Problems installing an IDE/ATA controller

ren-uk · 05-28-2004, 03:59 AM

NetDemon:
The Mainboard I was using is EPOX 8KMM3I with AMI BIOS v6.00PG
8/23/2003 KM400-8235-6A6LYPANC-00
There is a more recent BIOS for this board & I have downloaded it but I don't think it will make any difference as the release notes do not mention anything relating to this issue.
I will say however that years ago I had a boot problem with windows (Linux was OK) using a SOYO board with certain hard drive types (some did work though) in combination with an LS120 drive. I emailed SOYO support about this & they sent me a custom patched BIOS that fixed the problem. The patch was incorporated in their next release.
So if you want to go the BIOS fix route which is probably a good idea as it is the root cause of the problem then i would contact support at your mainboard manufacturer (both locallly & at their HQ but don't let one know the other has been contacted in case they assume the other will deal with it).
I haven't tried flashing the IT8212 BIOS as the release notes do not make any reference to fixing this problem.
I wouldn't be surprised if there will be a kernel patch for this as ITE do try to be cooperative with the Linux Community & the Kernel Crew have patched loads of other chipset / controller bugs in the past. Certainly there is talk regarding the IT8212 in kernel dev lists but I can't remember if there's anything specific to this problem.
Personally I need ACPI on for power button shutdown so I don't want want to turn off ACPI in the BIOS so pci=noacpi should give me the flexibility I need (although I haven't tested power button shutdown on this machine but am fairly confident it will work).
Thanks for the CompUSA link - I'm not in U.S. but it still can be very helpful to know what cards work well.

IT8212 - CDROM issue:
I feel sure I read somewhere that the IT8212 controller is specifically for use with hard drives & not CDROM drives. I can't remember if this is IT8212F or IT8212 in general. I know these cards are sold as RAID cards & also as IDE cards & it would seem fairly reasonable to expect an IDE card to operate with any normal IDE device (although a card that is specifically RAID might not be expected to do so). I can think of no specific hardware reason for this not to be implemented on a straight IDE card but would suspect it to be the BIOS is written that way - at best it will cause performance hits on RAID & it would also be much simpler to keep to just hard drives.

linuxhaxz · 05-29-2004, 02:01 PM

edit: neva mind........

Goala · 05-30-2004, 04:25 AM

Finally I've followed the steps indicated in http://www.passys.nl/tips/ite_kernel_image_compile.txt (those referents to 2.6 kernel) using the ITE sources from http://www.ite.com.tw//productInfo/Download.html (search the "Linux Driver (ATAPI, RAID)" string into the page to go the exact link).

I've integrated the IT8212 support into the kernel 2.6.6-smp and everything runs flawlessly.

Thank you very much for your help !!

Y0jiMb0 · 05-30-2004, 10:59 AM

Quote:

Hi Y0jiMb0,

hummm... you should be able to I have 3 or 4 of these controllers between work and home and I'v hooked CD-Rom's / DVD-Rom's / CD-RW to all of them.

In your case though... something seems to be wrong. The bios "should" be detecting any IDE device you put on the IDE chain.
The only thing I can think of that might be causing it not to detect is if you have both drives on a single chain set as master or both as slave. Or... the device might be bad?? Does it work on another IDE controller??

check these couple of things and post back.... because the controllers on board bios should be finding any devices...

Hi!
Thanks for the comment.
I checked out what you said: the device is well connected, the jumper is ok, I tried a lot of combinations of everything (master, slave, two devices in one chain, every device in its own chain...) and no way; it doesn't work

In fact bios seems to complain at boot time if the device isn't well connected, so it's difficult to make mistakes in that.
BTW, the device works like a charm in the onboard controller.

Quote:

Hola Y0jiMb0 ¿que tal?. First, my IT8212 is a PCI card (it is not integrated in the motherboard like yours, isn't it? but I think there is not any difference). In my tests I attached a cdrom to the card (it was the only device connected) and the it8212 didn't recognize it, at least it didn't show the unit at the boot post.

I've seen in the ITE web: http://www.ite.com.tw//productInfo/Download.html an ATAPI BIOS (for ATAPI device) update. There is another update for the RAID BIOS (for RAID, IDE). Perhaps you need to update the bios with that first file to make it recognize the cdrom . Although probably this will cause the raid (and non atapi devices?) stop to run. You should ask ITE client support about it.

Bye.

Hola, ¿qué tal por Mérida?
Well, first of all thank you.
I also have a PCI controller (it isn't onboard). I also saw that files in ITE's site, however, I'm not sure about what to do. Is that way (I mean bios updating) reversible? May I change back if anything goes wrong?

BR and thanks again in advance!

netdemon · 05-30-2004, 11:14 AM

Y0jiMb0: Do you have the ATAPI card, or the RAID card? There are two different ITE 8212F cards.

Y0jiMb0 · 05-30-2004, 11:33 AM

Hi, thanks for the quick reply!
How can I find out that?

I mean, the box seems to be generic, and the card doesn't "say" anything (Does it?Where?). I guess it is RAID because the bios only talks about RAID

, but it could be that I have the wrong bios...
The box reads: "Supports ULTRA ATA 133/100/66/33, EIDE/FAST ATA2 IDE & ATAPI devices" and "Compliant with Pc97 and ACPI specifications, up to 4 IDE/ATAPI devices", it says as well that it is ATA 133 and RAID".
Regards

Goala · 05-31-2004, 06:18 AM

Y0jiMb0, [por Mérida bien gracias, aunque ahora vivo/trabajo en Madrid]

Well I have the Raid card. I don´t know if the chipsets in the raid & atapi cards are the same and if both firmware bios's are updatable with either the raid or the atapi bios file. I don't know if the process is reversible (although it should be).

