AWARD BIOS v1.0a: boot problem. Message "LBA UDMA, 66&a

[tangerine83]

I am trying to boot from a CD in order to install my OS on C: drive.

The system starts to boot up and recognizes the primary master and also the CD drive with no problems.

Then the next screen is the "Award System Configurations" screen. The PC gets stuck here and there is a flashing cursor alongside the entry for "Pri. Master Disk: LBA UDMA, 66,"

It doesnt get any further. Any ideas what the problem may be?

The HD is a new Samsung SP1604N which works no problems as a slave on another machine.

I have AWARD BIOS v1.0a. The boot CD is also ok as it boots other machines with no problems. MOBO is Biostar M6VBE

I think it is some BIOS setting which is causing the problem with the HD.

Thanks for any help

[Denniss]

Your HDD is too large and your Bios has a bug detecting the correct size.
The easiest way to go around this is to limit your drive to report only 32GB to the Bios,that's enough to install your OS. All space above is available within your OS assuming you have Linux or W2K with SP4 or XP with SP1 or newer.

The other option is to get a newer Bios with the Bug fixed but you have to properly identify your mainboard. Especially the Biostar M6VBE series is problematic as there are three versions out each requiring a different Bios (2x M6VBE with different chipset, 1x M6VBE-A)

[tangerine83]

Thank you for your reply. I put the jumpers in to limit it to32gb, which got rid of that annoying error!

I have decided though I would still like to update the BIOS because I have also installed Ubuntu 8.10 onto an external USB drive which I would like to use on the old PC. The problem is I cant find any option to boot from USB in the AWARD v1.0a BIOS. I assume it's not there. I have looked everywhere.

1) Would upgrading my BIOS give me the option to boot from USB drive?

2) I tried to identify my MOBO and chipset as you described in your reply. At boot up I got the following string:

11/18/1999-693A-596-8671-2A6LGB09C-00

I checked out a site which you replied to in other posts ie
http://wims.rainbow-software.org/index. ... 0&count=10


But i could only see a BIOS ID string there without the A which I have (in bold above).

Is this the correct file I need?

Thank you again.

[Denniss]

Bios-ID points to a M6VBE-A - please verify this with a marking visible on your board.
The Bios you need is there:
ftp://ftp.biostar-usa.com/bios/M6VBE-A/Vbe0727a.bin
-> Please verify the file size of this file is 131072 Bytes after downloading, if the size differs please download again.

I have not seen any Award 4.51PG Bios offering a boot via removeable USB devices so don't hold your breath on this. It should fix the HDD issue though.

[tangerine83]

Ok I have verified the MOBO as you said. It is indeed a M6VBE-A. Thanks for that because the "A" at the end is barely visible!

I have downloaded the .bin file you linked to but the size is different to the 131072 bytes you listed. I downloaded it 5 times and each time it is 262144 bytes in size.

I assume this means I should not use it?

[cp]

i'd follow Denniss' recommendation to just set the 32GB limit jumper on the drive. the jumper setting really only affects the BIOS which is disabled by loading the kernel almost effectively after booting anyway. the kernel supports 48bit LBA and supports drives upto 144 Petabyte.
the only drawback (which isn't really one) is that you can only have a boot partition in the BIOS known space of 32GB. a 32GB boot partition should be enough even for Windows Vista.

my recommendation for the chipset as the BIOS programmers forgot about it: check if your RAM supports banks. if so you can set 4way interleaving giving you an extra 20% memory throughput for free. all you need is setpci. report back if you want to know more.

[Denniss]

Sorry - my fault with the filesize. I thought they used a 128K Bios on the M6VBE series.