On older system setups, how can I get both an ATA100 controller card to co-reside on the motherboard along with the EIDE controller? When installing ATA drives, I can usually get them to be recognized by the motherboard's bios when installed on the EIDE port, but when I try switch them to an install on an ATA controller card I encounter different problems depending upon motherboard mfg. Usually the ATA controller will recognize the drive but will bomb out before the O/S is loaded. After several attempts to resolve the conflicts, I usually resolve myself to the fact that the drive will only work on an EIDE port and remove the ATA card. Unfortunately, I feel that installing an ATA drive on an EIDE port only defeats the drives purpose.

Is there a secret chant or something I need to be doing to get both the add-on card and on-board controllers to co-reside compatibly on older systems?

Please post replies here or send to dek221@hotmail.com.

hmm well I've always been able to install ATA/66/100 devices successfully without any problems. I used to use NT which didn't recognize the ATA/66 controller on the BP6, so I would need to install the OS on the regular EIDE channel. But I never had problems moving the hard drive as long as I had the ATA/66 drivers installed.

Try this, install the drive on the EIDE port and install the ATA card. Make sure all the drivers are properly installed. When you move it to the ATA card, it should work if the drivers are present... I don't see why it won't. I've done it before... I hope that helps

Tom

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Hmmm. I can't imagine why this is not working for you. Right now I have an ATA100 card installed for my hard drive and I have a second hard drive connected to the built in EIDE in my motherboard and they co-exist happily. I did have a problem recently but that had to do with a crappy SIIG card that I bought in the past.

BTW - what controller card are you using? It wouldn't happen to be a SIIG would it?

Yes. It involves mixing a magic potion that consists of three parts water, two parts blood, six parts egg yolk, and one crushed MS Works CD-ROM.

Seriously, it's gonna be different depending on the manufacturer of the controller card, and also further complicated if that's an ATA-RAID card. Most of the time (I'm thinking you're talking about Windows 98 here), you have to select the option in the BIOS to have the first boot device be external or SCSI. That should allow the motherboard to cede control to your ATA adapter. From there, you should be able to install to it using a generic HDC adapter. You can update the driver later.

For WinNT and Win2K, you have to specify an adapter on install (Using F5 when prompted by the installer). For instance, I have a Promise ATA-100 card that I do this with. You have to hit F5, insert the driver disk, and then continue with installation. It'll prompt you again for the driver disk later.

More details?

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