My new A8N-SLI Premium: IDE detection problems, DMA failure. Hardware fault?
- From: Chris Metzler <cmetzler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 21:01:29 -0500
Hi. I'm posting this to a forum at my vendor's website, but I've obtained
a lot of very good help here so figured I'd try here too. I just got my
parts this past week, assembled the machine this weekend after months of
anticipation, and now I'm sitting here hoping like hell I'm not going to
have to return my mobo.
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium, Athlon 64 3800 (Venice), 2x1GB Corsair 3200
(DDR400).
Initially, this machine was set up with a DVD-ROM as Master on the 1st IDE
channel, a WD1200JB 120GB as master on the 2nd IDE channel, and a WD2500KS
250GB on the first SATA port. Upon attempting to boot this configuration,
it took a very long time to recognize IDE devices; when it finished, the
WD1200JB 120GB as the 2nd Master was not detected.
I knew this drive was OK because I had just taken it out of a machine in
which it was working fine. So, I changed its jumper from "master" to
"slave", moved it onto the first IDE channel as slave behind the DVD-ROM
master, and rebooted. It was recognized and the BIOS initialization/IDE
detection stuff took place quickly. However, it was incorrectly
identified as being addressed by CHS, when in fact it should have been LBA.
So, I got another WD1200JB 120GB drive (I have a bunch), jumpered it as
"master", and put it in as master on the 2nd IDE channel. Result: once
again, it took forever to recognize IDE devices; when it finished doing
so, the drive in that position was not detected.
On the chance that the problem with the second IDE channel was a cable
issue, I swapped in another 80-pin cable for that IDE channel. No change:
IDE detection took forever and the master on the second IDE channel was
not detected (but both DVD-ROM master and HD slave on the first channel
were detected OK). I swapped cables yet again, this time using the cable
that had just come with the motherboard. Still no change.
Next, I rebooted the machine several times, trying to see if it would find
the drive one of those times. Finally, after three attempts, each of
which included a very long wait to detect IDE devices, it did detect the
drive sitting on the master on the second IDE channel. Problems persist,
however: all IDE disk accesses -- not just the IDE device detection at
boot-time -- take forever, for both IDE channels. For instance, during OS
install, I put a bootloader in the MBR of the HD sitting as slave on the
first IDE channel; on boot, it takes over a half-minute to load that code
and run it. Once the OS is up, I have no DMA on any drives, and can't
turn DMA on even though it's explicitly enabled in the BIOS. (and here
again, not being able to get DMA, despite the BIOS telling me that DMA is
enabled and OS-level diagnostics querying the drive and reporting that the
drive can do UDMA5 would suggest a cable issue; but since I'm experiencing
problems with both channels, that'd be *four* bad cables, including the
new one that came with the mobo? Very doubtful.)
Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated. I put most of a day into
assembling this box -- I'm always slow doing this, out of caution -- and
don't wanna have to disassemble, ship, wait, and reassemble if I don't
have to.
Thanks.
.
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