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New Motherboards Disallowing IDE Booting?
wattsup asks: "It seems that bootable IDE ports are disappearing on newer motherboards. I recently purchased an
MSI G965M-FI motherboard for a system upgrade. Overall the board is pretty good with lots of features, but it had one unexpected 'feature' that I didn't know about when I bought it. The PATA100 IDE port won't allow you to install an operating system from an attached CD-ROM. Does anybody know if this is an issue that can be fixed by
upgrading the BIOS, or is this hard-wired into the IDE controller?"
"While its on their website, MSI doesn't tell you this on the retail packaging, until you break the seal on the static wrap and look at the motherboard. There, with a tiny label placed over the IDE connector, they inform you 'This IDE
does not support OS installation in hard drive'.
This made my out-of-box experience rather maddening, as I had to get a USB based CD-ROM to install a fresh copy of XP. This seems like a pretty lame way to save money, disabling functionality on an IDE port that's included. Some research shows me that other manufacturers are doing the same thing. Why?"
This made my out-of-box experience rather maddening, as I had to get a USB based CD-ROM to install a fresh copy of XP. This seems like a pretty lame way to save money, disabling functionality on an IDE port that's included. Some research shows me that other manufacturers are doing the same thing. Why?"
Yeah, I've yet to hear a 100% success story -- on Windows or Linux -- with those JMicron IDE controllers. They are absolute pieces of shit, and the drivers are even worse than the controllers.
Motherboards based on the intel 965 chipset do not have ide (pata) ports unless the mb maker adds a discrete chip. It then becomes a matter of cost to add simple ide support or a full blown ide host akin to a full scsi type host that supports booting.
As most boards are configured, the bios could boot off of an ide based DVD drive, but when the modern OS gets control, it will not see the ide ports since it isn't part of the chipset. Just like scsi needs drivers (or modules) loaded, the new ide will need these too. Ultimately, intel made the decision to use the pins needed for 2 separate ide ports for many more sata ports.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
On the MSI site you linked, it states "On-Board IDE (USB to IDE)
1 IDE port by JMicron JMB20335."
You can locate that part on JMicron's website
I haven't found a datasheet on it yet, but my assumption would be that chip doesn't allow booting. Essentially what you have is an MSI board without IDE support. Because that sucks, they integrated the JM20335, a USB to PATA bridge chip, much like what's likely used inside your USB CD-Rom drive. Unfortunately, it would seem this USB chip is non-bootable, like many USB Flash drives... Remember, I'm speculating on that outcome as I haven't found a datasheet.
To save a nickel a unit of course.
(Which is understandable given that they need to maximise profit and removing features that are almost unused in their target market is a good way to do it. Real engineers don't overspec!)
Beep beep.
Your mom selected my cable just last night and it was definitely enabled.
Firstly, should this really be posted on /. ? This is a support/hardware forum posting.
The answer is simply that the P965 chipset has no native PATA controllers in it and so motherboard manufactures provide support for these legacy interfaces (decided as legacy by Intel) through a 3rd party controller chip which is not controlled by the BIOS and requires device drivers to be used. Motherboard manufactures have realised the continued need for PATA ports which is why they are kind enough to provide the extra chip. So no BIOS update will fix this and yes it is a trend, pushed by Intel (and potentially other chipset manufacturers), which will continue. It could be considered that Intel's decision to drop PATA was a little premature due to the relative lack of SATA DVD drives, but DVD drive manufactures have said that the majority sold with finally be SATA by the second half of 07.
SATA optical drives have been around for a while, newegg has 15 different drives listed. Burners starting about $35US.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
Oh-no-he-di-ent!
Yes.
I don't know why they would disable booting from IDE, it seems rather lame, I wonder if booting from a pci card would work though, but, SATA DVD drives are pretty cheap, the SATA cable is smaller and allows for more air flow, plus it gives you a nice clean inside to look at through the window.
I know it's still stupid having to do it in the first place, but couldn't you just use an internal drive with a PATA-to-SATA connector?
Well, given that, it's only offensive and not horribly stupid. One of the best things about PC hardware is the amazing backwards compatibility...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
which is the same thing the posted indicated was on the sticker.
MSI didn't just update because of a
Just remember - if the world didn't suck, we would all fall off.
I wanted to add a 5.25" floppy B drive to my new Intel Core 2 Duo system, and the bios doesn't even recognize it! What will I do now if I need to read something from a 5.25" floppy?
