P5B Deluxe: ICH8R AHCI + JMicron AHCI: how?

[__Miguel_]

Hi there. I'm having a problem with my P5B Deluxe, and even after searching through two forums (Asus and XS), I'm still at the starting point...

The thing is, I've already installed Windows XP with the ICH8R configured as AHCI. No problems there, I'm already used to it. During the install, JMicron was configured as IDE. I have two optical drives connected to the IDE port, from where the OS was installed. The BIOS is the latest (1004, if memory serves me right).

Now I wanted to change the JMicron to AHCI (eSATA hotplugging and NCQ), but I think I've hit a brick wall... No matter the configuration for JMIcron (AHCI or even RAID), I can't install the drivers. Sometimes it says the device can't access resources, sometimes the drivers can't install, there are even time it simply returns a "code 10" driver/device error... At one time, I had a list of around 8 different drivers to install (latest oficial, plus two recent ones directly from JMicron's website - one of them downloaded only a few hours ago)

I had to return the controller to IDE configuration (and manually install the "Standard Dual Channel IDE Controller") to get it working again...

Does anyone know how I can get that thing to work in IDE+AHCI mode (JMicron), along with AHCI in ICH8R?

Please help, I'm going nuts here...

Thanks in advance.

Cheers.

Miguel

[wazoo99]

Changing ACHI/RAID mode after the fact is really bad policy, especially if it is a booting (O/S) drive (blue screens - disappearing drives)

ACHI is "true" SATA (Enhanced)
You can have:
A.) IDE (SATA with PATA Emulation) (MS drivers) ("Legacy")
B.) ACHI (without RAID) - making this choice FORCES native "true" SATA (JMicron/Intel drivers) (F6 step)
C.) RAID SATA - native "true" SATA - allows ACHI (JMicron/Intel Matrix drivers) (F6 step)

You cant have B and C with A (JMicron controller)
You can have B without C
You cant have C without B

FWIW: ACHI is worthless in real life usage. Hot swapping is nice - but means nothing to me.

Intel made a horrible decision to eliminate IDE ports on ICH7-8 (R). Virtually all affordable optical drives are PATA. Where are the $35 DVD SATA buners?? Would they even function in a "true" SATA environment? Or drop to PIO mode? Or disappear?

If you delete JMicron controller from dev. manager, immediately reboot into bios, change to ACHI, boot into XP O/S that was installed with integrated SP2 on CD (dont even think about using SP0 SP1) and reload JMicron drivers, that port will then be in true mode.

Do not confuse your rinky dink JMicron controller with dual modes
Here is your $30 solution - a third controller, IDE only
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816102007

[Cappie]

What I find is that Intel indeed ed up major, they have 2 IDE/SATA ports on northbridge and 6 on southbridge, now people who want to use 1 IDE true ATA cdrom/dvdrom device on northbridge are screwed when using true SATA(read AHCI), cuz your cdrom won't work properly now, probably the reason why you'r getting all these errors, try burning off some cd's and see what I mean hehehehe. I just solve this problem by going RAID, its RAID FTW for me. You still have Hotswap with that if you'r smart(Intels Matrix Storage Manager has a nice feature of scanning for plug and play devices),



So if you'r working with caddies/mobile racks and thats the way to go AHCI sucks indeed compared to going south hehehe.

PS : In case you'r still confused, you could just slap 2 drives on RAID, and use the rest of those 4 ports on southbridge for your hotswap, they'll then just be running IDE(using windows SATA drivers@3.0Gbps). Wazoo's solution is a little cheaper though since it doesn't require an extra drive, while in my case scenario you won't need an extra PCI controller you just put your main IDE burner as master on the IDE cable and your secondary drive as slave on that same IDE cable(make sure to place the jumper to slave on that particular drive)

[__Miguel_]

I think I must have not expressed myself clearly enough. The ICH8R is and was configured as AHCI since the beginning, I never changed it. RAID wouldn't do me any good, I only have one internal HDD at the moment (I just got it, and buying another one is completely out of the question for now, buying this one left me almost broke ).

