Is it possible to boot from a pci raid card with an old computer.

[codyw1996]

First off let me go ahead and say that I have several modernized systems I just like playing around with old comuters. I have a problem with my old pentium III system. This computers IDE speed is ATA66 and my seagate 200GB hard drive is rated to work at ATA133 speeds but i'm only getting max speeds of 37 MB/s. I thought at first that it must be my aging hard drive so I bought an IDE to SATA converter which suprisingly worked very well. I was expecting the old BIOS to not even recognize SATA drives, but that wasn't the case. Anyway I installed a 2.5 inch sataIII hard drive but even with the newer drive my speed was still maxing out at 37 MB/s. So now I know that it's some weird ATA66 bus limitation. ATA66 is supposed to work at 66 MB/s right? I did some research online and I think I may be using the wrong UDMA mode, however there is no option in the BIOS to alter the UDMA mode. I believe i'm supposed to be using UDMA 4 or something like that. Anyway 37 MB/s is unnaceptable. I need a faster drive so is it possible to boot from a PCI ATA133 or possibly a SATA RAID controller with a single drive attached on an old computer. This computer doesn't even support booting from USB which i've learned to bypass using Plopbootmanager.

 

[mbarnes86]

Hi
If raid card has its own bios it should be able to boot up
But remember it is a pentium III
There were bios limitations on largest drive supported and you may not get much faster

Does motherboard support 80wire parallel ATA ribbon cables and are they fitted?
See motherboard manual for details
80 wire ribbon cable required for max speed if supported

What speed is the p III ?
I know they went up to 1.4 GHz but most were less than 1GHz

Regards
Mike Barnes

 

[codyw1996]

Hi
If raid card has its own bios it should be able to boot up
But remember it is a pentium III
There were bios limitations on largest drive supported and you may not get much faster

Does motherboard support 80wire parallel ATA ribbon cables and are they fitted?
See motherboard manual for details
80 wire ribbon cable required for max speed if supported

What speed is the p III ?
I know they went up to 1.4 GHz but most were less than 1GHz

Regards
Mike Barnes

Yes both my primary and secondary IDE chanells have The 80 conductor wire installed. I exchanged the 40 wire cable that attached to my dvd drive a long time ago. My processor is the 1.4ghz Tualatin overclocked to 1.5ghz and I have zero experience with raid controllers so I don't know anything about RAID controller BIOS. Would it need to be an IDE RAID controller? Or might SATA be possible?

 

[Cristi72]

First off let me go ahead and say that I have several modernized systems I just like playing around with old comuters. I have a problem with my old pentium III system. This computers IDE speed is ATA66 and my seagate 200GB hard drive is rated to work at ATA133 speeds but i'm only getting max speeds of 37 MB/s. I thought at first that it must be my aging hard drive so I bought an IDE to SATA converter which suprisingly worked very well. I was expecting the old BIOS to not even recognize SATA drives, but that wasn't the case. Anyway I installed a 2.5 inch sataIII hard drive but even with the newer drive my speed was still maxing out at 37 MB/s. So now I know that it's some weird ATA66 bus limitation. ATA66 is supposed to work at 66 MB/s right? I did some research online and I think I may be using the wrong UDMA mode, however there is no option in the BIOS to alter the UDMA mode. I believe i'm supposed to be using UDMA 4 or something like that. Anyway 37 MB/s is unnaceptable. I need a faster drive so is it possible to boot from a PCI ATA133 or possibly a SATA RAID controller with a single drive attached on an old computer. This computer doesn't even support booting from USB which i've learned to bypass using Plopbootmanager.

Hello,

In BIOS you must have activated 32-bit transfer for HDD and IDE Prefetch.

