On the 07/05/96  14:38, Rod waffled to Bob..

 Hello Rod,

 BL> I've run into a bit of trouble with my VLB EIDE controller
 BL> card running on Mode 4. The CD doesn't like it.
 
 BL>   These are the results I  get...
 
 BL> IDE Mode    Transfer      Transfer    CD?
 BL>             Conner        WD250
 
 BL> 600nS (1)   1099 Kb/s     1082 Kb/s   ok
 BL> 500nS (2)   1209          1243        ok        <--- I set it here
 BL> 400nS (3)   1448          1474        stuffed
 BL> 240nS (40   1521          1477        stuffed +
 
 BL>   The big step is mode 2-3 .

 RS> Thats not very surprising, and why a better motherboard
 RS> with IDE ports on the motherboard allows the MODE to be
 RS> individually set for each drive. Even to the extent of having
 RS> say MODE 4 and MODE 0 for a pair of drives on a single cable.
 
 BL> My hard drives seem to work okay on all modes

 RS> The older one(s) are unlikely to be that brilliant
 RS> at the fastest, MODE 4, thats a tad risky.
 
 BL> and improves 40% at best.

 RS> But not with say MODE 3 used.
 
 BL> So... I thought I'd run the CD-ROM off the old ISA card.

 RS> That assumes you can set that particular card up as a secondary,
 RS> tertiary or quaternary IDE port. Some you can some you cant.
 RS> Thats basically just the address you use and the IRQ you use.
 
 BL> Keith said it's possible to use two IDE cards, but I can't
 BL> make it work and I don't know what I'm doing wrong...

 RS> You MUST disable the secondary port on the new VLB MultiIO. You
 RS> normally can do that. AND you have to configure the old ISA card for
 RS> one of those non primary port configs. It aint desirable to use the old
 RS> ISA card for the primary, and you often cant disable the primary on the
 RS> VLB multiIO anyway.
 
 BL> unless you can't mix VLB and ISA.

 RS> Thats fine.
 
 BL> First, I set the VESA board to use just address 1F0 (it
 BL> was set to use 1F0/170). This worked... I lost the CD ROM.

 RS> Thats the usual disabling of the secondary IDE port on that card.
 RS> There can be MORE than one jumper needed to achieve that tho.
 
 BL> Then I disabled everything on the ISA board,
 BL> enabled IDE and set it to "secondary IDE selected".

 RS> There may be more than one jumper there to change too,
 RS> you need to change both the port address and the IRQ used.
 
 BL> It won't complete the boot.
 BL> As soon as I plug in the ISA card, it stops...

 RS> You dont say how far it gets thru the boot phase. It does sound
 RS> like you do have both cards on the primary IDE address tho.
 
 BL> even when I disable the IDE too!

 RS> Presumably you mean completely disable the IDE port
 RS> on the ISA card. Thats certainly a bit of a worry.

 You forgot to include your "Poor old Bob" macro. Here, I'll do
 it for you.

 Poor old Bob, time for the gas chamber for a senile old fart
 like you.

 Dieter
 

... "He's dead Jim."         "Grab his wallet, Spock!"
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