40GB: Mercury Mb(crusader blue line)

ramakrishna · Tue Oct 07, 2003 8:29 am

Hi,

40GB western Digital (WD400)/5400RPM Harddisk is not recognised by my motherboard

Motherboard /bios information

CRUSADER BLUE LINE C586 TX 512K Ver:1.1
6X86MX-PR266 CPU

03/25/98 -i430TX-ALi5135-2A597PNAC-00

2A597 - Intel Mercury Chipset
PN - Procomp Informatics Ltd

Have checked on Procomp informatics website ,wimsbios.com and others but could not find the bios update or i might be missing some info. pls can any one help on this issue.

Thanks for your precious time and effort

rama

Tue Oct 07, 2003 10:22 am

That is a little puzzling because I would expect "C586 TX" to use the Triton TX chipset (2A59I) rather than the Mercury (2A597)

The Intel Mercury chipset consists of:
one 82434LX PCI/Cache/Memory controller (PCMC)
two 82433LX Local Bus eXtension (LBX) devices
and one 823781B System I/O (SIO) bridge chip.

Can you check what is written on the chips ?
Also, can you take a back-up of your BIOS ?

ramakrishna · Tue Oct 07, 2003 11:23 am

Thanks for your reply and time

Yes ! will check what is written on the chips. (Its my home pc)

Yes ! i can take the backup of the bios using the bioswirter utility from sourceforge.net

will proceed as u had suggested after verifing for the chips and backup

--
rama

Tue Oct 07, 2003 12:37 pm

Take a look at this page:
http://www.allproducts.com.tw/manufactu ... 586tx.html
which came from http://www.allproducts.com.tw/manufactu ... room2.html
Does this look like your board ?

ramakrishna · Tue Oct 07, 2003 1:28 pm

Hi,

YES ! It is the same Motherboard.

--
rama

ramakrishna · Thu Oct 09, 2003 9:23 am

Hi,

Flashed with Triton TX Chipset (2A59I) utility "B587" available at procomp drivers website.
bios flash went fine but of no use. Still am not able to get 40 GB Hard disk to recognise.

The motherboard has removable DIP AWARD BIOS CHIP Flash Type- WINBOND 29EE011 /5v
AWARD PCIPNP 586 S/N 113564619 @1997.
Is it possible to get/purchase the DIP BIOS CHIP for this MB ?

Any reference or help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your precious time and effort

--rama

Thu Oct 09, 2003 10:38 am

If that BIOS works OK for you (brave man) we can patch it. Watch your email....

Wed Oct 15, 2003 9:24 pm

@ramakrishna - did the patch work ?

ramakrishna · Thu Oct 16, 2003 9:07 am

Hi,

Am watching all my emails,

didn't receive the patch. or is it available at the site which am not aware of.

--
rama

Fri Oct 17, 2003 10:10 am

Well, it was sent from my Lycos account on 10th October, so I don't know what happened. I've now posted it at the "untested BIOS" link in my signature, so you can download it from there. Good luck!

Mon Oct 27, 2003 3:37 pm

In an email, Ramakrishna wrote:The Western digital HDD(40GB) is no more responding. I even shifted back to old bios but of no use.

I assume you have tried the old BIOS with the 32GB limit jumper ?

The patched bios recognises the disk as 8455MB ( i tried both manually
setting and also autodetect mode.)

This patch is to prevent hanging and does not fix bugs in calculating disk capacity.

But when i try to setup the disk(fdisk) The windows startupdisk says no fixed disks found. had even tried using cfdisk/diskdruid available on linux platforms. but couldn't able to setup the disk.

Which version of Windows ?

One interesting part i noticed on linux platform is am able to see the disk model and the physical/logical CHS information but could not either format or create new partitions.
I had even tried the diagnostic tools (data lifeguard tools) available on the Western digital support site. and have some options left to check before confirming whether the disk as gone kaput or any information am missing.

The information i have provided lacks tech issues like error types/CHS details and so ... .If u would like to know those details or any more info regarding the issue pls let me know.
Really appreciate your precious time and effort.

Thanks

ramakrishna

I can also patch with a different patcher, or patching only the
32GB bug, if you wish to try either of those options. These have been known to help.

Mon Oct 27, 2003 3:53 pm

Another issue: the bp patcher has highlighted the possibility that your HDD is running at a higher UDMA rate than your board supports. This can be fixed by using a utility from WD to set the UDMA rate to UDMA mode 2 (see Collected Wisdom, Links to UDMA (ATA) mode setting tools)
Alternatively, using the bp patched version can fix this in the BIOS.