IDE card affects performance of integrated IDE ports.

[CDRecorder]

I have a Daewoo CB649M-SI motherboard with integrated ATA-66 ports. I have a Maxtor (made by Promise) ATA-133 add-on card installed. I leave the CD-RW drives attached to the motherboard. If I have the hard drive attached to the motherboard too, the CD-RW drives read at full speed, but if the hard drive is attached to the ATA card, the CD-RW reading speed drops down to about 20x max (one is 12x10x32, the other is 12x8x36). DMA is enabled, and the drives read much slower (about 10x max) if DMA is disabled. I have the latest ATA drivers (downloaded yesterday) for the ATA card, and I am using Windows98. Interestingly, this problem doesn't occur if I use WinXP, but XP is otherwise too slow for this computer. Anyone have any ideas about why this is happening?

[tazdevl]

It's probably on the same IRQ. Go into the BIOS and manually assign a IRQ to the card/PCI slot the card is in.

I'd also recommend not plugging any optical drives into the controller card.

[blakerwry]

How are you measuring your CD drive's speed? does this happen to both optical drives? What mode are all the drives running in?

when you noticed a slowdown in the CD drive did you perhaps change cables or jumpers on that drive?

I don't buy the IRQ theory... 20x is only ~3MB/s... 36x is ~ 5MB/s

IRQ sharing on socket7 and above computers shouldn't be a problem and at worst should account for only a minimal (negligible in most instances) performance drop.

[BatGnat]

It will be the IRQ.
On my motherboard, i have usb2.0 and ATA Raid. They are sharing an IRQ(cant be changed). If I use the usb2, hdd speed drops, noticably.

In your motherboard manual it should have a little chart showing which IRQs are being used by other devices, including PCI bus. you may need to move the card to a different pci slot. Usually there is at least one slot that doesnt share anything if not pick the one which will get the least amount of use.

[Action Jackson]

I have that ATA133 card too.

My question is, are you just hooking up the harddrive to the 133 card and booting off of that?

I think I read somewhere that there was something that you had to setup if you wanted to use that card to hook a bootup harddrive.

I do agree with everyone that it's probably an IRQ issue.

[CDRecorder]

Thanks for all of your responses! I am sorry I didn't include enough detail; I always seem to forget something with these extremely detailed problems...

I don't have any optical drives on the controller card; I can't even burn at 12x without buffer underruns if I do this.

The IDE card is on IRQ 10. MS System Information says that it shares this IRQ with "IRQ Holder for PCI Steering", but it doesn't share with anything else. In fact, there is currently no IRQ sharing on this system.

I am using Nero CDSpeed 1.02e to measure drive performance. It happens to all CD drives. Both CD-RW drives are using Multi-Word DMA Mode 2. At least they do in Windows XP; DMA is enabled in Windows 98.

I have only the hard drive attached to the ATA-133 card. I am using that as the boot device. I partitioned and formatted the drive while it was attached to the ATA-133 card.

I hope I didn't forget any information this time! Thank you all again for your help!

[vbl117]

Sorry i had not understood the thread at first reading. My reply was off subject .

[Spazmogen]

It is your IRQ settings.

Win98 is horrible with handling IRQ's. I upgraded to XP to get away from Win98's IRQ limits.
My AGP video card conflicted with my ATA66 Promise card, and neither could be changed manually under Win98.

Upgraded to XP and all IRQ problems vanished.

You may have to upgrade the processor if that's keeping you from using XP.

if you have 2 hard drives, you could do a dual-boot Win98-XP.

But I'd back up the Win98 drive with Norton Ghost, so you can fully restore it all at once, should you not like the dual boot.

Setting up a dual boot is easy. You already have Win98 installed, just install XP and chose the other drive when prompted to select an install location. XP will automatically set up the Dual boot for you.

[Wedge Maniac]

It is your IRQ settings.

Win98 is horrible with handling IRQ's. I upgraded to XP to get away from Win98's IRQ limits.

Maybe I read through this too fast and I am missing something, but I beleive LiteOnGuy said that it works fine under 98, it's XP that is having the problems. I'm thinking he wants to get it to burning at its upper speed limits under WinXP.

[CDRecorder]

I'm sorry that I wasn't clear enough; it works fine under XP (except that the computer is really slow), and it doesn't work right under 98.

Yes, Win98 certainly is not the best when it comes to configuring IRQs. To get it working as well as it is, I had to tweak the BIOS settings a lot so that the IRQs didn't conflict.

In any case, I don't see how it could be an IRQ problem, considering that nothing is sharing the IRQ with the IDE controller, and nothing is showing an IRQ conflict.

I have been thinking about a CPU upgrade and about upgrading this machine to XP, but I am not sure I want to go to XP due to the fact that XP doesn't support my integrated sound at all (and I don't have any of the 3 PCI slots free, so a new sound card isn't really an option), and the integrated IDE ports frequently refuse to use DMA under XP.

