40GB: ATREND 6230 - 02/10/1999-i440BX-W977EF-ATC-6230C-00

Recommended by Wim's BIOS...

by **Ash** » Sun Jul 21, 2002 12:59 am

The Award ID-String is : 02/10/1999-i440BX-W977EF-ATC-6230C-00
Board / Bios-Version is : ATC-6230 VER:1.0 04 WB OM - NOT FOR SALE
Award BIOS : Award Modular BIOS v4.51PG
Bios Date : 02/10/99

The problem is my manufacter is ATREND.
The site is off , and the mirrors, the upgrade bios file DOESNT WORKS !

The AWARDFLASH tool advices to not use the bios 6230112a.bin , and I've already tried it ! Doesnt WORKS at ALL ! I almost kill my motherboard ! I restored the old-bios at blank-screen !!!

So, I anyone can help me ? Have the correct bios upgrade ...

I've already see in other sites like driverguide , and not found; the problem is the bios, need to be for ATREND model 6230 W977EF.

That's all.

by **Rainbow** » Sun Jul 21, 2002 4:15 pm

That looks to be some early (v1.0) board - the 6230112a.bin is "ATC-6230 VER:1.1 02 WB". It's for v1.1 board. I can't find anything about v1.0. I can patch your BIOS to support HDDs over 32GB - save it to file and send it to my e-mail.

[edit]
Found it: http://file2.mydrivers.com/bios/6230V104.zip. Do you want the patched version?

by **Ash** » Mon Jul 22, 2002 1:21 am

Sorry for that.

A mistake in registration default config to not show my email.

Please, feel free to send the bios patched.

Thanks...

by **Ash** » Mon Jul 22, 2002 6:05 am

Rainbow wrote:That looks to be some early (v1.0) board - the 6230112a.bin is "ATC-6230 VER:1.1 02 WB". It's for v1.1 board. I can't find anything about v1.0. I can patch your BIOS to support HDDs over 32GB - save it to file and send it to my e-mail.

[edit]
Found it: http://file2.mydrivers.com/bios/6230V104.zip. Do you want the patched version?

The bios at http://file2.mydrivers.com/bios/6230V104.zip is my bios too, for a test, i downloaded it and test in my board, it's ok ;a patched version of this file will work.

If possible, send to my email , thanks.

by **Rainbow** » Tue Jul 23, 2002 8:09 pm

Patched BIOS sent...

by **Ash** » Wed Jul 24, 2002 6:00 am

Doesnt works , but thanks Rainbow for support and help.
====================================

I flashed the new bios send by you, no changes.

My hard-disk 40GB Maxtor specifications :
D540X® (4D) Ultra DMA 100 5400 RPM

Model Number Actual Cyls Max Cycls Hds Sect SizeGB
4D040H2 79,408 16,383 16 63 40.0 GB

My HD is still detected as 32GB , It's not jumped the cylinder limitation... it's only jumped as master.

Maybe it's a hardware limitation (a friend told me), or maybe this info can help me and help you to figure out the problem :

The HD specification is about 79408 cylinders , event manually if i try to set it does not leave me to 'select' a number higher than 65535 cylinders..., the heads and sector can be set correctly.

Ah, if you see the maxtor website, they have a tool called MaxBlast ; it's not installed to afect the hd detection , and .. I give a try on this , but it's also leave me with 32GB.

Maybe the cyliders limitation by BIOS-SETUP is the problem.

============================================
I've read others post and see other ATREND board (seen to be older than mine) supporting new large disks and it give me a hope....

============================================

I really want to thank you for trying to help me in this problem.

:wink:

- ASH

by **NickS** » Wed Jul 24, 2002 2:11 pm

Ash, can you check what is reported on another motherboard ? My colleague has an IBM 40 Gb drive and he had to re-run their utility to make it report the full size of the drive after BIOS update.

by **Ash** » Wed Jul 24, 2002 9:02 pm

I tested on other pc.

I detected the same 32GB limit.

It's a soyo motherboard with p3-800 processor.

Only jump the cylinder as master......... the cylinder limitation is not set.

Please, I suspect that :

This HD is projected to work with the newest motherboards, I anyone has a working 40GB on MB P3 machine , please ...

See BIOS Info and see what number is set to cylinder...
I need to know if it's set higher than 65535 cylinders.

As maxtor MaxBlast ( www.maxtor.com ) , the EZ-BIOS a kind of overlay to allow to see the full capacity (disks managers..) is not installed , and I tried it also, gives me the same.

The EZ-BIOS (MaxBlast) is not installed.

And my board still detect's 32GB problem.

Please, I anyone has a P4 with HD40GB or higher , and it's a maxtor disk please, post what your bios tell about know it see the disk. If it can see more than 65535 cylinders.

I hope somebody answer this... and thanks for all.

by **Ash** » Wed Jul 24, 2002 9:05 pm

Rerun utility ?

