6BX7+ & Raid - Anyone modded the bios ?
 

The promise udma66 controller on the 6BX7+ can be modded to support raid.
I'm just wondering if anyone has done this and if there is a modded bios out
there I can use.

Regards,

Adrian.

Adrian Foster wrote:
The promise udma66 controller on the 6BX7+ can be modded to support
raid. I'm just wondering if anyone has done this and if there is a
modded bios out there I can use.

Regards,

Adrian.

Adrian,

I've had success in modifying the BIOS on my 6BX7+ to use the latest code
for the onboard ATA66 controller. From my notes, I used CBROM, V1.3 to
remove and install the updated Promise code, and MODBIN77 to update the BIOS
string shown at startup. There may be other programs out on the net to
use - from my notes, MODBIN77 only worked on Windows 9x, and not on
Win2K/XP.

Never tried the hardware mod to convert the controller over to RAID - I only
run one hard drive on my 6BX7+ so I don't have the need.

I did the mod of my BIOS back in 2001, and the board has been running fine
24/7 since then as a firewall.

Bob

"Bob"

Thanks.

Did modding the bios make a difference ?

I've recently found (after moving stuff around on other machines and buying
a couple of new larger drives) that I have 2 spare 80Gb maxtors so was
contemplating setting up a raid array and using the machine as a file
server. I (I expect like you) find the 6BX7+ the most reliable board I have
ever owned.

Regards,

P.S. I've recently found Raid 0 (striping arrays) are so fast.
wrote in message
. ..
Adrian Foster wrote:
The promise udma66 controller on the 6BX7+ can be modded to support
raid. I'm just wondering if anyone has done this and if there is a
modded bios out there I can use.

Regards,

Adrian.

Adrian,

I've had success in modifying the BIOS on my 6BX7+ to use the latest code
for the onboard ATA66 controller. From my notes, I used CBROM, V1.3 to
remove and install the updated Promise code, and MODBIN77 to update the
BIOS
string shown at startup. There may be other programs out on the net to
use - from my notes, MODBIN77 only worked on Windows 9x, and not on
Win2K/XP.

Never tried the hardware mod to convert the controller over to RAID - I
only
run one hard drive on my 6BX7+ so I don't have the need.

I did the mod of my BIOS back in 2001, and the board has been running fine
24/7 since then as a firewall.

Bob

Adrian Foster wrote:
"Bob"

Thanks.

Did modding the bios make a difference ?

I've recently found (after moving stuff around on other machines and
buying a couple of new larger drives) that I have 2 spare 80Gb
maxtors so was contemplating setting up a raid array and using the
machine as a file server. I (I expect like you) find the 6BX7+ the
most reliable board I have ever owned.

Regards,

P.S. I've recently found Raid 0 (striping arrays) are so fast.

Adrian,

The only difference I saw was the Promise banner at boot-up now showed V2.0,
the latest (last) version of the ATA66 BIOS. From digging around on the net
and newsgroups, the older version in the Gigabyte BIOS had some hard drive
size limitations (32 G?) that were fixed in V2.0. I run the Promise ATA66
PCI cards in a couple of computers, so I wanted my 6BX7+ to match the other
computers/cards, in case I ever did a switch of motherboards. Right now I
have a 20 Gbyte hard drive on my 6BX7+, and it's been fine as a firewall.

I was happy to have the dual BIOS feature of the 6BX7+ while I tried the
modifications; if something didn't work out, I could switch back to the old
version.

My 6BX7+ has been very stable over the years; the only problem I had with it
I caused myself. Turns out PCI slot 3 shares an interrupt with the onboard
Promise controller. I had a network card plugged into slot 3, and my
firewall box (Win2K Server) would stop responding. Once I moved the NIC
card to a different slot, it's been fine.

Regards,
Bob.

Thanks.

I was forever put off Abit motherboards due to PCI cards sharing, it created
continual errors and left me wondering why 6 pci slots were fitted when only
3 of them really "worked"

cheers,

Adrian.

"Bob" wrote in message
...
Adrian Foster wrote:
"Bob"

Thanks.

Did modding the bios make a difference ?

I've recently found (after moving stuff around on other machines and
buying a couple of new larger drives) that I have 2 spare 80Gb
maxtors so was contemplating setting up a raid array and using the
machine as a file server. I (I expect like you) find the 6BX7+ the
most reliable board I have ever owned.

Regards,

P.S. I've recently found Raid 0 (striping arrays) are so fast.

Adrian,

The only difference I saw was the Promise banner at boot-up now showed
V2.0,
the latest (last) version of the ATA66 BIOS. From digging around on the
net
and newsgroups, the older version in the Gigabyte BIOS had some hard drive
size limitations (32 G?) that were fixed in V2.0. I run the Promise ATA66
PCI cards in a couple of computers, so I wanted my 6BX7+ to match the
other
computers/cards, in case I ever did a switch of motherboards. Right now I
have a 20 Gbyte hard drive on my 6BX7+, and it's been fine as a firewall.

I was happy to have the dual BIOS feature of the 6BX7+ while I tried the
modifications; if something didn't work out, I could switch back to the
old
version.

My 6BX7+ has been very stable over the years; the only problem I had with
it
I caused myself. Turns out PCI slot 3 shares an interrupt with the
onboard
Promise controller. I had a network card plugged into slot 3, and my
firewall box (Win2K Server) would stop responding. Once I moved the NIC
card to a different slot, it's been fine.

Regards,
Bob.