Why not pick up a SATA CD/DVD drive? You can probably get an unboxed OEM for about $30. You might also be able to get a SATA -> IDE adaptor, but I don't have any experience with them.
It's very difficult to be backwards compatible with everything. Ignoring cost, it adds complexity and difficulty to the development process; and could potentially reduce reliability. As another poster in the thread added, Intel decided to go for more SATA ports in the chipset.
Let's face it, it's 2007, and IDE is quickly on its way out. Why should we hamper a chipset with functionality needed so that you can save $30?
I do empasize with you. This weekend I picked up a Mac Pro, and much to my surprise, I can't run dual monitors unless both are digital. (I can't bear to part with my 17" CRT.) I tried transfering my PCI video card from my old desktop, but it seems that the Mac Pro doesn't use PCI.
Now if I could only get Windows Vista to run on my P100!
No, I will not work for your startup
I've had something similar on an IBM xSeries (quite an old bit of kit) which was designed for SCSI drives. A small copy of lilo or grub on a boot floppy set to chainboot hd(0,0)/hda5 sorted it out, though.
Well, it's not entirely MSI's fault as Intel dropped PATA from the chipset--which saves a LOT of pins that can be used for other things or make the Southbridge a lot smaller. MSI probably should have used an IDE to SATA bridge chip instead of an IDE to USB bridge chip, though, as that could have been transparent to the rest of the system, though it would have wasted probably 2 SATA ports. It's a trade off...
Yeah, I've yet to hear a 100% success story -- on Windows or Linux -- with those JMicron IDE controllers. They are absolute pieces of shit, and the drivers are even worse than the controllers.
I recently tossed a pair of USB external HD enclosures, with JMicron chips on the bridge boards, in the trash. Under heavy load the USB device would just drop off the bus. Warning: JMicron inside.
Me, throwing away hardware - that's pretty rare (ask my wife - the one time I throw away hardware it's because they hosed her photo album - she can't win). Also, lesson learned: don't run RAID on two of the same bridge chips - they're likely to fail at the same time.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The cost?
Roughly $30 to $40 for the low end models and around $100 for the high end.
are they still have at least 1 ide port as part of the chip set.
Many games nowadays block all non-IDE CD-ROMs, as VirtualCDs tend to be all SCSI drives.
Well SATA CDs are SCSI too (IIRC). What happens as games refuse to recognize your perfectly normal SATA DVD drive? And, of course, the game publishers response will be to go F' yourself
meantime, booting from floppy disk still works ...
That assumes that your BIOS will let you boot from the SATA CD-ROM.
The dogcow says "Moof!"
Normally, I wouldn't stoop to grammar nazi status, but I simply couldn't help myself.
:)
If you had a lisp and tried to say "empasize", you would likely pronounce it "empathize". However, in this case "empathize" is indeed the correct word, which means, strangely enough, that the you had amazingly applied a reverse lisp to the word.
Anyway, sorry about being off-topic, but it was just too entertainingly fantastic to overlook.
I just picked up a SATA CD/DVD burner for $38 on newegg.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I mean, I've had this 20 meg MFD drive for like 15 years now, why can't modern computers keep up with something so simple!?
Honestly here, IDE(PATA) is a dieing format. It has a competitor that is just as cheap and even better performing. A new 250GB SATA hard drive and SATA CD/DVD burner can be yours for just over $100.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Alternatively, go grab Smart Boot Manager and avoid messing with configuring lilo/grub/whatever.
SBM pulls up a nice list of every bootable device on your system (including ones that aren't supported by the BIOS), and lets you boot from them.
Been looking forward to boards that don't have obsolete parallel connectors all over. Manufacturers; you can stop putting these connectors on new designs altogether. Don't even bother with some deprecated non-bootable vestige connectors. Just drop them. You could probably have stopped two years ago, although SATA DVD/CD-ROM drives did take a while to become widely available.
