Intermittent IDE connection phenomenon...

[tazwegion]

G'day fellow K6plus'ers

I've recently pulled an old KT133A chipset motherboard out of retirement, prior to being mothballed it had a major capacitor 'overhaul' as was a common requirement of components from 'that' era

It appears to have an issue with the IDE controller, with CDrom & IDE drives not responding to the system/OS 'sporadically'

I disabled the on-board IDE controllers & installed an ancient IDE controller card, but the phenomenon continued...

I checked the IDE/CDrom drive on another system... 100% AOK!

It really is a most perplexing issue, as I could really use another OC'ed Duron F@H machine right now (being stalked by an Opteron user )... I haven't tested either the IDE cable or the PSU (yet) but I figured I would ask here prior to undertaking further fault finding, hopefully with a few more theories/suggestion under my belt

Any thoughts?

[Jim]

IDE Cable is my guess. I have had a number of them go bad on account of the contortions I have to put them through to get things hooked up. Check it for scarring, where it may have rubbed the insulation off somewhere. Also if it doesn't have proper removing grips, sometimes the wires get strained internally to the breaking point when they have been installed and uninstalled several times.

[tazwegion]

Well that's a good point Jim, as they're all old (40 strand) IDE cables (I seem to have a glut of those ), and logic dictates that if it's the on-board IC controller... an add-on card should rectify this

Hmmm... to think of it, I remember getting 'that' cable with an old AT server case, I'm slowly in the process of upgrading to 80 strand IDE cables, so I'd better start 'there' first obviously... might set it up for a 'smoke test'

w00t w00t! one more DC system for my 'armada'

[Jim]

Another point I forgot to mention is that some boards, (like my DFIs), specify that the IDE cables should be no longer than 18 inch. If what you are using came out of a server case, it probably is longer than that. Check your manual to see if your board has any length limitations on IDE cables.

[tazwegion]

There you go... I'd never heard of that before, thanks

[Jim]

You'll get it solved, and have one more "Ant" for your "Army". Did you know that "Army Ants" or "Driver Ants" can kill an elephant? - or opteron for that matter.

[tazwegion]

LMAO thanks Jim I've yet to troubleshoot that particular beast... but I have been pondering if the chipset was damaged in some way, wouldn't that also effect the on-board & add-on (PCI) controllers equally?

BTW currently outpacing the BETA 64bit Opteron (in Retro style ) with a mere 4 Athlon class systems Thunderbird, Palomino, Thoroughbred & Barton... all that missing is an Athlon 'Classic' (SlotA)

I think the 'collective' grunt equals around 6.8Ghz

[Jim]

If you have situations where sometimes the bios is not picking up a drive; and sometimes it is; the first thing to do is change the IDE cable. (Preferably w/ one either new or known good). Have had cases where a scarred shorting cable caused me to lose my partitions. (Data Recovery sessions followed). IF that does'nt help, time enough then to worry about other things.

Edit: Ya otta add at least one K6 to your fleet; then use just that one in your sig. That would drive the opteron operator bananas, being outpaced by a K6

[tazwegion]

Why Jim that's such a devious proposition