You mean.. by low level disk format ?

Or kill all partitions ? and try ... ?

But , I dont think this is the problem.
It's the limitation in BIOS to not set highter number specfied by Maxtor.

Please, someone ; post a info report about this if you have a 40GB HD.

Thanks.

by **NickS** » Thu Jul 25, 2002 2:32 pm

Ash wrote:I tested on other pc.

I detected the same 32GB limit.

As maxtor MaxBlast ( www.maxtor.com ) , the EZ-BIOS a kind of overlay to allow to see the full capacity (disks managers..) is not installed , and I tried it also, gives me the same.

The EZ-BIOS (MaxBlast) is not installed.

And my board still detect's 32GB problem.

My colleague also stopped using the overlay, but the drive had been set to report a reduced size, only 16 Mb in his case. He needed to run the IBM Feature Utility to tell the drive to report the full capacity.

Try the IDEID.EXE utility, which you should be able to find on the web. This should interrogate the drive directly rather than going through the BIOS. Does this report 40 Gb or 32 Gb ?

If you have tried the drive on a PC which can report 40 Gb, and it only reported 32 Gb on that PC as well, there must be something wrong with the reporting rather than the BIOS.

by **Ash** » Fri Jul 26, 2002 6:56 am

The another Pc has the same limitation, only uses 30 and 20 gb harddisks ...

I tried the utility, gives a lot of technical info but the same informations I get on bios.

===========================================
-USEFUL TRICK ON MY ROAD TO 40GB- (for linux only)
I trick can be used in Linux, but i need windows because of programming enviour..... , .
Maybe this info can be precious :
- A friend has a old system celeron 300 using pcchips motherboard, iack ! but he made his 40gb disk work full !!!
He set the bios to NONE where the disk is, and linux regconizes the hd throught the bios, directlty by hardware and report full size.
But the has a disk set to primary master with the linux...

I tried this with windows, but the problem is boot, making this ; the hd is 'set' as backup only for docs,mp3,movies..... no more.
Windows only finds this when it's loaded.
Ah, it shows only existent partitions, and , as anybody knows, to make a partition need to be out of windows,... and if it's set to NONE, there is no way to get advantage of this trick on windows... only useful in linux.

==============================================
!! IMPORTANT !!

The Utility .. IDEID , maxtor has one too; tried IDEID and the tool from maxtor, tell me an important step :

The HD of your friend, with reports only 16MB , and he use this utility , what he really do with this utility ??? Little write to a kind of bios of ibm-hd ? or it was a low level format ???

I ask this because the maxtor tool has this option (low l.f.), but i dont think this may helps. Because the tool shows geometry as same as bios detect...
I will try something else.. if i get sucess; will report here.

===========
Well , that's it.
===========

Thanks for the tips and support.

by **NickS** » Fri Jul 26, 2002 10:08 am

Ash wrote:The HD of your friend, with reports only 16MB , and he use this utility , what he really do with this utility ??? Little write to a kind of bios of ibm-hd ? or it was a low level format ???

The IBM Feature Utility writes to the HD firmware telling it what size to report. It can also be used to set the data transfer rate, so that a UDMA100 drive can be set to UDMA33 as it is on my PC-Chips M577.

I do not know what Maxtor does, except that I know they have a utility to change UDMA66 and UDMA100 drives to use UDMA33.

Can you get your friend to check the size of the drive on the Linux machine ? I thought IDEID would not use the BIOS, maybe I'm wrong.

by **Ash** » Fri Jul 26, 2002 7:13 pm

Maxtor does have a tool to set udma mode only.

HD Maxtor seen to not have a firmware, only a very small writable to save udma mode.

And IDEID see my HD via harware.. I set to NONE .. and see specfications but same as bios report.... making calculations gets the same disk size (32gb) IDEID report the cylinder problem , same in bios.

Thanks anyway.

by **Ash** » Sat Jul 27, 2002 11:04 pm

Ops..

He report full disk-size (40GB) on linux.

It's by hardware access, all data seens to be ok.

But only can be used as storage data....

by **Ash** » Sun Jul 28, 2002 4:27 am

This info is from MAXTOR website (www.maxtor.com) :

I was researching about AWARD 4.51 Limitation then :

FROM MAXTOR SITE :
"Note: Award BIOS version 4.51 PG has a known 32 GB capacity limitation. Setting the Cylinder Limitation Jumper and using the MaxBlast Plus II software may not allow you to work around this limitation. Contact your system or motherboard manufacturer for a BIOS update that may resolve this issue. Another way to overcome the BIOS limitation is to install an Ultra ATA PCI card like the Maxtor Ultra ATA/133 PCI Adapter Card."

It's a grgrgrgrgr (sorry..) bug in award software ! The ATREND company shut down their services... so , no more updates...

Ôh...