Promise Ultra 133 TX2 Problems

Admiral Michael

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Joined
19 Feb 2003
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I am having problems with my IDE controller card. When I am using my computer, the 3 cdroms connected to it just "restart" this causes my computer to freeze up for a minute.

Here is my computer's setup:

Onboard IDE
Primary Master - Western Digital 60GB
Primary Slave - None
Secondary Master - None
Secondary Slave - Iomega 250MB Zip

Promise Card
Primary Master - LG 52x24x52x CDRW
Primary Slave - Panasonic 5x DVDROM
Primary Master - LG 52x CDROM
Primary Slave - None

Heres a link to a screenshot of Device Manager - View By Connection Click Here


Almost forgot, I'm running Windows XP Pro, AMD Duron 1600+, 512MB DDR. and I installed the latest drivers and I upgraded the card's BIOS.
 
You should NEVER put CD-ROMs or other external storage devices on an external controller card. Hard Drives should go on the external controller with CD-ROMs and the ZIP Drive remaining on the motherboard's controller.

JJB
 
It mainly applies to CD/DVD burners. Many burning applications and utilities will not properly access drives on a card and you will spit out nothing but coasters.

Cards are optimized for ATA/66/100/133 hard drives, so its just a general rule of thumb that optical drives (that normally use PIO or ATA/33 at the most) dont belong on them.

JJB
 
Have you got a big enough power supply to handle all those drives? 400-450W would be recommended. Are all the drives connected to a single power supply header using spliter cables? Thats too much load on one connection.

Spread it around on all the power supply connectors as evenly as possible.
 
(i got a pm off this guy, that started the thread)

ok so i got the same card, and all i can say is i never mangaged to get a cd rom drive running off the card since you asked me about this problem.

i brought this card because it was designed to run 4 slave drives with a built in bios and io controller to allow fast transfer speeds all round. this it does very well, in all reviews. i can't find any refrence to cd drives running off it.

sod's law the card you got is none bootable, so you cannot run the hard drive from the card allowing the 3 cd roms on the mobo. i have no idea how the zip drive will function ( if at all) on the controler card.

my rig is setup with a boot drive and 3 cd roms on the mobo, and 4 hard drives on the controller card. i transfer about 2gb a min from drive to drive, hence getting this card.

if you brought the card locally, chance is they will change it for a card that will run the cd drives for the purpose you have in mind.
i hope this helps. :(
 
Originally posted by LeeJend
Have you got a big enough power supply to handle all those drives? 400-450W would be recommended. Are all the drives connected to a single power supply header using spliter cables? Thats too much load on one connection.

Spread it around on all the power supply connectors as evenly as possible.

i run a 450W PSU with an extra 3 connectors solderd into the circuit board. and 2 thermaltake smart fans with the sensors stuck on the PSU heatsink instead of the standard 2 fans it came with :cool:
 
Well, I ony have a 250Watt PSU, I kno I kno. But I did rearrange the drive setup and so far its working normal. Heres the setup:

Onboard:
Pri Master: WD 60GB HDD
Pri Slave : None
Sec Master: LG 52x CDROM
Sec Slave: LG 52x24x52 CDRW

PCI Card:
Pri Master: None
Pri Slave: Iomega Zip 250
Sec Master: None
Sec Slave: None

I removed the DVDROM becasue I dont watch DVDs on my comp, I use my laptop cuz I have an old monitor and theinages is dark.
 
Also forgot, the bix that the card came in said it will add up to four devices including tape backup, cd-rw/dvd, ide cdcdroms and other ide drives.

This is bad advertising.
 
I'd still invenst in a bigger power supply. At least 400w if you want to run that many drives.

JJB
 
I use a Promise Ultra100 TX2 controller card for my hard drives with no problems whatsoever. WinXP picks up the drivers and are more current than the supplied floppy disk. I run all 3 Optical drives (DVD+R/CD-RW/DVD-Rom) off of the IDE's and it works like a charm. I agree that you should run the HD's off the controller card and not optical drives. I'm running this on a Asus P4PE board with a 450 PSU and have yet to run into problems.
 

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