the stability of bp6 ru with iwill hpt 368 raid bios.....

OS / Drivers / BIOS
rubyyoga
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the stability of bp6 ru with iwill hpt 368 raid bios.....

Post by rubyyoga »

:?: i recently flashed the abit bp6 ru bios to a modified ru bios that contains Iwill hpt 368 raid bios (a bp6 bios from a japaneese website) BUT not stable cause the raid system is not compatible with the bp6 ide controller. Now i'm trying to move the boot drive and a cd rom drive to the raid system (which already has 2 hdds stripped, raid 0) to make it stable and disable the bp6 ide system.
it seems the system works fine (with win 2003 server). Has anyone tried this before????
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Post by hyperspace »

Never heard of RAID on the HPT366 controller. I don't think the controller has the capability of doing RAID. What is the link for the modifiied BIOS?
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Derek
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Post by Derek »

We tried it a while back; the results were that the HPT BIOS did not detect drives with the 368 BIOS installed.

I'm interested to hear about your results.
-Derek
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hmmm... BP6 Raid revisited?

Post by Tim »

After getting word of this from Daredevil, I revisited the topic and did a little searching on the web. I noticed some other sites in Japanese with specs of their BP6 mobos with the 368 bios.

Check out Pierrot's Factory
http://www.be.wakwak.com/~pierrot/pub/s ... rtsbox.htm

Win2K Driver
http://www.be.wakwak.com/~pierrot/pub/s ... 2K_366.zip

BP6RUD Bios with HPT368 Raid
http://www.be.wakwak.com/~pierrot/pub/s ... 6_rurd.zip
Last edited by Tim on Fri Aug 29, 2003 6:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by InactiveX »

(OT: Hello Tim! Been a while since you were last here.)
Like BP6.com? Not a member?
Then why the hell not? It's great!
-> BP6.com Membership <-
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Post by Tim »

Yeah it has.. I've been laying low in the background while Daredevil has been doing a great job of maintaining and improving the site. He has some new stuff planned for the server and if things go like planned we'll have re-born BP6.com website with new features for all the fellow BP6 users to call home.

It's amazing how this mobo has evovled over the years, through the help of the BP6 community.. Leaves me to wonder if Abit would be willing to create a new successor to this motherboard. One that is redesigned using the user feedback from all the BP6 and VP6 users... I'll have to get back in through some contacts to see what type of feedback I receive.

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rubyyoga
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Post by rubyyoga »

I also experienced the same thing (2 raid 0 hdds were not detected) but after disabling both the bp6 ide controllers in bios and moving the cdrom and boot drive to the raid system, the 2 raid hdds + 1 boot hdd + 1 cdrom drive were detected.
the link for the bios is the same one that Tim already posted....
the stabilty is still not clear
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Post by hyperspace »

Glad I was wrong!

Hey, Tim!

Huge Thanx to you and Derek for providing this site for the BP6 community!
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bpsix
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To flash or not to flash

Post by bpsix »

So what was the final result for this...

Is it worthwhile loading the modified BIOS with 368 drivers?

From what I gather you need to disable the standard onboard IDE controller to get the HPT controller to work with the 368 code...

Do you then re-enable the IDE drives again so that you can then run 2 drives off the HPT controller, in RAID 0 or 1 PLUS running your CD off your existing IDE?

For me it would be useless having a machine running 2 drives of the HPT controller in a RAID config, & not being able to run my CD drive off the existing onboard IDE.

I guess I could just try it out, & if it doesn't work, then re-flash the bios back to what I have now.

What are your thoughts?
bpsix
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To flash or not to flash

Post by bpsix »

So what was the final result for this...

Is it worthwhile loading the modified BIOS with 368 drivers?

From what I gather you need to disable the standard onboard IDE controller to get the HPT controller to work with the 368 code...

Do you then re-enable the IDE drives again so that you can then run 2 drives off the HPT controller, in RAID 0 or 1 PLUS running your CD off your existing IDE?

For me it would be useless having a machine running 2 drives of the HPT controller in a RAID config, & not being able to run my CD drive off the existing onboard IDE.

I guess I could just try it out, & if it doesn't work, then re-flash the bios back to what I have now.

What are your thoughts?
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Post by redpath »

bpsix - Hi - well; it [the Japanese RU BIOS with the Iwill SIDE-RAID66 BIOS & drivers linked to above] worked OK for me on a rev 1.0 BP6; but I wouldn't recommend it.

The SIDE-RAID66 HPT368 BIOS is competent enough [made a mirror in about ten minutes]; but the drivers [under Win XP Pro SP1] are pretty dire - unacceptably high CPU% loading & conflicts w/ other PCI devices - you can't adjust PCI latency on the BP6 AFAIK.

There's a fairly amusing if useless Iwill RAID-utility for the SIDE-RAID66 which when installed treats the BP6/HPT366 hacked-RAID lashup as if it were a genuine HPT368 PCI-host.

Also had [what I understand to be 'the usual'] hassles between the HPT & other 'scsi' hosts - since I need to run plural [real] SCSI-hosts in this system I changed to the 'no_HPT' BIOS.

