[NTLUG:Discuss] Hard drive question

[Daniel Hauck]

In general, I would say everything should be just fine.  But I don't know
how large your drive is.  The ATA/100 mode most likely will not be used and
I have had only rare instances where compatibility problems surfaces from
that and these were limited to one drive not wanting to work when connected
to the same controller as another.  You don't mention the capacity of the
ATA/100 drives so I can't comment on that.  But if you want access to the
speed you want, I would recommend buying a PCI controller that supports the
speed.  If you can find one that does only ATA/100 you will find it will be
cheap.  I picked one up from CompUSA for like $10.  It worked nicely too...
running a Linux software RAID on it.  (There's some trivia associated with
that too -- it seems that the Promise Fastrak 100 controller is merely a
software RAID controller in the first place -- I discovered that when I
wanted to use my Promise RAID controller with my RedHat 7.3 and they
wouldn't supply the drivers soon enough... I looked into it and finally
realized that it's all driven by software.  I went out to find a PCI
controller (Maxtor ATA/100) and realized that the Maxtor and the Fasttrak
100 were IDENTICAL!!!  The only difference was the BIOS on board!)

Anyway... I guess I'm going off in a different direction... it's 06:30... go
figure.


  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Fred James
  To: Discuss North Texas Linux Users Group
  Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2002 06:18
  Subject: [NTLUG:Discuss] Hard drive question


  Will I be able to run an ATA/100 hard drive on my 1998 motherboard?
  Would upgrading the BIOS be of any benefit?
  Does upgrading the BIOS dangerous in terms of OS and data already on the
hard drive?

  Elitegroup P6BX-A+ motherboard
  Award BIOS v4.51PG

  (the following information is from:
<http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/reviews/193/1/>)

  The specifications of the P6BX-A+ are as follows:

    a.. Chipset: Intel 440BX processor
    b.. CPU: Intel Celeron, Pentium II & Pentium III
    c.. Bios: Award
    d.. RAM: 3 DIMM - Max 768MB
    e.. Slot: 2 ISA, 5 PCI, 1 ISA/PCI shared and 1 AGP
      I/O:

    a.. One - EPP/ECP mode parallel port
    b.. Two - 16550 high-speed serial I/O ports
    c.. Supports 360K~2.88M Byte, 3 Mode FDDs or LS120
    d.. Dual PCI IDE interfaces - PIO mode 4, DMA Mode 2, Ultra DMA 33
    e.. PS/2 keyboard and PS/2 mouse connectors
    f.. ATX Power Supply Connector
    g.. Two USB connectors
--
small is beautiful
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