 

[codyw1996]

First off let me go ahead and say that I have several modernized systems I just like playing around with old comuters. I have a problem with my old pentium III system. This computers IDE speed is ATA66 and my seagate 200GB hard drive is rated to work at ATA133 speeds but i'm only getting max speeds of 37 MB/s. I thought at first that it must be my aging hard drive so I bought an IDE to SATA converter which suprisingly worked very well. I was expecting the old BIOS to not even recognize SATA drives, but that wasn't the case. Anyway I installed a 2.5 inch sataIII hard drive but even with the newer drive my speed was still maxing out at 37 MB/s. So now I know that it's some weird ATA66 bus limitation. ATA66 is supposed to work at 66 MB/s right? I did some research online and I think I may be using the wrong UDMA mode, however there is no option in the BIOS to alter the UDMA mode. I believe i'm supposed to be using UDMA 4 or something like that. Anyway 37 MB/s is unnaceptable. I need a faster drive so is it possible to boot from a PCI ATA133 or possibly a SATA RAID controller with a single drive attached on an old computer. This computer doesn't even support booting from USB which i've learned to bypass using Plopbootmanager.

Hello,

In BIOS you must have activated 32-bit transfer for HDD and IDE Prefetch.

There is no such option. Do you mean the RAID controller BIOS or my PC's BIOS. Wouldn't 32 bit transfer be the default option anyway? There is an option for IDE prefetch which is enabled by default on my PC.

 

[codyw1996]

Oh so no one cares because it's an old machine, well no one'll care about you when you're old so take that internet.

 

[Cristi72]

There is no such option. Do you mean the RAID controller BIOS or my PC's BIOS. Wouldn't 32 bit transfer be the default option anyway? There is an option for IDE prefetch which is enabled by default on my PC.

I was referring to the motherboard BIOS (and by default, the 32-bit transfer is OFF). However, I think it is all about the chipset (if you have the Intel 8xx chipset and onboard graphics, you must use an AGP card to free resources from PCI bus; I don't know about VIA/ALi/SiS chipsets). The maximum speed for PCI 33 was 133MB/s, so a good PCI IDE/SATA card should reach at least 66 MB/s.

 

[codyw1996]

There is no such option. Do you mean the RAID controller BIOS or my PC's BIOS. Wouldn't 32 bit transfer be the default option anyway? There is an option for IDE prefetch which is enabled by default on my PC.

I was referring to the motherboard BIOS (and by default, the 32-bit transfer is OFF). However, I think it is all about the chipset (if you have the Intel 8xx chipset and onboard graphics, you must use an AGP card to free resources from PCI bus; I don't know about VIA/ALi/SiS chipsets). The maximum speed for PCI 33 was 133MB/s, so a good PCI IDE/SATA card should reach at least 66 MB/s.

I have a VIA chipset and there is no 32 bit option in my BIOS. My AGP slot is already populated by a video card. The only PCI cards I have installed are a gigabit LAN card and a four port USB 2.0 card. I also have a soundcard installed in an ISA port although I don't know if ISA is on the same bus as PCI. I just tested my Kingston SSD out on the onboard IDE controller and the BIOS recognized it just fine. So I'm just going to save up some money and buy a 64GB SSD and a SATA controller at the same time and hope that it works and if it does work then i'll buy another SSD and RAID 0 them both together and have the ultimate pentium III. Who knows, maybe one day i'll even buy a dual processor board and have the greatest pentium III that ever existed .

 

[Cristi72]

I have a VIA chipset and there is no 32 bit option in my BIOS. My AGP slot is already populated by a video card. The only PCI cards I have installed are a gigabit LAN card and a four port USB 2.0 card. I also have a soundcard installed in an ISA port although I don't know if ISA is on the same bus as PCI. I just tested my Kingston SSD out on the onboard IDE controller and the BIOS recognized it just fine. So I'm just going to save up some money and buy a 64GB SSD and a SATA controller at the same time and hope that it works and if it does work then i'll buy another SSD and RAID 0 them both together and have the ultimate pentium III. Who knows, maybe one day i'll even buy a dual processor board and have the greatest pentium III that ever existed .