As for those who choose to insist on nursing obsolete drives; older designs will continue to remain available for what should be sufficient time. If you're really bent on running old drives with new motherboards you can also get a PCI adapter. You can also get PATA-to-SATA adapters. Don't bother; fast, reliable SATA drives are so cheap today you really shouldn't be puttering around with obsolete drives.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
Actually guys, most "SATA" chipsets out there do not conform to the Advanced Host Controller Interface standard. Instead, they show up as IDE controllers to all concerned software. All that changed was the interface between the drive and the board going serial instead of parallel. Chips that do support AHCI are generally set into "compatibility mode" that makes them show up as normal old-school IDE controllers. The AHCI spec supports things like NCQ (yep, you only THOUGHT hooking a NCQ drive to a SATA port on a MOBO gave you that functionality,) etc. Software support is sorely lacking. You're bashing Jmicron, however, you should be aware that it's the software that needs work. I can only think of two AHCI capable chips off the top of my head. Not very many. They need to become more ubiquitous before you start seeing support for them that does not suck. Plus AHCI was designed by intel (who wants you to license it from them WTF?), and all four-letter capitalized specs they've ever released have been pure brain damage.
I've looked around on newegg a bit and didn't find anything, but are there any ATX boards with a socket AM2 that have NO PATA ports? The only thing I have that uses them is a CD-ROM, which I can quite easily convert/replace with an SATA. I'd really like to find a board that lacks any PATA ports to simplify my cabling. :)
bork bork bork!
'Well, given that, it's only offensive and not horribly stupid. One of the best things about PC hardware is the amazing backwards compatibility...'
It's still horribly stupid. There are SATA optical drives but there is no particular reason for a normal pc user to use them. Or to use SATA for that matter. Most people only have one HDD and one optical drive, you don't really benefit from SATA under those conditions. It's especially annoying because most boards only give you two SATA ports.
or firewire to IDE
The SATA devices have achieved and in some cases surpassed the price-performance ratio of PATA devices, and they have a smaller cable. That alone is reason enough to go to SATA.
But as I am sure you will agree, that doesn't help or make you happy if you have a bunch of PATA devices you want to move into a new system, and have to go out and buy a PCI PATA card because the onboard stuff has less functionality than the previous generation.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Since when is George W. Bush conservative?
Thanks for the corrections guys, like I said, the damn thing is ancient, and my memory for acronyms is limited ;)
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
You've got back-ups on audio cassette, right? Try those.
Just, not in the floppy drive.
I mean, I've had this 20 meg MFD drive for like 15 years now, why can't modern computers keep up with something so simple!?
The last time I tried that, the 2.2 kernel saw and used the drive. I'm glad it did, because that made the final backup a single 20 mb file instead of a bunch of floppies.
I don't mind hardware makers abandoning hardware, so long as they are not secretive about the new hardware. Unfortunately, SATA makers have been not shared and there are many problems with SATA for GNU/Linux. This secrecy is a M$ move to make free software that much more difficult, just like winmodems, wifi cards and ACPI, the next BIOS and many other barriers to your software freedom.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
My desktop's floppy controller doesn't even have the circuitry for a second drive. They're not even saving a nickel there. It probably reduces the amount of silicon by a small fraction of a cubic millimeter (~1/3?). (What is the going rate for pure silicon these days anyway?)
☠
What I want to know is, given the wide use of USB flash drives and CDs/DVDs (all of which can be booted off), why motherboard manufacturers even bother with supporting ONE floppy drive. I haven't had a floppy drive in my machine for years now. Is the market for "people who want both the latest and greatest motherboard AND a floppy drive" that great? Are there operating systems in current use that will refuse to function without a floppy disk controller?
Does it work as an A drive?
;)
hehe was actually planning on setting one up this way.
But, yes, the B-drive went away some time ago. No idea why they stopped supporting 2, they still have a connector/controller for one so they can't be saving anything.
The ones that only recognize one drive will recognize the old floppy-based tape drives given the 'right' drivers and programs (that they took out of windows XP) Hehe, impressed myself by getting the old tape to work under winXP then I (me myself and I, not MS) decided it wasn't needed
Since when is George W. Bush conservative?
The second god "told him" to go to war, and all the conservatives lined up to vote for him.
While you are at it, tell them we'd like A: and B: back to use for something other than a floppy.
I love my silent machines running pata to compact flash !
Why should I give them up in the name of progress ?
For the sake of a dollar or two more on the end price of the board they could have made it bootable.
My money will be with whichever manufacturer understands this concept (yeah right), until such time as SATA compact flash units are cheaply available (yeah right).
Time to stockpile some "open" hardware methinks.
I think intel pulled a gutsy move (maybe a little premature) by hacking off the IDE parts of the mainboard.
You can get around this with the F8 key on your keyboard and a floppy disk drive and the right drivers for the JMicron controller.
