HOW DO YOU ENABLE DMA ON HARDRIVES?

[jdafunk1]

I cannot for the life of me figure out how to enable DMA on my hardrives, the option is not there in my control panel. Digi states something about disabling PCI parity in the bios but i could not find this option ( i have award bios) Anyway here is my configuration any help would be great.

Abit bx-133 motherboard w/ATA 100 raid board
933 mhz
256 ram
Matrox g450 video card
15 gb Maxtor drive for system
30 gb Maxtor drive for audio

I have my hard drives hooked up to the onboard ATA 100 controller. I noticed my cd-rom and cd-r have a DMA option, which are both hooked up to the standard IDE controllers. Is it possible to use the ATA controller and have DMA? Hope so cause i want the speed of ATA 100, plus my standard ide controllers are already filled up. Again, any help or info is appreciated.

[Numachida]

Please verify this with another source, but I think that the RAID controller is DMA by default. Have you got ProTools running on this system yet? I purchased the same board for a non PT application and it's been nothing but trouble. Tried to run PT free on it and it wouldn't even load. By the way my Digi-01 PC uses an ASUS 440-BX (Intel chipset)recording to a SCSI drive-no problems at all. Please post your results with this board including the RAID configuration. As an option you might try adding an Ultra-100 controller (Promise technology? <$40.00) if the RAID won't do it.

[Eric Heil]

I had this problem as well and it took me quite a long time to figure out what I was doing wrong.

Place your IDE ribbon cable into an UDMA/33 socket and install standard Dual FIFO drivers. When you re-boot you will now see the option in Device Manager for DMA on your hard drives.

If you only have the two UDMA/100 sockets then "junk" the UDMA/100 controler and install a Standard IDE controler. Then go back and install the Standard Dual FIFO HDD drivers on both the primary and secondary HDD sockets (that's what I had to do with my Asus CUSL-2c w/UDMA 133).

I wish I knew more about RAID to tell you how to configure your hard drives but, unless you have two MATCHING drives, RAID will not do you any good. Besides, you want to keep PTLE and your plugins on a seperate drive from the audio dedicated drive anyway to keep system garbage from strewing your audio DATA all over the disk!

The other RISK you run with RAID is that if you configure all the drives to act as ONE BIG DRIVE, then if one drive fails you have irretrievably lost part of your audio DATA. But then again, you run the SAME risk by just running one IDE or SCSI drive for audio.

Hope that helps,

Eric

[jdafunk1]

Thanks for your guys suggestions. Just to clear some things up im not using the raid technology at all, i dont even know what its for. I know that i want to use the ATA 100 controller for my harddrives. My udma/33 controller are already filled up, so thats not an option. It was suggested to by a seperate promise, UDMA 100 controller but if i already have one built onto the motherboard i dont understand why i need to do this. Please explain. Also i alreay have PT Free running on the motherboard and system with no problems, but i read that enabling DMA will increase your track count, so this is why im painfully trying to figure this out. Another thing is that my ATA 100 controller appears in my SCSI controllers under the Device Manager in Window. Should i try removing and somehow install it so it appears in the hard disk controllers. Just a thought, im not really sure, any help is appreciated
thanks.

[Numachida]

How many sockets do you have on this board
that you can plug an HDD cable into? If yours
is the same as mine you have four. Two next to the FDD cable socket and two others more
mid-board-these may be red or some color other than black or grey. If so these are the
RAID HDD cable sockets. Don't use them!
You should be able to hook all four drives,
two HDD and two CD's to the TWO main IDE
connectors-next to the FDD connector.
Try the boot drive as master in the IDE-1
socket, the recording HDD as the slave (same
cable). Hook the CD/CDR up the same way to IDE-2. How does that work out?

[JMS40]

I have this board.
You will not have this option (DMA setting) in System Properties/Device Manager with the standard dual fifo drivers. The setting is made in CMOS/Setup/Integrated Periferals. Check the settings for each Onboard IDE-controller enabled/in use. You should see each Master-Slave listed as Ultra DMA... if they are. I have had great sucess with the bx-133, and after a bios flash right off the bat, didi is very happy. Setup was done literaly, by the book. Hope this is some help.

[JMS40]

Sorry, I should also say that your drives should be connected to IDE's 3&4 which support Ultra DMA 100. (IDE's 1&2 support UDMA 33.)

[jdafunk1]

To JMS40
Thanks for response. couple questions. I went into Bios under CMOS setup/ intergrated Peripherals. Under it there is the Onboard IDE-controller 1 and controller 2 listed. Under each there is Master and Slave drive PIO moder and Master and slave Drive Ultra DMA listed. Everything is set to Auto right now. What exact setting should i change to have the DMA be enabled? Also you mentioned flashing your Bios with success, should i perhaps do this , Will it change anything or help.
Thanks for your response.

[JMS40]

Originally posted by jdafunk1:
To JMS40
Thanks for response. couple questions. I went into Bios under CMOS setup/ intergrated Peripherals. Under it there is the Onboard IDE-controller 1 and controller 2 listed. Under each there is Master and Slave drive PIO moder and Master and slave Drive Ultra DMA listed. Everything is set to Auto right now. What exact setting should i change to have the DMA be enabled? Also you mentioned flashing your Bios with success, should i perhaps do this , Will it change anything or help.
Thanks for your response.

Hi-
My Intergrated Peripherals settings are as follows:
IDE-controller 1 - enabled
[all Master and Slave PIO and Master and slave Drive Ultra DMA set to "auto"
Same with IDE Controller 2
Also note that ATA 100- RAID controller is "enabled".
This can be a bit misleading because you aren't using a RAID array, but this setting is really about enabling the ATA 100 IDE controller... not choosing RAID settings. There's detailed information on RAID in the bx-133 users manual, but for now... just ignore RAID. At least two of your drives would have to be twins, and then you'd actually have to create a RAID and select type and options...
The point here is that DMA is enabled on this board when these settings are made, and a capable device is detected.
I'm sorry if I've missed something but, are you actually having some problems or are you attempting to make sure your following directions to the letter? If you are having problems running 001, and your settings align with mine, I would surely consider a BIOS flash.
When I assembled my system and plugged in 001, it froze on the demo playback. After a day of headscratching, I flashed the BIOS and it's been running without a hitch since.
Good luck.

[jdafunk1]

To JMS40

I have those exact settings and still no DMA in the Device Manager properties. Im going to try to flash the bios and see if that helps. One more thing. My UDMA/ATA 100 controller appears in my SCSI controllers in the device manager in Windows. Is that where yours is too? Should it be under the Hard disk controller instead? Perhaps i should remove and try installing it there? not sure
Again your help is appreciated
Thanks