[plug] IDE tape drive [solution]

[Jon Miller]

Have you tried other devices on the connector other than a tape drive, such as a CD-ROM or DVD drive to see if it's detected in the BIOS?  I had a board that for some reason could not see a CD-ROM (tried several new and old that I know to be working) and yet it can see a smaller drives (6-20GB) and not a larger drive (60GB).  This even after applying the latest BIOS. 
Turned out to be faulty BIOS, ended up replacing the board.

Personally, I would build a DOS boot disk and put on it a problem that can scan the system and report what it finds.  Do this both with and with tape drive, quicker and cleaner.

Jon

Jon L. Miller, MCNE, CNS, ASE
Director/Sr Systems Consultant
MMT Networks Pty Ltd
http://www.mmtnetworks.com.au

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure
 is trying to please everybody." -Bill Cosby



>>> zombie at penguincare.com.au 12:39:48 PM 30/09/2003 >>>

Quoth Jon:

> > > So there were no other settings for the IDE connectors?

I went through the whole BIOS, and there was nothing else.
I also upgraded to the latest BIOS and tried the latest stable Linux
kernel (2.4.22)

I guess the only thing left to try is see what happens under Windows, but
that's another several-hours job, and it would probably be cheaper to just
buy another mainboard. :)

Quoth Onno:

> > Back to my original question, do I tell the Kernel team so they can
> > work-around it, or how do I tell Intel that their BIOS is broken - as
> > both Matt and I suspect.

If it can be worked around, then it's probably a good idea to do so, but
I'm not sure if a disabled IDE port can be worked around...

On Mon, 29 Sep 2003, quoth Michael Hunt:

> Does the tape drive have any firmware patches available for it ??? It
> could be the tape drives firmware that is causing the problem.

I tried another tape drive, completely different make/model, same result.

- Matt

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