to use IDE2 with another Mini PCI-E drive, it does not get detected. I also have a drive that connects to the ZIF connector, IDE3. I tried connecting that drive and it did not get detected by the bios.
It seems like the KingSpec's presence is deactivating the other ports.

 

[hang-the-9]

There could be a BIOS limitation, those systems are not really designed to be upgraded or added on to.

You can check if there is a new BIOS available, if that does not help, you'd have to work with ASUS support, although they will likely charge you if it's out of warranty or have you contact the KingSpec support, which will likely send you back to ASUS support in a neat loop since neither side will try to check into things too much due to the fact that you are doing the upgrade and it's not a supported item directly from ASUS.