You must ask ITE client support.

Bye.

netdemon · 05-31-2004, 11:44 AM

I have the ATAPI card and BIOS update failed on two computers, making me think their update utility is screwed up. Has anyone with the ATAPI card successfully updated their BIOS?

Y0jiMb0 · 06-05-2004, 01:56 PM

Quote:

You must ask ITE client support.

So I did. I explained the problem and they finally answered me. This is a verbatim copy of their answer:

Quote:

Dear Sir:
Please attenion:
1.Raid just connect to R/W Device(Only HDD,CD Writer or DVD Writer not support)
2.If you want to IDE extend function, you are used to ATAPI Function(Pure IDE)

Best Regards,
itesupport

So, if I didn't understand bad, what is supposed I have to do is to change my firmware to ATAPI, haven't I?
I tried this. I changed the firmware with no luck

It gave me error.

Now I don't know how to continue.

Any idea?
TIA

Regards.

netdemon · 06-05-2004, 10:23 PM

I got the firmware error too. They sent me a new utility, but I haven't tried it.

Email me at netdemonz at no spam yahoo dot com and I'll forward them to you to test out.

Y0jiMb0 · 06-06-2004, 01:34 PM

Hi again!

Quote:

I got the firmware error too. They sent me a new utility, but I haven't tried it.

Email me at netdemonz at no spam yahoo dot com and I'll forward them to you to test out.

I got two files from netdemon (thanks again):

Code:

FLASH14C.EXE
FLASH200.EXE

which are versions 1.4C and 2.0 of "ITE IDE RAID ROM UPDATE UTILITY".
This is what I did:
I booted with msdos floppy (damn! cannot it be done without M$ stuff???); I tried both files: NOTHING!
I tried the utility downloadable from ite site as well: NOTHING!
(I checked out every posibility I could imagine combining flash utilities and both "RAID BIOS (for RAID, IDE)" and "ATAPI BIOS (for ATAPI device)": NOTHING)

When I wrote NOTHING I mean everything is the same as before: CD writer is missing at boot time and no change occurs in firmware version of ITE bios. It always says

Code:

IT8212 RAID Bios V1.4.1.6 F/W ver 02093030

BTW, the v2.00 of this "ITE IDE RAID ROM UPDATE UTILITY" seems to be very bad, at least this is what it says; whenever I ran it I got a couple of errors: this is the output:

Code:

>> Detect IT8212/8211 IDE RAID CHIP .......[ OK ]
>> Input update file [int13h.bin] ........ [ OK ]
>> Check input file ....... [ OK ]
>> Erase ....... [ OK ]
>> Blank check ....... [ FAIL ]
>> Program ....... [ OK ]
>> Verify ....... [ FAIL ]
>> Press any key to exit

It looks it cannot read in the bios

To me it doesn't matter if it'd work, but...

Version 1.4c of the utility seems to work quite well (no "FAIL" messages), however, it doesn't do anything, nothing changes when I boot again.

Any other idea?

I thought another possiblity: inside the RAID bios I can configure things; I have one place where it reads:

Code:

Auto configuration:
Setup array type as:

and then I have several choices: RAID0 or RAID1 or RAID0+1 or JBOD or Normal. I think I tried everything but maybe I have to change anything else; any idea about this?
TIA

Best regards, I'll keep "researching".

netdemon · 06-06-2004, 05:39 PM

Unfortunately, I have the ATAPI card, but it seems more like it is having problems writing. If it were writing properly, you wouldn't get the error message. I think their utilities are just screwed up. Did you try both putting on the ATAPI BIOS and updating your RAID BIOS? It might lock out the RAID BIOS from being installed on an ATAPI card, and vice/versa.

As I said, I got the Belkin ATAPI card, and all was good.

I'll see if I can get them to send me the source code for the update utilities so I/we can fix it. It should be easy to write from scratch, but I shouldn't have to do their work for them. Cross your fingers.

EHart7 · 06-06-2004, 09:27 PM

My IT8212 controler is integrated into a Giga-Byte 7N400Pro and Pro2 motherboard...
So I'm not really sure how your guys/gals firmware differs from mine.. BUT.. I do know that in my case there is just a simple option in my M.B. bios to change the function of the card between RAID or ATA. Now in the PCI version of this controler I would guess its not giong to be in the normal bios... but in the cards bios that pops up on boot... "IF" the setting is anywhere....

Like I said... this is just my 2 cents... but you might see if there is an option like this for the ppl who have the PCI version........

Good Luck...

netdemon · 06-06-2004, 10:00 PM

The PCI card does not have this setting.

fgmr · 06-08-2004, 02:01 AM

I have installed fedora core 2 (2.6.5) on a machine with a GA-8KNXP / GA-81875 Ultra motherboard, which has an integrated IT8212 controller. (I bought this board because it supports 12 ATA devices.)

I got the driver mentioned above to compile in the drivers/scsi/ directory, with some scary warnings (e.g. some pointer/int size mismatches, etc.).

I can insmod the module, but after probing the first couple disks, I start to get errors:

sdc: asking for cache data failed
sdc: assuming drive cache: write through

atkbd.c: Unknown key pressed (translated set 2, code 0x0 on isa0060/serio0).
atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes 00 <keycode>' to make it known.

and etc. for sdd, sde, sdf. (Devices sda and sdb are a different scsi chip on the motherboard.)

The drives work -- I can make and mount filesystems -- but all accesses keep triggering those atkbd.c errors on the console. This can't be good.

Any ideas? It sounds like an interrupt conflict or something, but I'm not seeing anything obvious (to me).

Thanks,
Frederick.