Frankly, if you want cheap IDE RAID I'd get an old 32-bit 3Ware host off Ebay - they are vastly superior any 'firmware RAID'
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Post by kuun »

you may be able to find a hardware raid card for cheap that is supperior...

but this is about the bp6.. taking it to levels where t was not fully intended to go (a true overclockers dream)

you have made one hell of a feat here

PLEASE do keep us informed on the progress of stability

this is something no one has acomplished (afaik)


are you running dual cpu's? if so what cpu's , are they OC'd if so how much and with what settings



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redpath
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Post by redpath »

kuun - Hi - no feat at all: many folk have done this with onboard HPT366' [including, obviously, the author of the hacked BIOS].

I'm running at the 'usual' 5.5 x 100 dual - at default vcore. Serious air-cooling [kanie hedgehogs]; ample PSU.

I suspect the drivers available for d/l here are not the same as the one's I'm using - they appear to have been edited for the correct device ID#.

Overall, it was a lot simpler than hacking the onboard Promise 20265 on an MSI 694D Pro_A - that required hardware hacking, on top of editing the drivers.

[edit] As regards stability; there's no abnormal [given we're talking HighPoint] hassle w/ the BIOS or boot order or anything like that: the drivers work in XP Pro . . . but not particularly well. There are no blue-screens or similar due to this arrangement. I wouldn't recommend it due to the excessive CPU loadings - this hits 50% or so.

Many of the stability issues I see in this forum look to be likely due to the famous inability of Creative to write proper SMP drivers - I'm using a TBSC.

['nother edit] - stuck it back together with the RAID BIOS & a mismatched pair of ATA66 HD's that were lying around: works fine as a mirrored pair [haven't tried striped; but what's the point?].

- CPU% is much lower than I remembered & performance quite good given the HD's. OS installation much easier if you install OS first to a HD on an IDE channel, then install RAID drivers in OS, then transfer HD to HPT, then make a mirror to a second HD on the HPT, then boot into OS - worked seamlessly for me but as ever YMMV.
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Post by headseed »

I have heard that the performance of the HPT366 on the bp6 is bad even when it works. Have you run any benchmarks that we could compare with someone running the controller in regular HPT366 fashion? Thanks.

I gave up and got a promise TX2 ATA100 controller, I think it was $15 shipped, not too bad. Not raid though, and I don't think it can be flashed to it. Anyone know about this?
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Post by redpath »

headseed - Hi - I believe Xbitlabs tested the Abit 'HotRod66' [HPT366/8] against the then-equivalent Promise controller a year or so back if you want to search out figures; as you have no doubt read above, I've only run a pair of old & mismatched HD's [mirrored] so don't exactly see the point of benchmarking this setup - not that any of the common benching tools bar IOMeter are reliable anyway, & IOMeter is not exactly meaningful to simple workstation usage.

There are a few motherboards [the Iwill VD133 Pro RAID?] which had an onboard HPT366/68 RAID setup - there are probably web-tests out there using [ugh] ATTO/HDTach et al to produce figures from striped arrays.

I don't think [but don't know] the TX2 100 can be hacked to the RAID equivalent - the previous ATA66 & ATA100 hosts could be hacked to their 'FastTrak' equivalents [required soldering].

Being accustomed to all-SCSI setups; all I can say about the performance is that by ATA66 IDE standards it appears OK, tho' CPU% is far, far higher than you'd hope or expect: simple streaming transfers to, from, & across the array are OK, but CPU load when any kind of random access is involved seems excessive. The mirroring appears to work - there's the expected background chuntering as the HD's are synchronised. Possible that striped-RAID CPU-loading using this firmware controller & drivers would be quite different.

Don't quite see why there don't appear to be more posts here from folk who've enabled rev 1.0 BP6 onboard RAID - perhaps everyone, but everyone did it long ago & the results were so ghastly no-one felt like posting 'em:- but if several folk here really wanted it I could post a step-by-step for the process - only snag might be I don't use striped 'RAID' due to a working life spent preserving data at all costs, so howto would be to set up & transfer an existing installation to a mirrored array.

Over the w/e I'll change back to booting off a SCSI HD - suppose I might then see out of curiosity whether it's straightforward to make a fresh OS install onto a striped array.
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Post by headseed »

redpath wrote: - due to a working life spent preserving data at all costs,
if this is the case then why are you running the onboard ata66 on a bp6 at all, never mind with different drivers? :D
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Post by redpath »

. . . fun :) - I've wanted one of these mobos for years.

- but [sigh] I've now plugged in a couple of SCSI-hosts, disabled the HPT, & gone back to being old & sad . . .
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Post by kuun »

SCSI!

what scsi card you using?

i've got an aha-2940UW in mine.. have 8 scsi drives in my bp6
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Post by redpath »

Compaq [Adaptec & flashed to the 39160 firmware] 396D - a dual channel U3W 64/66 thing; & an ICP-Vortex GDT7523RN - 'nother dual-channel 64-bit U3W; but this time a RAID-host & 33MHz.

To my fury; neither of the 64/66 RAID-hosts I'd intended to switch over for the time being will work in this mobo.
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Post by redpath »

overclocker@voz - Hi - do you mean you've edited the SIDE_RAID66 BIOS to have the 'right' device ID#'s? . . . & which drivers are you using?
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Post by redpath »

Hi - assume you're running the ACPI multi kernel: I couldn't get the thing stable without disabling ACPI & using the MPS multi kernel. Am using 3x SCSI-hosts which may have something to do with it.

Mind you . . . symptoms sound like the vid-accelerator from here . . . time to try another & see what happens.

BTW: is this striped firmware RAID you're running, or mirrored? I assume these drivers alllowed a clean install onto the array, yes?
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