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Old July 27th 04, 09:55 PM
S. Lipson
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patrick wrote in message .. .
S. Lipson wrote:
I have a 3 or 4 year old PC, home-built. Windows 98se, AMD 1.3 ghz, 3
hard drives (10g AT66, 180g ATA100 and 250g ATA133). The large hard
drives are attached to a Promise Ultra card. ECS motherboard.

For quite a while (and since reinstalling all peripherals, OS, etc)
I've had a mysterious problem -- when there is no mouse attached to
the PS/2 port, the system (and Promise bootup sequence) does not
recognize the 180g hard drive, which is configured as the primary
drive on the Promise ATA100 card. The 10g hard drive is the primary
boot drive I usually use.

With no mouse attached, the system freezes when the Promise bootup
sequence tries to find the 180g drive which is configured as the
primary drive on the first ATA100 channel. After attaching a PS/2
mouse, the PC boots fine. Has anybody ever experienced this or knows
what causes this?

TODAY I have a much bigger problem, which is related -- something
seems to have gone wrong with my PS/2 port. None of my PS/2 mice work
in the PS/2 port, and so the 180g hard drive is not recognized at all.
(The PS/2 port has had a rather insecure connection to the USB/PS2
adapter hooked to the mouse.) The system will boot normally -- but
only sees the 10g and 250 hard drives. I have a boot drive /
partitioning program active "BOOT IT" (similar to "Partition Magic"),
and this program also now does not see the 180g hard drive.

Attaching a USB mouse to a USB port gives me a working mouse, but
still no 180g hard drive is recognized.

Any helpful advice is appreciated.


Re-load the Promise ATA card drivers!

You are experiencing IRQ resource conflicts.

And, without the ATA card, your system cannot see the large hard drive!


Thanks for responding.
I have two large hard drives attached to the Promise Ultra100 card --
180gb and 250gb. The Promise card has two channels (2 cable
connections), and I've connected each hard drive on its own channel
(each is a Master). The Promise UltraATA100 driver recognizes the
250gb drive but not the 180gb drive.
I have tried switching hard drives and cables in every combination --
using both drives and each one separately. In every test, the 180gb
drive is not recognized by the BIOS (or anything else). The 250gb is
recognized and functions properly in every test. The Promise ATA
driver uses IRQ 5.
Because of this I might guess that the ATA driver is not the problem.
But should I try reinstalling it anyway?

If the BIOS doesn't recognize the hard drive, is this a physical
problem with the hard drive?