BE6-II version 1.0

[Bob Troll]

Does anybody know for SURE if the subject machine will handle an 80gb drive on the hotrod 66 controller. It is equipped with the latest bios (70) and the hppt is matched with the OS at 1.25.

I checked with the website and they successfully tested with a 75gb drive, so it looks like it may be close.

Regards, Bob Troll

 

[TomG]

Homie had or *has* an 80 on a BE6 (not a BE6-II) and it works so I'd feel safe in saying that with the newer bios, you should have no issues on a BE6-II.

 

[Bob Troll]

Cool. Thanks Tom. It is coming Friday so I'll slap it in there and post only if it doesn't want to be cooperative. My plan is to sub one 80 for a pair of 40's that are in there in an effort to drop the heat a bit. Those 7200 rpm drives produce a fair amount of heat and I'll use the 40's on a couple other systems I can put together around here. I don't allow them to go to sleep and they run 24/7/365 in that box.

Regards, Bob Troll

TomG wrote:

Homie had or *has* an 80 on a BE6 (not a BE6-II) and it works so I'd feel safe in saying that with the newer bios, you should have no issues on a BE6-II.

"Bob Troll" wrote:

Does anybody know for SURE if the subject machine will handle an
80gb drive on the hotrod 66 controller. It is equipped with the
latest bios (70) and the hppt is matched with the OS at 1.25.

I checked with the website and they successfully tested with a 75gb ...

 

[Wayne Youngman]

Bob Troll wrote:

Does anybody know for SURE if the subject machine will handle an 80gb drive on the hotrod 66 controller. It is equipped with the latest bios (70) and the hppt is matched with the OS at 1.25.

I checked with the website and they successfully tested with a 75gb drive, so it looks like it may be close.

Hi,

I'm not sure about the hot-rod, but the HPT366 controller on my BE6-II (v1.1) does not like ATA/100 Disks, only ATA/66. I think my highpoint BIOS is 1.25 (and drivers). My brother also has the same board and I got him an 80GB IBM ATA/100 which formatted ok but would lock up whenever he copied files to/from the new disk to his existing ATA/66 disk. . . . . in the end he gave up and connected the new disk to the regular IDE channel.

Wayne ][

 

[Bob Troll]

Hot rod66 is the name that was given to the hpt66 drivers so highpoint and hot rod are differing names for the same thing essentially. I'm running win98se on the machine.

I'm at a loss as to why your brother's machine is/was locking up when he was copying files.

I can however tell you that I have experienced lockups when doing some massive and numerous file transfers with it even with 40gb drives. I discovered and laid the blame on windows explorer. By massive I mean like at least a gig or more of files. Since I started using Power Desk instead of windows explorer I have enjoyed no further lockups under that type of situation.

Also most drives have software available that will allow you to set the ata speed in the firmware of the drive. I think most drives are set from the factory at the ata100 (or their highest rated) setting which should be downwardly compatible anyway. In other words if you throw a ata100 drive in a system only capable of ata33, then that is what it will transfer at even though the drive itself is set at 100. It just simply won't be as fast as it could be and can only run as fast as the controller's capabilities. In my case I set the drives at 66 so as to perfectly match the onboard hpt controller even though it was not really necessary to do so.

On the other hand if you set a ata100 drive at ata33 and run it on a ata100 controller, it will transfer at ata33 as far as my understanding is concerned.

My drive should arrive sometime tomorrow and we'll find out then.

Regards, Bob Troll

Wayne Youngman wrote:

Bob Troll wrote:
Does anybody know for SURE if the subject machine will handle an 80gb
drive on the hotrod 66 controller. It is equipped with the latest
bios (70) and the hppt is matched with the OS at 1.25.

I checked with the website and they successfully tested with a 75gb
drive, so it looks like it may be close.

Hi,

I'm not sure about the hot-rod, but the HPT366 controller on my BE6-II (v1.1) does not like ATA/100 Disks, only ATA/66. I think my highpoint ...

 

[Wayne Youngman]

Bob Troll wrote:

Also most drives have software available that will allow you to set the ata speed in the firmware of the drive. I think most drives are set from the factory at the ata100 (or their highest rated) setting which should be downwardly compatible anyway. In other words if you throw a ata100 drive in a system only capable of ata33, then that is what it will transfer at even though the drive itself is set at 100. It just simply won't be as fast as it could be and can only run as fast as the controller's capabilities. In my case I set the drives at 66 so as to perfectly match the onboard hpt controller even though it was not really necessary to do so.

Hi,

yeah I hear you, and that's exactly what I did, which was to use a IBM switching utility to lower the drive to ATA/66 (from ATA/100). I hope it works out for you but after trying for a few days I gave up. I have tried only one IBM ATA/100 disk of my own BE6-II (using HPT366) and that couldn't even be formatted, crashed 1/3 way through. . .

I just figure the HPT366 doesn't like anything higher than a native ATA/66 disk, although I have read posts here of people that have got it to work?. I have been using 2 x IBM ATA/66 drives for the past three years! no issues, works great. . .. .stick a new 80gb HDD into the system and it goes screwy. I am working on a new system for myself right now, when that's done I will patch up me old BE6-II, first thing I will do it *DISABLE* the HPT366 and pop in a IDE RAID PCI card I been given. . . . .

Wayne ][

 

[Homie]

Yep,
"had" is the proper term ...as of about a month ago, I no longer have any BE6II's in the house or basement. Still have a BE6, runs great and it handles 80gig drives with no problem.

 

[Bob Troll]

I Finally got around to setting up the new WD SE 80gb drive in the box. I did the usual routine of fdisk, format and even a scandisk write test. The drive comes up in the bios startup screen at boot as being a 10gb drive although the format details had the correct information. It is hooked up to the hppt controller. I did my 20+ gb of file transfer to it and windows reports it correctly and it is working fine irregardless. I have not tried it on the onboard ide controller to see if it would come up any different at boot. So there it is.

Regards, Bob Troll

 

[TomG]

cool...