Well, if you can, test the HDD without the LAN and USB cards; I am sure you'll have a nice surprise regarding the transfer rate 😉 . As for the SSD, you will be limited by the same PCI bus, so if your HDD is slow, the SSD will also be slow (you will have though a very nice boost when transferring small files as pictures, docs, mp3s, etc)

 

[codyw1996]

I have a VIA chipset and there is no 32 bit option in my BIOS. My AGP slot is already populated by a video card. The only PCI cards I have installed are a gigabit LAN card and a four port USB 2.0 card. I also have a soundcard installed in an ISA port although I don't know if ISA is on the same bus as PCI. I just tested my Kingston SSD out on the onboard IDE controller and the BIOS recognized it just fine. So I'm just going to save up some money and buy a 64GB SSD and a SATA controller at the same time and hope that it works and if it does work then i'll buy another SSD and RAID 0 them both together and have the ultimate pentium III. Who knows, maybe one day i'll even buy a dual processor board and have the greatest pentium III that ever existed .

Well, if you can, test the HDD without the LAN and USB cards; I am sure you'll have a nice surprise regarding the transfer rate 😉 . As for the SSD, you will be limited by the same PCI bus, so if your HDD is slow, the SSD will also be slow (you will have though a very nice boost when transferring small files as pictures, docs, mp3s, etc)

Actually I'm trying to increase game loading times namely Skyrim which can take half an hour or more. Also the textures load extremely slowly which causes weird issues like falling through the floor and what not. It's weird the game has a decent playable frame rate but the textures are soooo slow.

 

[Cristi72]

Actually I'm trying to increase game loading times namely Skyrim which can take half an hour or more. Also the textures load extremely slowly which causes weird issues like falling through the floor and what not. It's weird the game has a decent playable frame rate but the textures are soooo slow.

Skyrim? With an PIII?? You are a very patient person 😉 . Please open Task Manager, I bet your CPU is going 100% all the time.

 

[codyw1996]

Actually I'm trying to increase game loading times namely Skyrim which can take half an hour or more. Also the textures load extremely slowly which causes weird issues like falling through the floor and what not. It's weird the game has a decent playable frame rate but the textures are soooo slow.

Skyrim? With an PIII?? You are a very patient person 😉 . Please open Task Manager, I bet your CPU is going 100% all the time.

I probably have one of the last Pentium III desktops ever built. It even has an AGP 4x slot so all the latest AGP Graphics cards work. Right now I have a Radeon HD with 1GB of video memory. My processor is usually around 80 - 100% when playing. I really want a dual processor board with a standard ATX non server form factor. Then i'm sure I might be able to do atleast medium settings. Especially with two raided sata SSDs

 

[Cristi72]

I probably have one of the last Pentium III desktops ever built. It even has an AGP 4x slot so all the latest AGP Graphics cards work. Right now I have a Radeon HD with 1GB of video memory. My processor is usually around 80 - 100% when playing. I really want a dual processor board with a standard ATX non server form factor. Then i'm sure I might be able to do atleast medium settings. Especially with two raided sata SSDs

Be sure to find one working with normal memory (back in the day these kind of boards needed ECC memory)

 

[codyw1996]

I probably have one of the last Pentium III desktops ever built. It even has an AGP 4x slot so all the latest AGP Graphics cards work. Right now I have a Radeon HD with 1GB of video memory. My processor is usually around 80 - 100% when playing. I really want a dual processor board with a standard ATX non server form factor. Then i'm sure I might be able to do atleast medium settings. Especially with two raided sata SSDs

Be sure to find one working with normal memory (back in the day these kind of boards needed ECC memory)

I'll probably never buy one. The cheapest one i could find that might work was like $300 I guess that they're rare.

 

[codyw1996]

If anyone is still curious, yes it is possible. In fact I am using a sata ii pci raid card in a pentium iii computer right now and it is paired with a 180gb intel 530 ssd.

I have the installation video on my youtube channel if you're interested.

https://www.youtube.com/user/codyw19965523