Problem w/CUSL2 & Fasttrack 66? Please help!

[Tummy]

Hi All. I have an Asus CUSL2 and a Promise Fasttrak Raid 66 card, and the problem is that when writing large files to my striped array, the system will "stall" for about 1-2 seconds and then continue to write. The setup is that both drives are Masters on channels 1 & 2. The exact same setup on my old P3V4X worked fine. I've reinstalled Windows and everything like that and still the same problem.

I've tried moving the drives to different combinations of master/slaves and found that if i set up the array for master/slave on a single channel, the problem went away however the drive performance dropped significantly. I'm using the latest bios and drivers for everything, and i've tried different values of the PCI latency in the motherboard BIOS as well. Also tried different PCI slots. Does anybody else have this combination that is working fine, or know what the possible problem might be? I can't think of anything since it worked fine in the P3V4X other then that maybe there is some incompatibility between the Fasttrak and the CUSL2...thanks in advance!

 

[dakost]

You haven't mentioned what fsb and pci speed you are running at. I have seen a couple of reviews which mention that the ft66 isn't too stable when overclocked. If i remember correctly one of the reviews was on iXBT hardware. Have you the latest promise drivers ?

 

[Tummy]

Hi! I am running 143FSB but in the P3V4X i was running at 146 fsb without any problems, so i doubt if it is that. Yes, I am running all the latest drivers and BIOSes for the system. I tried moving the card around as well, same problem everywhere though..

 

[dakost]

Did you check system properties and made sure that the SB live and the G400 do not share an irq ? I remember that as long as the SB live shared an irq with anything i had problems on both the cusl2 and on the msi 6199VA ! In the case of the cusl2 i disabled both com1 and com2, since i haven't got anything on them, then the my isdn moved to irq 3 making space for the SB live to use irq 5 all on her own and that solved the problems. Hope you find a solution to the problem.

 

[dakost]

Oops ... *laughing* ... that was a bit of a mixup with another post ... sorry.
Looks like there may be a problem with the 815e chipset and the FT66
then ? Have you tried to see if there are problems at say 140 fsb ?
And if there aren't any at 140 fsb, have you reied to set the vio to
3.6V ? That might help, although as mentioned in the manual it would reduce your hardware lifespan.

 

[Tummy]

Hehe..i was wondering about that as I was reading it! =)

Possibly a problem with the FT66 and the CUSL2...don't know, anybody else having a problem like this!? Yeah, i tried increasing the voltage ti 3.6, still no luck. Although, I haven't tried dropping it to 3.3...that might be something to think about and try as well! Haven't tried 140fsb because, as i mentioned before, because i had the thing running without any problems at 146fsb when I had my P3V4X.

 

[dakost]

Are you using 2 or 1 memory dimms ...
"the CUSL2 was running stable at basically all other bus speed settings, including the 166 MHz FSB with memory set to FSB frequency
... The one caveat is that the Ultra ATA controller gave up at more than 37 MHz PCI speed ... In a 2 DIMM configuration, the highest
bus speed running stable was in all cases around 155 MHz" ... these
are the few problems that lostcircuits encountered with the board.
And have you installed the intel busmastering drivers, did you use version 5.5 which is included in the asus cd or the newere version 6.0 from the intel site ? If yes, there may be ab incompatibility between the intel and promise drivers ?

 

[Bricolo]

i don't thik the problem is the ide controller, i think that the disk the guy at lostcircuits has used can't handle 37Mhz PCI Bus.

 

[Tummy]

I am using 1 PC-133 128MB dimm at Cas3. I tried some other memory timings and stuff as well but always the same thing.

I'm using the Intel drivers that came with the CD. I have Pioneer 10X DVD on secondary master and a SAF 6/4/24 secondary slave. I also have an older Quantum 12G on the primary master. It's very possible there is something here that doesn't want to work properly, i suppose...although it's not the quantum drive that gives me problems it's the raid array. As I mentioned, if I run master/slave off one channel for the raid card it's fine. But it takes longer to boot because it's looking for something on the secondary channel and also it's slower overall because the drives are on the same channel.

shoot, it's starting to drive me nuts! Did NOT have this problem on the P4V4X.

 

[dakost]

Bricolo, maybe, though i wouldn't expect a WD Expert 41800 not to be able to get at 37 MHz.


Tummy when the FT has setup an array in one channel, ie master - slave, it uses 1 irq. When used with 2 channels, two irq's. Is that right ? And if it is find what other device shares the 2nd channel
irq and disable it to see what happens.

 

[jjsimas]

Good Idea, but I think that Promise FastTrak66 only used one irq, no matter what... (I recall reading it somewhere..)

Jason

 

[dakost]

jjsimas i wasn't sure, hence the questionmark in the post. My brief experience was with a udma 66 hacked to ft66 by a friend. I borrowed it before the conversion and after and on both ocassions i had problems with it in a single drive configuration at pci speeds over 35 ! My friend would have converted one for me as well, but i avoided it after the trial.

 

[Tummy]

Hey again. The FT controller uses only 1 IRQ and it's not shared with anything right now. But yeah, i could put both drives on one channel and i don't have the problem, just that the array is a lot slower reading than when on separate channels. However, the write times for large files is really starting to get to me (and the slow boot is really unacceptable). I'm really confused what the problem is - i'm surprised that nobody else has any issues with this? Darnit. Thanks for the suggestions, anything else? =)