I just replaced my hard drive and ram from 80 gig Maxtor and 256 megs ram to
Seagate 200 gig and 512 megs ram.
I have been getting errors with messages starting with:
dma status == 0x21
and on and on.
I had put the new drive on the end of the 80 wire cable and left the old on the
other socket on this cable. I spent a lot of time trying different things out
till this AM. I finally moved the new Seagate drive to the inner socket on the
80 wire cable and moved the Maxtor to the other ide cable along with my dvd
writer. I have tried rebooting several times and no longer get the error messages.
Could the 80 wire cable have caused my errors? Or have I still a problem but it
is not simply showing up for now?

--
Leo in Canada:
A computer without Microsoft is like a chocolate cake without mustard.
< running Slackware 10.1 Linux >

Leo (Bing) Whiteway wrote:
> I had put the new drive on the end of the 80 wire cable and left the old
> on the other socket on this cable. I spent a lot of time trying
> different things out till this AM. I finally moved the new Seagate drive
> to the inner socket on the 80 wire cable and moved the Maxtor to the
> other ide cable along with my dvd writer. I have tried rebooting several
> times and no longer get the error messages.

It's unlikely that the cable caused the problems. If at all, it's mostly
using 40-pin instead of 80-pin that's problematic.

I suspect it was rather the setup of the drives - did you make sure they
had the correct jumper settings for their respective master/slave
position? It's sometimes possible to boot with a wrong setup there, but
weird things can happen.

Cheers,
~Mik

--
Alpha Test Version: Too buggy to be released to the paying public.
Beta Test Version: Still too buggy to be released.
Release Version: Alternate pronunciation of "Beta Test Version".

Leo (Bing) Whiteway wrote:
> I just replaced my hard drive and ram from 80 gig Maxtor and 256 megs
> ram to Seagate 200 gig and 512 megs ram.
> I have been getting errors with messages starting with:
> dma status == 0x21
> and on and on.
> I had put the new drive on the end of the 80 wire cable and left the old
> on the other socket on this cable. I spent a lot of time trying
> different things out till this AM. I finally moved the new Seagate drive
> to the inner socket on the 80 wire cable and moved the Maxtor to the
> other ide cable along with my dvd writer. I have tried rebooting several
> times and no longer get the error messages.
> Could the 80 wire cable have caused my errors? Or have I still a
> problem but it is not simply showing up for now?
>
No idea what dma status 0x21 means but I'd check the jumper settings on drives.

sounds like you could have both set to master, both set to slave, or only one of the drives set to cable select.

Michael Bueker wrote:

> Leo (Bing) Whiteway wrote:
>> I had put the new drive on the end of the 80 wire cable and left the old
>> on the other socket on this cable. I spent a lot of time trying
>> different things out till this AM. I finally moved the new Seagate drive
>> to the inner socket on the 80 wire cable and moved the Maxtor to the
>> other ide cable along with my dvd writer. I have tried rebooting several
>> times and no longer get the error messages.
>
> It's unlikely that the cable caused the problems. If at all, it's mostly
> using 40-pin instead of 80-pin that's problematic.
>
> I suspect it was rather the setup of the drives - did you make sure they
> had the correct jumper settings for their respective master/slave
> position? It's sometimes possible to boot with a wrong setup there, but
> weird things can happen.
>
> Cheers,
> ~Mik
>
I always use jumpers when setting drives, but in the seagate literature I
got with my recent 300gb drive it said "we do not recommend using jumpers
and instead you should use cable select"

Now I thought that was weird and did what I usually do which is ignore the
manufacturer, after all they only designed and made the product, what do
they know.

Could it be, in this case, cable select is the way to go...

Also, get smartmontools up and running, test the drive, get its S.M.A.R.T
features to tell you if the drive is a bit knackered or spot on.

Michael Bueker wrote:
> Leo (Bing) Whiteway wrote:
>
>> I had put the new drive on the end of the 80 wire cable and left the
>> old on the other socket on this cable. I spent a lot of time trying
>> different things out till this AM. I finally moved the new Seagate
>> drive to the inner socket on the 80 wire cable and moved the Maxtor to
>> the other ide cable along with my dvd writer. I have tried rebooting
>> several times and no longer get the error messages.
>
>
> It's unlikely that the cable caused the problems. If at all, it's mostly
> using 40-pin instead of 80-pin that's problematic.
>
> I suspect it was rather the setup of the drives - did you make sure they
> had the correct jumper settings for their respective master/slave
> position? It's sometimes possible to boot with a wrong setup there, but
> weird things can happen.
>
> Cheers,
> ~Mik
>
Thanks for the reply.

I have read that sometimes you can get problems when mixing drives on the same
cable. This may have something to do with it but I have the 80 pin cable on the
ide0 socket and the 40 pin cable on the ide1 socket as that is what the
motherboard docs suggest. 80 pin to blue socket. The jumpers are not easily
mistaken and I did not err that way. The Seagate wants no Jumpers if it is
master. the Maxtor wants jumper crossways if slave. I did this. I have had
problems with 80 wire cables before so this is why I changed things around. For
some reason the 80 wire cables seem to screw up on the tail end socket for me.