Also, F6-install problems arise when you change the driver for the controller where the system drive sits. Other controllers do not have this problem... I didn't have ANY BSODs while changing drivers. I simply don't know which drivers to install to make this work... If you tell me I can't have both the standard IDE driver for the IDE port and a SATA driver for the two extra SATA ports, that's ok, but I still want NCQ and hot-plugging on the eSATA port. I don't need hot-plugging for the internal ports I don't have neither the space nor the case to use it (though NCQ is great); I will be needing hot-plugging, however, for the eSATA port. That's where it makes more sense, and is most needed.

I haven't had any problems with IDE mode on the JMicron controller, every CD I burned was ok. I still haven't tried burning in AHCI simply because the drivers refuse to install/have weird issues when installed. That's what brought me here in the first place, I want to know which drivers I should use when in AHCI mode in the JMicron controller.

Man, this is giving me a headache already... All I want is flexibility. Intel definetely didn't do a very good job loosing the IDE connector on the ICH8. And Asus messed up too, the JMicron 383 controller is a pain in the ...

Any more ideas?

Cheers.

Miguel

[Cappie]

Well all I know is I had major issues with AHCI, I didn't even have hotswap availability when running a F6 setup windows XP with the intel AHCI drivers and I fr[ggin tried everything. I really need hotswap too, so I thought WTH, ditch this crap and try something new and thats how I ended up on RAID and glad I did. I emailed Asus, made topic upon topic about not having hotswap with AHCI and noone from Asus nor here knew the answer so my guess is you won't find it here either, no correction its not a guess its a certainty.

Every time I would insert my SATA mobile rack nothing happened, do this on any other PC and you'd immediately get that little green arrow saying new hardware detected, on this board, forget it. And its purely software thats causing this cuz when on Raid you can detect newly added SATA devices so go figure eh

Thnx Asus support for never picking up the phone and never adressing or fixing issues when people have some serious issues. All you get then is the same standard mumbo jumbo:LOL:

Sorry I can't help you any further Miguel, but I think you can see that I have already travelled your road before, one travel I no longer wish to partake

PS : just to show you the nerve of mobo/chipset makers, I am currently struggling with following issue,

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=132871

and I decided to call intel cuz its actually related to their chipset, and their helpdesk had the nerve to decline my request and forward me to Asus who on their turn forward me to Intel for this sort of questions, so here I am stuck between a rock and a hardplace. What should be a simple thing to explain now is made impossible.

[__Miguel_]

Ok, so I guess I'll have to get my ICH8R in RAID mode, even if I don't use the RAID functions, to get hot-plugging (and probably NCQ as well, since hot-plugging is not working in AHCI mode...) in the internal connectors. I'll give that a try when I can.

The only thing missing, then, is NCQ and hot-plugging in the EXTERNAL SATA port. That's what I need, I want to use an external SATA drive and not have to shut the PC down every time I want to use it...

Thanks for the heads-up.

Cheers.

Miguel

[Cappie]

You could try one simple thing though, and by goddigedy why didn't I come up with this any sooner aaaarg, its so simple and obvious.

Plug in your ESATA, when its not popping up - same way my mobile rack wasn't - then go to your device manager(type following command at the RUN : devmgmt.msc)and do the following,



that should bring up your ESATA, its not really hotswap like plug in and green arrow pops up but atleast it will bring up your drive(This board just doesn't have simple hotswap and it never had, and oooh I tried, I tried it IDE, AHCI, RAID, it does have hotswap but one needs to use backdoors instead of the simple plug and play you'r used to). Then when you'r done using the drive, close windows explorer so its no longer in use and you can safely remove the device by doing the following,



Hope that works for you, lemme know if it did,

cheerz,

Your Asus helpdesk supporter Cappie

[wazoo99]

Just to make sure we are on the same wavelength here:
e SATA means JMicron controller, single I/O port SATA II - has nothing to do with 6 Intel SATA or Matrix drivers.
Intel hot swap is internal
JMicron is hot swap external - internal (I assume)
AFAIK hot swapping external part of a JMicron internal/external RAID array wrecks it

