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 .

Thats not very surprising, and why a better motherboard
with IDE ports on the motherboard allows the MODE to be
individually set for each drive. Even to the extent of having
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

The older one(s) are unlikely to be that brilliant
at the fastest, MODE 4, thats a tad risky.

BL> and improves 40% at best.

But not with say MODE 3 used.

BL> So... I thought I'd run the CD-ROM off the old ISA card.

That assumes you can set that particular card up as a secondary,
tertiary or quaternary IDE port. Some you can some you cant.
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...

You MUST disable the secondary port on the new VLB MultiIO. You normally
can do that. AND you have to configure the old ISA card for one of those
non primary port configs. It aint desirable to use the old ISA card for
the primary, and you often cant disable the primary on the VLB multiIO anyway.

BL> unless you can't mix VLB and ISA.

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.

Thats the usual disabling of the secondary IDE port on that card.
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".

There may be more than one jumper there to change too,
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...

You dont say how far it gets thru the boot phase. It does sound
like you do have both cards on the primary IDE address tho.

BL> even when I disable the IDE too!

Presumably you mean completely disable the IDE port
on the ISA card. Thats certainly a bit of a worry.
@EOT:

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