promise ultra133 TX2 controller card problems?

[Edward2000]

Okay, this is driving me crazy. I recently purchased a segate 200 gig hard drive for my windows 98 second edition system (I am using a pentium III computer with a asus cusl2 motherboard). When I first installed the segate hard drive, I only could access the first 132 GIG.

Then I purchased the promise ultra 133 tx2 controller. Once the controller was installed, the computer saw the hard drive and reported that I could access 189 gigs of storage space on my new hard drive. However, the computer rebooted once windows 98 was starting up and went into safe mode.

I then deleted all of my windows 98 directories on my c drive and re-installed windows 98 second edition. Everything was okay, until I hit the part where I installed my sound blaster live gamer sound card (the original soundblaster gamer sound card, not the 5.1 gamer sound card). At that point, the computer rebooted successfully and when it tried to restart, it got to the windows 98 splash screen and rebooted itself again and returned to reboot and start in safe mode. No matter what IRQ setting I use, the computer reboots when it gets to the windows 98 splash screen.

From what I can tell when the computer starts, I have a soundblaster sound card, 3com 3c905 network card and promise mass storage device all using irq 9. The sound card, network card and controller card are listed by a generic device name at the start up of my computer and it lists what irqs are being used by what device. I had a simular problem with my system before when I was using the soundblaster card and my network card. When I placed the two devices in slot 3 and slot 4 of my motherboard everthing cleared up, until I just added the promise card this weekend. I placed the promise controller in slot number two. I also have access to slot 4 or slot 5, I cannot remember exactly which one, but my last pci slots are currently covered by some usb ports and a com port that is setting over the covers of the last two slots. I also believe that there are isa slots at that end as well.

So my basic question is this: How do I get rid of conflict between my sound card and my new promise ultra133 TX2 controller card. If necessary, where should I be installing the promise card in my motherboard (ie: what slot to avoid irq conflicts). If it looks like an irq conflict, what can I do to get rid of the conflict (where should I setup the irqs (bios, operating system or somewhere else). Do I need to change any drivers or bios setttings on the promise card? Any advice would be of help at this point.

Edward Letendre.

[DMR]

I don't have time to do the research on the PCI/ISA structure of you particular mobo right now, but in general, the solution to PCI resource conflicts (IRQ, I/O address allocation) can unfortunately sometimes be a process of trial and error.

On that era of mobo, some of your PCI resources are almost certainly shared with the ISA slots and/or other system devices. The other issue is that your PCI slots themselves may be electrically broken down into more than one PCI bus. Especially given that the Promise controller is a bus-mastering device, I'd suggest that you first try different combinations of slot-ordering for all of your cards. For PNP PCI devices, this often forces the BIOS and/or operating system to realocate resources each time you do so; it's often just a matter of trying all possible combinations until you find a slot-ordering which eliminates the resource conflicts.

[Catweazle]

There's also the point you can get to where the constant fiddling to get things working is enough to convince you that perhaps it's time to upgrade some components! That motherboard might still be working, but with ISA slots on it the thing is a relic! If that Soundblaster is an old ISA card, then it may be a treasured old friend, but the cheapest of PCI soundcards will do a better job that it!

As DMR stated, getting it to work is a trial and error process. Reset CMOS between changes, and don't make too many of them without helping Windows out by performing a format and fresh install. Piling mess upon mess in the form of system setup changes takes its toll after a while.