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Motherboard IDE controller issues

K

kvanderlaag

Experienced Member
Joined
Oct 17, 2009
Messages
126
Location
Vancouver, BC, Canada
A while back, I purchased an Atrend ATC-1425B from a forum member here. I like this board because it's a Socket 3 board that has PCI slots on it, for maximum shenanigans. I eventually did manage to get it configured with my Intel 486DX4 100 MHz processor, and it posts and runs through the memory test just fine!

That's about where my luck stops.

This board has two built-in IDE channels on it, just bare pin headers on the board itself. When a hard drive is plugged into it (and I've tried numerous hard drives, as well as a couple optical drives) it doesn't autodetect anything. I've tried both channels, master and slave, and made extra sure that all the drives were jumpered properly.

Is it more likely that I've overlooked some jumper setting somewhere, or that the controller itself might be faulty? I mean, I guess it's been a really long time since I've worked with a 486 board, so it's also possible that I'm trying to use incompatible hardware.

The user's manual for this board, for anyone curious, can be found here: http://www.elhvb.com/mboards/a-trend/1425b/ATC-1425B.html
 
First, the stupid questions...

I assume that the IDE channels are enabled in the CMOS setup. Have you tried using the IDE HDD autodetect?

Are you certain that your IDE cables aren't inserted "upside down"?
 
Chuck,

I'm not very smart. I've discovered that recently. I DID once get the IDE cables on 'upside down' on this board, but that didn't last long.

Turns out that the drive that I was trying was bad. It also turns out that I have a lot of bad hard drives here. I need to start marking them.
It also turns out that the IDE controller on this board is old enough that it doesn't do optical drives. That makes enough sense, on a Socket 3 board. This means that I need to find an ISA controller card that does, or see if one of my spare Sound Blaster 16s has the CD-ROM Interface port on it.

Feeling very silly right now.
 
Heh.. lol xD

Like to remind dont forget about the 32gb clip most older bioses had. If a drive is larger or not jumpered correctly for this shortcoming, it may fail to detect. Also, try not to use 80 pin newer ide cables on these older boards, they hate them. 40 pin cables work best. As for the cdrom, ya it wont autodetect. Never even seen a board post pentium II that autodect cdroms...

Oakcdrom.sys should find the drive nonetheless if not using win9x.

As for the cable, remember this tip...
Ide , has red side on ribbon cable towards molex
Floppy is opposite. :thumbsup:
 
Last edited:
Is that the one that was pseudo-bricked when I sent it to ya?

Glad to hear you were able to recover it :)

On a hunch I searched my hard drive for 'atrend' and found it:
atrendatc1425b.jpg
Apparently the forum software is auto-reducing attachments...oh well.
 
Yeah, it most definitely POSTs just fine now.

Now it keeps throwing a "Hard Disk Fail" and "Floppy Drive Fail" at me though. It autodetects the HDD all right, so I'm assuming that's not the issue, but it really dislikes having a floppy drive connected to it these days.

I will prevail!
 
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