Promise Technology Products supported in the Uk by www.Euro-tech.co.uk ATA100 products Question: Where can I get ata100 speed drives from? Answer: They are becoming more widely available. However, you should check your current drive becuase it MAY be upgradable to ATA100 by performing a simple firmware upgrade Maxtor users can refer to: http://www.maxtor.com/technology/technotes/21009.html Fastrack33&66 ---------------------------------------- Question: What type of cable connects from card to disk (are they supplied)? Answer: HighDensity 80wire/40pin shielded (max 45cms) cableswithproduct length drivespercable Fastrak/66 2 45cm* 2 (4 using both cables!) Ultra/66 1 45cm* 2 spare - 45cm* 2 *30cm from controller to 1st drive, 15cm from 1st drive to 2nd drive. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Question: Can the drives be daisy chained or is it up to 4 separate cables? Answer: both the fastrak and the ultra/66 support 2 x cables. Each cable supports 2 x drives. total = 4 drives. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Question: If I add another disk to my system will it still work with the partition of c: and the new drive d:, or does the card only work with full unpartitioned drives? Answer: see SCSI,C,A explaination further down this FAQ. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Question: Can I run my old single hard drive on the fastrack until I get my 66 drives? Answer: yes - and you should not need to reformat it but you may need to SYS it. note: we recommend backing up all data before changing disk controllers ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Question: Can I run a single udma66 drive now and add a second drive in 1 month? Answer: yes - BUT if you want to stripe the drives, you will need to - backup the drive - create the array in the promise bios - fdisk the new VOLUME - format the new VOLUME - restore the data from your backup if you want to MIRROR the drives: - backup the drive - create the array in the promise bios note: we recommend backing up all data before changing disk controllers ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Question: can I run non-ATA-66 drives on my Fastrack Answer: yes, the controller is fully backward compatible with ATA-33 and PIO drives, the drive will run at the speed at which it is rated ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Question: what operating systems are supported by the Fastrack? Answer: windows 9x and NT4, Netware to be added shortly ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Question: if I connect four 25Gb ATA-66 drives, my machine (running Win98) will read it as on 100Gb drive, allowing me to partition it as I wish. Answer: correct. (however IBM drives required the latest promise firmware) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Question: This still leaves the usual IDE slots on the motherboard for use with whatever I wish - i.e. zip, DVD etc. Answer: correct. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Question: If so, what drive letter will it get by default assuming that I have my original C drive connected to an IDE cable on the motherboard ? Answer: In the BIOS of your system, you can tell the system to boot in order: C,A,SCSI - Which will mean: c: = onboard IDE d: = fastrak drive SCSI,C,A - Which will mean: c: = fastrak d: = onboard IDE ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ultra 33 Question: Why am I not getting the performance from the controller that I should be getting? Answer: Promise have experienced a few compatibility problems with Certain Intel Chipset based motherboards Solution: Requires the following upgrades Drivers: - 1.30 Firmware Ver: - 1.25 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Question: Why does my controller not recognise drives larger than 8.4Gb? Solution: Requires the following upgrades Firmware Ver: - 1.25 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Question: Why does my Ultra 33 fail during the format of a hard disk even though the BIOS detects the drive without any problems? Solution: Ensure that the drive cable is of good quality and is capabale of handling the UDMA protocol. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fast Trak Question: Why am I not getting the performance from the controller that I should be getting? Answer: Promise have experienced a few compatibility problems with Certain Intel Chipset based motherboards Solution: Requires the following upgrades Drivers: - 1.12 Firmware Ver: - 1.02 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Question: Why does my controller lock the machine during system boot with an Intel LX chipset? Solution: Requires the following upgrades Drivers: - 1.20 Firmware Ver: - 1.03 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Question: Why do green strips appear on the screen when the Fastrak is used in conjunction with a Miro DC30+ display card under Windows 95? Solution: Requires drivers ver: - 1.21 N.B. The Miro drivers should be as far up-to-date as possible as well. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- List of incompatible drives for use with the Fastrack Quantum: LPS series ( 730MB and smaller) MV 540AT ( 540MB) Maxtor : 540MB and smaller Seagate: ST 32132A old firmware version ( This version firmware does not support TX chipset). Conner CFS 420AT , 850AT Fujitsu: MPB 3096AT ( Supported by Drivers diskette V1.21 and above) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Question: What drivers do I need for Windows 98? Solution: Use drivers ver - 1.21 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FloppyMax Question: How do I setup a FloppyMax controller under Windows 95? Solution: The LS-120 under Windows95 OSR2. Please add the drivers for FloppyMAX under OSR2. Please refer to our menu for the detail information. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SCSIPlus Question: Why doesn't the "SYMDISK" driver load when a CD-Writer is connected to the system Answer: The SYMDISK is a removable disk drivers for MO, Removable hard disk, ZIP, etc. It does not work with CD-ROM. And most of CDR using CD-ROM mode for the read/write operation. But, some special CDR using WORM mode for read/write operation. ( The WORM device ID is 4. The CD-ROM device ID is 5. ) Please make sure the type of your device. The old SDMS 4.0 does not support WORM. Please using new drivers for it. Otherwise, please check the CDR software request the ASPI or WinASPI ? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------