O.K., so now:
http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardw...ict221220.html

http://www.station-drivers.com/page/jmicron.htm
(Nov - 06 driver)

ftp://driver.jmicron.com.tw/jmb36x/Win2k_xp_Vista (brand new driver - also Vista ready)

http://www.jmicron.com/Product_JMB363.htm

Note: this info is for my Gigabyte JM 363 controller
There are also 361/365/366

Edit: Another point - I always make sure I have XP SP2 before correctly installing JMicron drivers - so that means integrated on CD

[Cappie]

It doesn't matter, if he goes to DEVICE MANAGER and instead stands completely at top with his mouse and rightclicks SCAN FOR HARDWARE CHANGES it should bring up his ESATA.

[__Miguel_]

First of all, sorry about the delay. For some reason, the forum doesn't inform me about answers to all the threads I've subscribed (go figure...)

(Un)fortunately, I had to reinstall Windows again. It installed itself in an extended partition . So, I went the easy way: I created a hybrid driver disk (with both the ICH8 and JMicron drivers, each of them the most recent ones from the manufacturers' sites) and F6-installed with both controllers set to RAID. Big surprise: I now have three "SCSI and RAID Controllers" (ICH8, JMicron and Alcohol), two IDE ODDs and a "Standard Dual Channel IDE Controller" (shouldn't that be single channel?). I haven't tested burning CDs yet, but I guess it should go OK, it is using default drivers after all...

As for the eSATA drive, I'm still waiting for the box. I'm getting everything ready for it. Do you know if it is possible to conect an HDD drive directly to the eSATA port to test it? If so, I can test it right away...

I now have three problems with this configuration. First up, I don't get the "Press Ctrl-J" message to access the JMicron ROM on boot, even with the controller set to RAID. Why is that? Maybe because I still only have ODDs on it? Second, the JMicron Raid Configurer always says "JMB36X Raid Device not found!" when I try to load it. Again, why is that, since the drivers are installed? Last, but not least, I can't enable Write caching on my brand new Samsung 321KJ. Up to a few boot cycles ago, every time I tryed there was an Event logged saying "the driver" disabled it. Now the whole properties page is greyed out... Is there a problem with something?

Btw, thank you for the heads-up, Cappie. I'll keep that in mind. Oh, and wazoo99, I'm not going RAID on the JMicron SATA ports. And yes, hot swapping RAID disks usually brings the whole array down (especially with RAID-0 arrays). Only RAID 1, 5 and 1+0 survive that "shock treatment", and even then they become "limp" arrays, which will need to be rebuilt.

If you have any more ideas, I'm all ears.

Cheers.

Miguel

[Cappie]

Standard Dual Channel IDE Controller is what it should say so thats correct, also if you'r not going RAID on the Jmicron ports then why install those drivers, thats allways asking for trouble, mate of mine did that and his cdrom devices would fail burning most if not all of his media. Also when you install windows with those RAID drivers write back caching is turned off by default because the intel matrix will enable write back cache for you, atleast it did that for me and performance is just perfect.

The way I see it you'r looking at a new install cuz you'r mixing too much stuff and are probably applying the wrong settings in bios while doing it. If you just need ESATA and normal IDE internal devices you need to set your SATA mode to IDE, also then you should not load any Jmicron crapdrivers or any RAID drivers, just let windows load these drivers for you.

[__Miguel_]

Fortunately, going to plain IDE on the JMicron controller from RAID setting is easy, I only need to change it in the BIOS if anything goes wrong (not so for the ICH8, changing functions equals reinstall ALWAYS).

I went directly to the RAID configuration because of the AHCI functions (just like I did to the ICH8R, but in that case it's also because I'm planning to add another 321KJ - or even a pair - in the future, so I can have RAID 0 - or 5). I probably just needed AHCI for the JMicron, I reckon I went overboard on that one. The thing is, I was getting VERY frustrated. Three Windows installs in less than 48 hours (and four in less than three weeks) in the same computer just drove me a little wild. I'll just try it like it is, if I have any problems I'll take it from there.

