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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?"
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.
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
Firstly, should this really be posted on /. ? This is a support/hardware forum posting.
/. Now I know to research IDE bootability before I buy my next mobo, whereas before, I would have taken it for granted since it's something I've been able to do for well over a decade.
Yes. It's definitely news for nerds. I'm a pretty big nerd, and I wouldn't have known about this had it not shown up on
Firstly, should this really be posted on /. ?
I believe it should. Reading all the comments so far, I've found out there's a feature-lacking controller chipset that at least one motherboard manufacturer uses without labelling this boot "feature" in a clear way on the packaging (without having to break the seals). I do buy motherboards on occasion, and I sure would have been frustrated to find this out on my own. If this is a new trend, then I prefer to hear about these kinds of issues beforehand.
Many times, what one thinks is a trend or a common way of thinking is news to everybody else. I had one slashdotter reply to me not long ago saying that IPMI was a standard now. Funny how that is, since I deal with Sun, HP, and IBM servers, and none of them use Intel's IPMI spec, at least as far as remote management is concerned. I don't think he meant to troll, I just think he got caught up in his own corner -- as probably happens to me in other areas too.
To me, this type of discussion is valuable. Many (most? almost all?) people still use PATA devices, and PATA devices are still being sold right alongside the SATA devices (and still possibly in greater quantities for PATA). There are a lot of people affected by this "trend" and possibly directly affected by this chipset.
'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.
Bootability is not a function of the chip used, but depends on bios support alone. You can boot off anything, as long as there is code in the bios or an option rom that presents the proper interface. It really doesn't matter behind what bridges a given chip is, or how broken it is. If it's on the mainboard, I'd expect the manufacturer to implemnt the proper workarounds if it's broken. There are enough boards out there that can boot off jMicron IDE ports. This is just lazy and/or cheap from MSI.
If that were the case, how come so many random boards can boot from devices in PCI slots?
I have an Adaptec SCSI card and an SATA card in one of my machines (the latter because the mobo had a POS Sil 2114 that causes massive dta corruption), and it can boot off of those just fine. They are effectively random hardware dropped into the box, and the machine boots from them (ABit NF7-S v2)
I had another machine that could boot from both devices as well. I don't see why the fact that the controller is not built into the chipset should make it any less bootable.
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