--
Leo in Canada:
A computer without Microsoft is like a chocolate cake without mustard.
< running Slackware 10.1 Linux >

On Tue, 25 Oct 2005 16:24:56 GMT, "Leo (Bing) Whiteway" <leowhiteway@yahooc.a> wrote:

>I just replaced my hard drive and ram from 80 gig Maxtor and 256 megs ram to
>Seagate 200 gig and 512 megs ram.

Well, you've crossed 137GB boundary, one issue, perhaps...

>I had put the new drive on the end of the 80 wire cable and left the old on the
>other socket on this cable.

Bad move, hard drives go in as master at end of cable, you want hda + hdc
for best performance. Decent DVD/CD that do udma2 can go in as slave on
the slave (gray) connector 6" from the end. Only use 18" 80-way cables.

Other reason for hard drive on own cable is that IDE transaction do not
disconnect, so during seek time on one drive, both drives are locked out

'Tis the other reason to go SATA for new drives.

Grant.

chris dewbery wrote:
> Leo (Bing) Whiteway wrote:
>
>>I just replaced my hard drive and ram from 80 gig Maxtor and 256 megs
>>ram to Seagate 200 gig and 512 megs ram.
>>I have been getting errors with messages starting with:
>>dma status == 0x21
>>and on and on.
>>I had put the new drive on the end of the 80 wire cable and left the old
>>on the other socket on this cable. I spent a lot of time trying
>>different things out till this AM. I finally moved the new Seagate drive
>>to the inner socket on the 80 wire cable and moved the Maxtor to the
>>other ide cable along with my dvd writer. I have tried rebooting several
>>times and no longer get the error messages.
>> Could the 80 wire cable have caused my errors? Or have I still a
>>problem but it is not simply showing up for now?
>>
>
> No idea what dma status 0x21 means but I'd check the jumper settings on drives.
>
> sounds like you could have both set to master, both set to slave, or only one of the drives set to cable select.

Nope. I did the jumpers correctly. The Seagate wants no jumpers to be master and
the Maxtor wants the jumper crosswise to be slave.
I have heard that having different manufacturers hard drives on the same cable
can cause odd errors but I have also had problems with the end socket on 80 wire
cables before.
I google a lot before I post and that is where I saw these things I seem to be
not the only one with this error so I figured someone else may have had it and
figured out what was the problem and the fix.
Thanks for the reply.

--
Leo in Canada:
A computer without Microsoft is like a chocolate cake without mustard.
< running Slackware 10.1 Linux >

Grant wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Oct 2005 16:24:56 GMT, "Leo (Bing) Whiteway" <leowhiteway@yahooc.a> wrote:
>
>
>>I just replaced my hard drive and ram from 80 gig Maxtor and 256 megs ram to
>>Seagate 200 gig and 512 megs ram.
>
>
> Well, you've crossed 137GB boundary, one issue, perhaps...
>
>
>>I had put the new drive on the end of the 80 wire cable and left the old on the
>>other socket on this cable.
>
>
> Bad move, hard drives go in as master at end of cable, you want hda + hdc
> for best performance. Decent DVD/CD that do udma2 can go in as slave on
> the slave (gray) connector 6" from the end. Only use 18" 80-way cables.
>
> Other reason for hard drive on own cable is that IDE transaction do not
> disconnect, so during seek time on one drive, both drives are locked out
>
> 'Tis the other reason to go SATA for new drives.
>
> Grant.

You guys have given me a lot to think about. I will do some more changing about
with the drives and cables. Will see what gives then.
I can't afford to change now to sata but maybe the next change in motherboard
will go the sata way.
Thanks much.

--
Leo in Canada:
A computer without Microsoft is like a chocolate cake without mustard.
< running Slackware 10.1 Linux >

Grant wrote:
>>I just replaced my hard drive and ram from 80 gig Maxtor and 256 megs ram to
>>Seagate 200 gig and 512 megs ram.
>
> Well, you've crossed 137GB boundary, one issue, perhaps...

Only to the BIOS. If you bootable partition is below that, there should
be no problem. Once the kernel takes over, it talks directly to the HDD
and sets the size parameters correctly (i have this on an old Compaq
which only sees 6G of a 160G drive, but as my boot partition is in the
first 2G, there's no trouble).

~Mik

--
Quantum placui tibi?
// How was I?

From "Sensual Latin" by Henry Beard

On Tue, 25 Oct 2005 22:05:43 +0000, Steve'o <na@na.com> wrote:

>
>Also, get smartmontools up and running, test the drive, get its S.M.A.R.T
>features to tell you if the drive is a bit knackered or spot on.

Good point, smartmon CRC errors counted are due to data scrambled over
the cable.

Grant.