ECS K7S5A - WIN2000 - Fasttrack TX2 Raid

[Mustang]

ok last night till 4 in the morning, installed all this:

ECS K7S5A
Promise TX2 Raid with two Maxtor 40G
TBird 1.4
WIN2000

The moment 3DMark2001 told me 4200 I went to bed.

During POST I had one issue: sequence
1. NVRAM check
2. "hit DEL if you want to run SETUP"
3. initialisation of Drives and CD
4. Promise Fasttrack Version 2.00 (Built 2)
5. Scanning IDE drives ...........

The very first time, Promise stopped exactly here, not showing the Raid config.
not showing the message "hit CTRL-F to enter FastBuilt ...
(and I was NOT able to go into Setup by hitting DEL)

I took out the Promise card and could get into Setup (using DEL).

A little bit checking in Setup, I thought disable the Modem had done the trick.

putting back the Promise, and there was the "hit CTRL-F to enter FastBuilt .."

I succesfully installed everything and the word was looking wonderful.

...till this morning.


Now: there is no way to get past that point where FastTrack shows
Scanning IDE Drives .......

Still scanning IDE drives......................................

 

[irrigating]

I spent a full day getting a fastrack66 stripe set running, I was getting the same hang at scanning ide drives.......

 

[Mustang]

I am using a Leadtek WinFast GeForce 2 Ultra.

under Leadtek.com it says: and make sure there is no device sharing the same IRQ with the GeForce.

When I was running in W2k, I saw that the FastTrack and the GeForce were both using IRQ 5.

Now, how can you change IRQ's under W2k?

 

[SexualChocolate]

Ive got this board and the TX2 controller. To get it to find your drives, you have to turn off ACPI in the bios. AFter its off, reinstall your TX2 Raid card and boot normally. After a few boots you can try reenabling ACPI if you want, it works most of the time.

Problem solved

 

[Mustang]

not quite.
I tried to disable ACPI, no result.

in the BIOS:
"Allocate IRQ to PCI VGA" - NO

With this setting the FastTrek suddenly finds the Drives, and I can get into Win2000.

only problem, the GeForce is not starting up.
because it does not have an IRQ.

so you have an K7S5A with 1.4G and an GeForce 2 Ultra with 640x480 - 16 colors.

not very desirable.

 

[Mustang]

The only good thing about CompUSA, they are open on Sundays.

So I got me an Adaptec 1200A Raid controller there.
and guess what...

works great.

The difference is that it assigns IRQ 12 to the RAID card, so that IRQ 5 stays with the GeForce.