Or, if you're using Vista, you can use a USB thumb drive for the drivers.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
Sadly, there are no SATA slot-loading DVD burners. Plextor has slot-loading, and SATA, but not in the same drive.
It's like they think these are special features for weirdos, not high-end / new features people expect from drives.
So yeah, I can get a SATA drive, if I want to jump (technologically) into the past.
You *want* slot loading? I'll put up with it on laptops in place of that flimsy "tray", but I wouldn't want a slot-loading drive on any machine with enough space for a realy tray. Of course, I also liked CD caddys and owned a DVD-RAM drive before DVD-RW was available, so maybe I'm biased toward cased media formats (which don't get along well with modern slot-loading optical drives for obvious reasons).
Prior to Vista Windows only allows you to load additional install time drivers from floppy. This is important if you want to use the RAID capabilities of most modern chipsets.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
pc's are the klunkiest way to play games, period.
go to consoles, they dont make you jump through hoops, and when you need to reload you wont get killed because you accidentally hit the useless key next to the one with reload bound to it.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
This may not work with your board, but might be worth a try.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
My thoughts exactly.
What a silly question, no?
2^3 * 31 * 647
Umm... I happen to have the MSI 965P-NEO motherboard. I don't know about the differences between the two, but I have my DVD drive set to master (not cable select) and am perfectly able to boot from it.
Of course, the difference may be in the controllers, but I doubt it..
I personally have some software that is only supposed to use floppies, and always references the a: drive. I lack a floppy drive and set up my 256 flash drive to have the drive letter a:, and ever since, I have always had a perfectly working "floppy."
That does NOT make him a conservative any more than you handing out tuna treats to the neighborhood feline's makes you a cat. (it does make the voters appear stupid however)
'Other than more efficient air circulation within the chassis? There was never an official spec for rounded parallel ATA cables.'
Unless you are overclocking it really doesn't make a difference. You can run a modern processor on a stock fan without a chassis cooler and everything will run within acceptable operating temperatures.
Besides, those who say that SATA cables are smaller and better for airflow may be forgetting that you need twice as many cables with SATA.
What is an IDE controller on a SATA board for, if not for the CDRom to install the system? Am I supposed to hook the data HD there, or what else is that slow ass bus good for in a system like that?
Bonus for another 50: If people go cheap on the mainboard, you think they have extra money for new hardware? Or why do you think they took the cheaper mainboard in the first place?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
And slot-loading drives will choke on non-standard-sized CDs, such as the 200M CDs you often get with drivers on them. Why would anyone deliberately buy a CD drive that cannot handle every CD?
Get a cheap small USB key and boot from that into grub. Using grub you can then daisy-chain boot into your IDE drive.
PATA: wide, flat cable for data + bastard MOLEX power cable = 2 cables.
SATA: small, narrow cable for data + (easy SATA | bastard MOLEX) power cable = 2 cables.
It's two cables either way. The exception is optical drives with an analog audio cable (for three total cables), and that works the same for both types of IDE optical drives. That said, you're absolutely correct about stock parts and thermal performance. Use a decent case and you'll be way ahead of the game anyway.
There is currently no good reason to disallow booting from PATA drives of any sort. Maybe in 5-10 years, once the vast majority of PATA devices have died and are replaced by SATA versions, it will be worthwhile to delete the PATA controllers entirely. Until then, don't screw around with basic functionality. Either have a fully functional controller or none at all, but don't half-ass it in an attempt at forcing hardware upgrades.
-1 raving lunatic; +6 subGenius... Things even out...
PATA: wide flat cable that supports two device per cable.
SATA: small, narrow cable that supports one device per cable.
spot-on... that'll teach me to think before typing.
Good luck on the ongoing troll hunt, too.
As for the issue at hand, I've read through more comments and such, and my opinion is the same. If a motherboard manufacturer is unable or unwilling to do what is necessary to make their pata ports bootable (directly, out of the box, no floppys, no workarounds), then don't include them in the first place. Deleting the pata pins (and controller) in favor of several sata connections is a great idea, so long as it's made obvious that it is a sata-only board. If a mobo-maker wants to add a controller chip after the fact, it needs to work the same way any other controller would (read: bootable).
Sure, there will be adapters and hardware workarounds to allow booting from pata, and there are sata optical drives available. That's not the point. The complaint is that it's harder or more expensive, not that it's impossible.
-1 raving lunatic; +6 subGenius... Things even out...
