ATA 100 Onboard Promise Controller on A7V

[Guest]

My motherboard is an Asus A7V. I have an IBM harddrive that is ATA 100 capable. I am using the Promise Ultra ATA 100 controller that comes onboard the A7V.

I have my hardrive connected to the primary master and my CDROM drive connected to the secondary master of the ATA 100 connectors.

I would like to boot from the CDROM but there seems to be nowhere to enable this option. The CMOS setting for this only applies if your storage devices are connected to the ATA 66 connectors on the board.

Only one controller can be used at a time, ie. either the ATA 100 or the 66.

Is there an update for the Promise BIOS?

Is there a hidden keystroke sequence?

Vince Muscarella of the Promise support team had no idea. Can Tomshardware help me?

kjaffer

 

[Guest]

hum, i have the same mobo and i have one hard disk on the primary ata100, one on the secondary ATA100 and my CDROM on the ata66 (can boot from it) and every things work great. Where did read that you can use both at the same time? Anyway mine works fine and the CDROM is listed in the BIOS under bootable device... Try it, you will see...

btw, don't forget to put the SCSI/ATA before the other device(don't put it before the floppy) if you want it to be the primary bootable device.

 

[Guest]

For starters, you can use all 4 ide ports (ATA100 and ATA66) and the same time. And I think this is your problem.

You say you've got the CD on the secondary ATA100 connector, but the ATA100 controller on the A7v is provide by a promise controller, which has it's own bios ! Stick the CD on the primary ATA66 connector and it'll appear in the 'main' bios and you'll be able to boot from it

And there have been several bios updates for this board.
http://www.asus.com.tw/products/Motherboard/index.html

 

[uncoando]

Exactly. Windows treats the Promise IDE controller as a scsi/mass storage device.
There's no reason to put a cdrom on anything faster than a udma/33 contoller.

<b><font color=blue>Brainy Sturgeon</b></font color=blue>