4 DVD writers on 1 system

[fresh2kuk]

I've managed to get 3 dvd writers working at once on my system but have had to buy a pci ide card to have one more.
but when i put a blank disk in, the whole system freezes, the mouse, everything,
please help!

[disturbed1]

Check for IRQ and/or DMA conflicts. Also make sure your IDE card properly supports ATAPI devices. Some only support hard drives. The ones with the promise chipset (Maxtor and Western Digital ATA 100/133 cards) do support ATAPI devices. Check with the manu. for bios and driver updates. If your using WinXP and a promise chipset card, WinXP tries to use its built in driver. This driver will and does cause many errors with those cards.

I used to use a Cele 1000 with 512RAM, and 4 Pioneer A05 drives. The motherboard had 4 IDE ports, so each DVD drive was set as master, the computer booted from a PCI SCSI raid card. It was nice turning out 12 DVDs in under an hour, from burn to print to package. I'm saving for a firewire controlled robotic production now

[fresh2kuk]

i think its a promise ultra 100 tx2.
i think i installed the drivers, and i'm on xp, so what would i have to do?

[QuaiBoy]

I've installed (literally) hundreds of Promise100/133 cards. Do not run an optical drive off of one. You'd be much better off moving your hard drives to the card (if you have two, then put one per channel) and using your onboard controller ports for your optical drives. Make sure you have the latest Promise driver installed.

This is similar to how my second machine is setup, however I am using a Highpoint133 card for my second harddrive and an onboard SATA for the primary Raptor. Your setup should work as described above.

Best of Luck,
-Evan-

[lordsmurf]

I've installed (literally) hundreds of Promise100/133 cards. Do not run an optical drive off of one.

I don't agree with this. ROM drives are fine.
But for burners, I'd have to agree.

[QuaiBoy]

I've installed (literally) hundreds of Promise100/133 cards. Do not run an optical drive off of one.

I don't agree with this. ROM drives are fine.
But for burners, I'd have to agree.

I have to stand by my statement, based on first-hand experience working for a school district a few years back, building machines for friends and on my personal PCs. The Promise cards can cause optical drives to act strangely (ie- "reinitialize loops" where the drive powers up and down for no apparent reason, XP/2k/98 stop in the middle of the bootup process when the drive is connected, bad performance in windows, I've seen it all)and the best recourse is to simply avoid using them for that purpose. In many case (various VIA chipsets come to mind) the Promise card can be a better performer than the onboard controller with hard drives. This is assuming that the PCI bus is not loaded up with other cards.

-Evan-

[fresh2kuk]

so can i have my primary hard drive with my os which is xp connected to my pci ide card?
how would i set this up, just change the connections?

[QuaiBoy]

Yes, just move the hard drive connector over to the Promise card.

Normally, when you change IDE controllers (ie- changing a motherboard) you would have to run the MS Sysprep utility to delete all controller information and let Windows discover it again when you connect up the new hardware. Failure to do so would result in a fatal blue screen upon every boot before reaching the desktop, and a Windows repair would not fix it. The Promise/Highpoint/other add-on IDE controllers bypass this step. Quick and easy.

-Evan-

[budz]

The easiest is to purchase a Silicon Image SiL0680A chipset PCI RAID card from COMPUTERGEEKS.COM to use with your dvd burners. The Silicon Image SiL0680A chipsets are the only ones that will work with dvd burners. I have one of my BENQ 1620's attached to one and it burns flawlessly.

Here's the link for the silicon image chipset PCI RAID controller card that I have:
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=SY-SIL-133R&cat=150

If you wait until tomorrow COMPUTERGEEKS.COM has their SIZZLING SUNDAY SALES their controller cards are usually on sale. Regular price is $17.95 when on sale it's like $12.99 which is dirt cheap. Newegg.com has the same chipset cards but it more expensive.

As already suggested you could use the PROMISE CONTROLLER card for your hard drives to free up your mobo IDE controllers.

[dun4cheap]

I am running 4 Pioneer 108's on my system currently. Geeks.com had an external 4 bay firewire box for $80. The unique thing about this is firewire does not take much processor performance to run. Then you can use your internal eide for your hard drives. I have 5 hd, 4 eide and 1 sata giving me over a terabyte of space.

The geeks sales are great, they had eide to usb cables for $10 last week. I spent $140 there last week. The nice thing is I don't have to pay for shipping since they have a store fron near me.

[fresh2kuk]

i'm in the uk so that site is no good.
i'll try and just swap the connectors over, and i'll let u know how i get on

[Jah_Rankin]

i'm in the uk so that site is no good.
i'll try and just swap the connectors over, and i'll let u know how i get on

I have a Iomagic light scribe DVD burner connected to a promise ultra 133 tx2 controller card with no problems whatsoever, never did.