The funniest part is, unless you got some wierd motherboard with a Floppy-to-USB converter, the Floppy/COM port/LPT port/hardware monitor/fan controlling SuperIO chipset that you have on almost every mid to high range motherboard, is still compatible with a 5¼" drive, and with the correct software (say Linux) can still read standart floppies, but also esotheric formats.
All this in 2007.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I'm still grumpy about disappearing serial ports on new laptops. USB-serial adapters are a bandaid.
Trolling is a art,
I own a Wii, you insensitive clod! :P
-Pope Peter Porker, S.O.W., K.M.K.R., U.G.O.A., F.S.G.S.D.
And it's easier for air to flow around two small, narrow cables than around one wide, flat cable, especially if the wide, flat cable has to be stretched across the entire front of the case to fit both a hard drive an an optical drive.
... for buying MSI.
I've used other motherboards with the JMicron controller, and while they are as buggy as you can imagine, the motherboards allowed installing the OS from an optical drive on that controller.
It's not a controller issue, it's likely a BIOS issue.
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
maybe you haven't bought a board in a while. New motherboards have at least 4 SATA ports now, with 6 being more common. My mini form factor board has 6. On another note, I'm not sure if the submitter actually tried to install an OS with that IDE port. I've seen the same warning but had no trouble booting off of the drive. It did detect it as a usb device, which was odd... but it did work normally.
When I built my last computer (about 2 years ago, I'll admit!) I thought exactly the same... Who needs a floppy drive? I haven't used one for years! Then I tried to install Windows. Turns out XP requires you to give it drivers for SATA hard drives during installation, and the only way it'll accept them is on a floppy disk. Cue rummaging around my old computer to pull the floppy drive out. I'm aware (now!) that it's possible to slipstream the drivers onto the install CD, and that it's better to use Linux anyway, but the need is still there. I actually switched from XP to Ubuntu about 8 months ago, and gave that computer to my girlfriend about 2 days ago. The disk with the XP sata drivers was still in the floppy drive (poking out) - so whilst I agree that floppy drives are virtually useless, there does appear to be that one place left where it's required.
What about good ol' PCI to IDE? There's lots of chips for that. They're eliminating PCI slots on the motherboard anyway, so why not stick one of these chips on there?
I have an MSI P965 Platinum board and the cd drive attached to the JMicron IDE bridge is perfectly bootable and usable in Linux. The catch is finding a Linux livecd with support for the chip after the OS takes over; support for the JMB361 chip only seems to exist in very recent kernels. Any USB disks/cd drives attached to the motherboard USB are also bootable, so if you have an external CD this isn't a problem for installing. Haven't tried Windows and I have no intention to.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10);'
It's just a broken design.
This is just like a few machines I've had come in where I work. They came stock with a USB keyboard but have PS/2 ports on them. However, PS/2 keyboards will not work in the BIOS on these machines! This stunned me.. I expect a USB keyboard not to work in the BIOS on older machines, but PS/2? I have seen machines with no PS/2 ports, but if the port is there it ought to be fully functional.
Now, MSI does mention the PATA port's problem on the motherboard description, so I don't consider it deceptive on the part of MSI or anything, but it's most definitely a broken design.
'And it's easier for air to flow around two small, narrow cables than around one wide, flat cable, especially if the wide, flat cable has to be stretched across the entire front of the case to fit both a hard drive an an optical drive.'
/floppy drives and those don't present much of a heat problem (contrary to what cooling solutions marketers want you to believe).
Yes, but what are you obstructing airflow to? The only thing that gets poor air circulation due to an ide cable is the HDD/optical
Unless you have 3 or 4 high speed hard drives in your case then an IDE cable allows plenty of air flow to the drives. My argument is supported by the fact that no drive that wasn't wedged between two others ever failed because of a heat problem. Optical drives don't really get that hot and hard drives fail due to mechanical problems before a little heat becomes a problem. Your heat is primarily generated by your video card and cpu and an IDE cable isn't going to interfere with routing that heat out of your case. When the air is expelled out of the top of the rear of your case then fresh cool air will be pulled (without needing a fan there) from the BOTTOM front of your case where there are vents. The IDE cables are in the top front of the case so they don't obstruct airflow there either.
People go overboard with cooling these days. A stock fan, power supply with fan, and a rear mount case fan is enough for anyone who isn't overclocking or using a raid and/or server tower. In most server towers you would need to install an additional fan in the lower front of the case and that will be more than adequate.