Thank you all for your help, though!

[blakerwry]

I'm thinking it's just the motherboard. Perhaps you can live without the controller card and can live with the less than perfect performance until you have the funds to upgrade to a decent motherboard.

If you were looking at another M-ATX board, I'd recommend the Asus A7N266-VM from newegg.com (AMD assured version) for $72 in combination with an AthlonXP 1700+ ($61.00 retail). (onboard sound, USB, LAN, and geforce2MX video with 1 AGP and 3 PCI slots)

[CDRecorder]

Thanks for your help. I can live with the slower performance; I just wondered if anyone knew what the problem was.

Actually, this is one of my older systems, so I probably won't upgrade the motherboard. I am thinking about a new CPU, though, and this would probably allow me to use WinXP.

[Inertia]

Check and see if you have a yellow exclamation point for the primary and secondary IDE channels in Device Manager when the hard drive is connected to the Promise card.

If so, follow the instructions in MS-DOS Compatibility Mode Problems with PCI IDE Controllers to removed the NOIDE value in the registry and restore 32 bit file access and virtual memory.

Also, if you are using the original Win98, Win98SE is far superior and has better busmastering capability. I have used Win98SE with all kinds of controller and ATAPI device combinations at full speed.

[CDRecorder]

No, there aren't any yellow exclamation points next to anything in Device Manager. I would be really concerned if there were.

Yes, I am still using the original Win98. Where could I get 98SE? I remember that MS used to sell an update to SE from the original 98 for about $20. Does anyone still sell these?

[Inertia]

There are plenty of copies of Win98 SE available at eBay with starting bids about $5.

It is usually better to install a full version rather than an upgrade, although the change from Win98 to Win98 SE is not as risky as an upgrade to a totally different operating system.

[CDRecorder]

It is usually better to install a full version rather than an upgrade

I know, but I figured that this is really just a service pack. I ususally hate upgrade versions of software because they never really work correctly without a clean install.

[Action Jackson]

LiteOnGuy,

Unless I missed it, what is the harddrive?

I know the Promise card auto configures itself to the device. That's why you won't see an option to enable/disable DMA.

[CDRecorder]

Sorry; I didn't mention the hard drive. It's currently a 6.4GB Quantum Fireball ATA33, but I am using that as a substitute because my 40GB Western Digital ATA100 died. The WD had the same problem, except that it wouldn't work at all on the motherboard because the motherboard is so old. I'm hoping to get a new Maxtor 40GB or 60GB drive soon because I love the Maxtor 60GB on my main desktop computer.

[Action Jackson]

I have a Maxtor 60gb 7200rpm 2mb cache ATA100 harddrive. Performance is decent and I've never had a problem with it.

The only aspect that I eventually didn't like about it was when I was trying to make my computer quiet. It emits an annoying whine.

Arrrggghh!

I'm not sure if your current hardrive being a ATA33 has anything to do with your slower burner performance. If it's a 5400 rpm harddrive, then it might.

It could even be something as simple as any of the IDE connector wires giving you problems.

[CDRecorder]

The hard drive shouldn't be the problem. The CD drives work at their rated speeds when the hard drive is connected to the motherboard. It also isn't an incompatibility with the controller card; the same thing happened with a WD 40GB ATA100 drive.

Your 60GB Maxtor is whining loudly? It sounds like your drive is defective. My 60GB 7200RPM 2mb ATA133 Maxtor is absolutely silent except for the clicking when it reads or writes. Maybe you should try to get Maxtor or the store from which you bought the drive to give you a new one. My 40GB WD whined loudly, too, before it died (at only 1.5 years ).

[Action Jackson]

Apparently that's the normal idle noise of the Maxtor. It's been like that since day 1 and other owners have experienced the same thing.

It's only when you finally get your PC to be quiet that you notice it.

[CDRecorder]

I just got a new 60GB 7200RPM ATA133 drive for the machine with the ATA133 card problem. I'll let you know if it changes anything once I have Windows and drivers re-installed.

BTW, both of these Maxtors seem to be very quiet. I'll try disconnecting my case fans and listening to the drive's noise (my Celeron-366 doesn't exactly get very hot). I did notice that my new drive said, "Whisper-quiet FDB motor" on the box; maybe they changed that in the newer models, which would explan why your drive is whining, Action Jackson.

[Action Jackson]

My Maxtor isn't the Fluid Dynamic Bearings for sure.

That's okay, I've got my WD's SE's and they're really quiet.

Good Luck with your rig.

[CDRecorder]

Good Luck with your rig.

Thanks, Action Jackson!

I got the new drive installed in my PC, and, even with the case fans disconnected, it is nearly silent. I also tried running CDSpeed, and I had the same 20x limitation. Oh, well, it must be a problem with Win98, and I can live with it (the burners are only 12x anyway). Thank you all for your help.