🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 28 Nov 1997 00:50:57 GMT, midigard@aol.com (Midgard) wrote:

>For months I've been listening to my brother boost about how lightning
>fast his standard EIDE hard drives are.  Claims it all depends the
>motherboard's controller on how fast a hard drive can get, up to the
>maximum rated speed for that drive of course.  Right now I'm using a
>486 VIP green Mainboard (M919) w/ an AMD P75 cpu & have *never* gotten

This model drive is available in TWO DIFFERENT copnfigurations
1) Mode 3 - Max of 11 MB/sec transfer..
	They were VERY buggy, I have had two replaced already.
2) Mode 4 replacements
	Again Buggy, this is not one of seagates better drives. It was
manufactured during the Conner buyout.

>more than 1,870 kb/sec using my Seagate ST-3851A HDD.  But you're
>always hearing about how these drives are capable of 16 MB/sec data
>transfer rates.  In a few weeks, I'll be upgrading to  a Socket 7
>mainboard with either an Intel 166MHZ MMX or AMD K6 166MHz.  

Forget it, it is just not worth it to try to keep this drive with
newer hardware.

Go out and get a 4.3 or larger UDMA drive. They are ALOT faster and
are Current technology, unlike the 4 year old drive you have.

>But I'd
>like to keep my present drive & want to know once and for all if it's
>actually possible to get the maximum rated speed for these "older"
>EIDE drives?  Is it, in fact, the controller on the motherboard that
>determines data transfer rates with hard disks?  
Yes it is the controller, but this ALONE does not control transfer
rate.

1) The BIOS must support UDMA - as it is handled differently than EIDE
or  ATA-2 drives.

2) The chipset that you are using MUST support it, and you MUST have
the proper Chipset drivers installed, so that the operating system
recognizes the chipset properly, and the correct drivers are loaded.

	Currently ONLY the Intel TX and VIA chipset support this. 
	
Rumor has it that the Pentium II chipset supports UDMA, but this has
yet to be proven, as the technology is to new to rate.

Their is a rumor that the SIS chipset supports this, but I don't
believe it, as I cannot find the UDMA software drivers or Chipset
drivers.

3) You must have the appropriate software drivers (IDE controller
drivers, and Chipset drivers)  installed to get MAXIMIUM transfer
rate. I use the Tritones UDMA drivers with MUCH success in all 16 of
my machines, both at home and at work. It has problems with certain
older IDE devices (such as Sony CD-ROM's) but with most newer stuff it
works OK.