How to get DMA on HD ?

hongteck

hongteck

New member
I experienced the same skipping tracks as DaveO in his previous post
entitled "buffering" & after following the thread I'm pretty sure it is caused
by the DMA setting I'm suppose to have on my audio IBM Deskstar DPTA
7200RPM HD. However I have a problem because when I go to Control
Panel > System > Device Manager > Disk Drives > to check out the drive.
My HD does not have a DMA box to select. My question is how do I get it
to run on DMA mode ?

My system is a Abit BE6-II board running a Celeron 466 chip with
128 Mb Ram and 2 Hard Disks. The Abit board has IDE1 & 2, IDE3 & 4.
IDE1 is connected to my main Maxtor hardisk as Primary Master
IDE2 basically connects the CD-ROM and CD-RW drives.
IDE3 has my audio IBM DPTA 7200RPM HD which is supported by
Ultra DMA/66. I'm using the Highpoint Tech's HPT366 Ultra DMA 66
Controller driver.

Thanks in advance
 
Well now that all depends on the driver for the hardware. My system has three type of controllers, ATA, SCSI and ATA66. Only the standard ATA controler has the option to enable/disable the DMA mode. Why do the others not have it there? Because they are in DMA mode by default. It's not an option to turn off. The driver is written to always be in the DMA mode with no support for NON-DMA mode.

Long and short of it. If it's not an option and your sure your running bus mastering drivers... it's already on.
 
drats!

oh drats, now that would mean i have to find another reason for the sudden skipping of tracks.

another question is that how come i couldn't get the Hard disk to be hooked up in the black Master connector end of my cord attached to IDE3. It is okay if I put it at the grey Slave connector end. Every time I do that when I reboot, it will not recognized my HD and the system will hang. I've set the jumper to 'Cable Select' in the Hard Disk.
 
That's because the way an ATA66 or higher (80 pin) controller works is it needs a device at the end of the cable. No choices. If there is a drive in the middle, it needs a drive at the end...... And, if you can not get the drive to connect to one end, are you sure the cable is not reversed? Meaning the wrong end into the mobo? Seems odd that it would not.

Check that out and make sure your not inverting the cable. That alone will cause the issues you are talking about as the controller and drive try to decide what is going on. (Controller to Drive: "Name and Mode" drive to controller: IBM, Mode 4 sir! C to D: No, your not! D to C: well, yes I am Sir. C to D: Hang on now, lets try this again...) and on and on....hehehehe Think this isn't disrupting the system?

As for the 'sudden' track skipping, can you describe a little better in your own words how you are perceiving this. And, what you have done to your system in the last two weeks. Even the smallest detail, a Windows update, a realplayer update, a virus update. Anything? A new drive install...you know, the little things.

Let me know and I will help if I can.

Good luck.
 
Temporarily leaving my thread to join you here ...

I'm not happy to see anyone else having problems, but at least I'm not alone trying to deal with this strangeness. :D

I haven't solved my problem yet, but I just haven't had any time to work on it this week. My wife has been away on business so I was "single parenting" until she got back last night. Hopefully I'll ge some time this weekend. When I do I'll post what I tried and the results, whether they're good or bad.
 
My symptom is that around 80/90% of the time I play a song using N-Track, the HD seems to halt for while and resumes again as normal after that. It will happen sometimes up to 3 to 4 times per song. Also it most likely happens at the same parts of a song but not always. During the halt, what I see is that the screen freezes. The line that indicates where you are in the song, the time indicator, the vu-meter .. everything freezes. When I look at the Hard Disk access light on my front panel of my computer casing, the light just stay on without blinking as it would when reading files from HD. This will happen for one second sometimes two. It also happens for a song with only two tracks and very little effects so I don't suspect that its because I'm running too many tracks that my CPU cannot handle.

Yeap, checked that the cable is connected as it should at both ends.

I've tried many times but quite contrary to what you have said my HD doesn't work when placed at the end of the cable as the Master drive. It won't get detected during boot up. However it works perfectly at the middle connector ... of course until I play N-Tracks and the skipping happens. There must be something wrong here ! Could it be the cable ? I've yanked the cable out so often I'm beginning to suspect its reliability now.

I tried playing my songs from my main HD instead of this audio HD this morning and I realized that the skipping doesn't happen on my main HD. So now, I'm pretty sure its my UDMA HD and these ATA 66 connector thingy.

What do you think ?
 
I'm thinkin that your UDMA bus master drivers ain't workin for ya, that's what. Are any of your drives in DOS comapatability mode?

Or, as you say, the cable is bad. All I know is this, the controller should be requireing a device at the end of the cable. If it is not then either it is bad or the controller is not functioning. I have read thu my ATA66 and my ATA100 Raid manuals and they unfortunately do not support my contention, but they don't deny them either. I know I read it so I will research it again and prove or diprove my possition. BUT, the dang thing should work at the end of the cable. No bones about that. If a connector does not work then you have a problem.

My issue about the DOS mode tho I still want answered. And ATA33 that is working better than an ATA66 says alot about the ATA66. Check it out.

Get back and let me know. I will do the same with what I come up with. We will figure this out. Keep diggin!
 
None of my drives are in DOS compatibility mode as far as I know.

I experiment replacing my 40pin, 80 conductor cable with a normal 40 pin, 40 conductor one. According to my manual, this setup will make it run in ATA/33 mode. It still works but the skipping still persists. Is there anything else I can try ?

If its the driver will getting alternative drivers help ?
 
No, if using a 40pin 40 conductor cable gave you the same results then one of two things is happening.

1. Your ATA66 is not working as an ATA66 even with the 80 conductor cable

2. or that 80 conductor cable is bad.

Was the skipping any worse with the 40 pin cable?

Did the drive work at the end of the 40 conductor cable? I suspect it did or would. But you could not get the drive to work on the 80 conductor cable... BINGO... big clue there.

Does the drive perform worse with the 40 conductor than with the 80 conductor? If not then that tells me the 80 conductor cable was NOT being detected properly by the controller and thus the ATA33 performance.

I encourage you to do some drive benchmarking to see what kind of track count and performance you are or should get with this drive. The ATA66 should far outperform your ATA33 drive, the one you said was your OS drive. Do you have the tools to do so? Let me know.

Patience is the key, this will get resolved OK. Keep whackin at it...
 
no i don't know any benchmarking tools. anywhere i can get one to try ? i won't want to get another 80 conductor cable until i can confirm that this is the problem.
 
if your drive does not have a checkbox for "DMA," you can get it by removing the driver and replacing it with the standard windows hard disk driver... at least this has been my experience. You do this in the usual way, either by uninstalling the driver if it is available in add/remove programs (this will cause a reboot, then windows will find the standard driver) or by manually changing the driver through the system control panel.

actually, i think most often, drives run in PIO mode by default in win98, and this plays havoc with audio apps that require synchronous reads and writes. i'm no expert, but removing my fancy intel hard disk drivers and replacing them with the windows standard drivers eliminated 99% of all my audio lockup problems.
 
thanks charger,

i'm in the midst of reinstalling my software having reformatted my hard disk (don't ask me why i did that ) i'll try if the problem still exists and continue once i get everything up again.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top