It is good to know the Matrix Storage drivers take care of the write back cache. It does make sense, if they activate it, they know how much they have and how to use it more efficiently. One thing less to worry about...

Thank you for your patience. I'll let you know how it went after burning something, ok? [EDIT] Dude, that sounded weird... [/EDIT]

Cheers.

Miguel

[Cappie]

Wasn't following so don't know what sounded weird:LOL: As for the write back cache, you can enable that here from that matrix console,

[__Miguel_]

Thanks for the info. As I still don't have any RAID arrays configured, that option is not available yet. However, with ~128MBps burst speeds in HDTune, seems to me Write-Backe cache must be on (the 321KJ has 80-40MBps max-min speeds). Though, I'll keep that information in mind when I build the array.

The "I'll let you know how it went after burning something, ok?" comment was what sounded weird. Right after I wrote it, I though "man, are you planning to start a fire somewere or what?"

Ok, since I'm at it, I don't know where this problem I have comes from, so I'll just ask here, and if necessary I'll post again in other section. Right now, my installation is stable. I've got everything I need installed (except for games, that is... ). However, every time the system suspends on its own (as per Power options scheme), the monitor doesn't power up, and sometimes the HDD keeps thrashing for half a minute or so, then stops and that's it.

What could be causing this? If I tell the computer to suspend and then power it up again, everything is fine... Maybe the Catalyst drivers (or any service related to that I disabled)? [EDIT] OK, never mind that, I think I figured it out, though it was worse than I stated. In fact, now I couldn't even manually suspend withou having a 3-non-post failed overclocking error message. A simple BIOS POST error search led me there. It seems my memory sticks don't like to be told the speeds to work in... I have to let them "Auto" for the speed, or else I get in trouble... Hmpf, lousy OEM sticks... Teaches me right for buying TwinMOS regular instead of Kingston Value... Everything seems fine now.[/EDIT]

Cheers.

Miguel

[Cappie]

Well nice to hear, guess I'll see you around when some new weird issue arises, as they allways do in the pc world

[__Miguel_]

I think I spoke too soon about that memory problem... Today it gave me the same BIOS POST error code when I first started the computer. It's getting annoying, the PC has to POST twice...

The error code is 1-3 (long beep followed by three short beeps), which, in AMI BIOS POST error codes means memory error, most likely caused by the memories being wrongly seated on the slots. I've checked that already, they are seated correctly... I'll probably have to run Memtest to check on that.

It seems my first CD burn after install is just around the corner... lol I'll keep you posted.

Cheers.

Miguel

[__Miguel_]

Well, I have good news and bad news. Good news is, I burned a CD this afternoon and it went smoothly. It consisted only on "formatting" a CD-RW disk and then burning the Memtest ISO in it. Everything went just fine, I just hope bigger recordings go well too.

Bad news is, the memory (I assume it's memory...) problem keeps happening. I've already started another thread with more detailed information (and in the correct sub-forum ) about it, let's see if someone can help me.

Thank you for your time and help. If anything arises from this drive issue, I'll let you know.

Oh, just one thing... You guys never told me if I can connect a SATA HDD directly to the eSATA port...

Cheers.

Miguel

[Cappie]

You can connect a sata hdd to it but you'll need a cable like this and asus doesn't supply it,



Most people use an external HDD casing that supports ESATA and insert a SATA drive in there. You could also run a bare HDD and just use an ESATA to SATA cable but thats something I wouldn't recommend. You could however but then you'd be looping the external ESATA cable back inside your pccase towards your SATA drive.

[__Miguel_]

I'll be on the safe side, then, and wait for the external case. I don't want to wreck a perfectly good 80GB SATA drive I have here... It's old, not too fast and a little noisy, but it does its job... I still want a separate pagefile drive, and if I loose that one I won't be able to have it...

Thank you for the info. Also, if you want to try helping me with that memory issue, here's the link: here. I'm just lost on this one...

Cheers.

Miguel