2 hardware issues

Elmo89m

Elmo89m

New member
I just bought 1 GB of Ram and a 80GB hard drive for my crappy computer and after installing the ram, my computer only reads it as 512 mb. And the HD is SATA and my motherboard only support IDE. What is the cheapest way to connect my sata HD to my motherboard and how do i get my computer to read my ram as 1GB?
Thank you.
 
Wow... so many possibilites..


Check the motherboard manual, it may not support 1024mb sticks...
I dont think there is a way to connect your sata hdd .. look for a PCI card that can do that... i doubt you'll find one htough..


live and learn.. make sure you do research before you buy hardware..
 
make sure the RAM is firmly seated in the socket, with both latches clamping down. Double check to make sure it is the right model (DDR400, i.e.)

Are you checking through your control panel or through DXDIAG? sometimes they report differently, and lastly, google your motherboard to make sure its compatible.

Another possibility is to convert your hard drive into a portable one. Im not sure how, but i have heard it can be done.
 
I was thinking along the lines of his already made investment, but you are quite right Bulls Hit (LOVE that name!), in terms of performance.

The best choice would be if he could return the SATA drive or exchange it for a (good) IDE.
 
Bulls Hit said:
While that card should sort your HD problem, I would recommend you replace the sata drive with an ide one. It's not a good idea, particularly in a daw, to have your disk traffic running accros the pci bus
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Why is this bad?
 
Elmo89m said:
Why is this bad?
Click to expand...

It isn't, generally. If you run into IRQ conflicts (PITA) or too high a contention level on the PCI bus, it can be a problem. This usually occurs if you're using a PCI audio interface. As long as you aren't sharing a PCI bus between the two devices, it really shouldn't be a problem.

Note: most motherboards these days have at most two PCI slots per bus, so if you do run into this, move one of the cards to a different slot and that should take care of the problem.
 
That can be a problem.

Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information that a signal bus can carry at one time. Ordinarily, this isn't a problem, as digital audio really isn't ordinarily that demanding, but as you start adding devices onto the bus each one eats into the total available bandwidth.

Two of the worst offenders are hard drive controllers and LAN cards. If you have a PCI ethernet card already and added a PCI hard drive controller, there undoubtedly would be very little bandwidth left over for your audio devices, evidenced by audio artifacts such as hesitation or popping sounds.

Video cards can also be tremendously demanding of bandwidth, but usually video is either integrated onto a seperate PCI bus or has it's own dedicated bus (or port) called AGP.

As dgatwood said, the solution if you MUST use a PCI hard drive controller is to move it to another PCI bus, if you have one. Your motherboard manual should tell you which slots share a bus.
 
If you mobo supports only parallel ATA then your mobo is (in computer years) too old to support you serial ATA drive and your zoomy new memory. Haul it down to your local techie and get this diagnosis confirmed, but my gut tells me you are SOL.

Nonetheless... Luck!
 
Kiauma said:
Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information that a signal bus can carry at one time. Ordinarily, this isn't a problem, as digital audio really isn't ordinarily that demanding, but as you start adding devices onto the bus each one eats into the total available bandwidth.
Click to expand...

The bandwidth is less likely to get you into trouble than the latency. If the buffer in your audio interface wraps all the way around before it gets handed access to the bus to service the DRQ, you're screwed. :)


Kiauma said:
Two of the worst offenders are hard drive controllers and LAN cards. If you have a PCI ethernet card already and added a PCI hard drive controller, there undoubtedly would be very little bandwidth left over for your audio devices, evidenced by audio artifacts such as hesitation or popping sounds.
Click to expand...

Like I said, unless you're 33 MHz 32-bit PCI (really old)l, the designer runs into a wall with trace distance limits if they try to do more than two slots on a single bus. Thus, if you have three slots for those two cards and an audio card, unless your motherboard is really freaking old, you're pretty much guaranteed to have at least two PCI busses.
 
The bandwidth is less likely to get you into trouble than the latency. If the buffer in your audio interface wraps all the way around before it gets handed access to the bus to service the DRQ, you're screwed.
Click to expand...

With software settable buffers, I didn't think to address that.

Like I said, unless you're 33 MHz 32-bit PCI (really old)l...
Click to expand...

Well the post didn't address the number of slots on the bus, only that data load cut into bandwidth. While everything you say is true, nothing I said contradicts it. :)
 
Kiauma said:
With software settable buffers, I didn't think to address that.
Click to expand...

The bus latency, not the sample latency. If the drive controller card becomes bus master, it controls the bus arbitration and can starve other devices on the bus for arbitrarily long period of time (I think).


Kiauma said:
Well the post didn't address the number of slots on the bus, only that data load cut into bandwidth. While everything you say is true, nothing I said contradicts it. :)
Click to expand...

True enough.
 
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