Broken computer

[ewx]

naath has acquired a computer from a friend. She'd like to put her existing PATA IDE disks into it, but it can't see them.

The previous owner never used a PATA device, so there's no past evidence that it has ever worked.

The motherboard is an ABit NF-M2S. It has two SATA ports and a single PATA port. The BIOS appears to think the SATA are channels 2 and 3 (i.e. these ones disappear if you turn off SATA) and the PATA channel 0; it knows that there's supposed to be a master and a slave, but it never believes there is anything connected to it.

We've tried three disks and a CD ROM, and at least three IDE cables, including the ones that were working fine in her old computer (where they still work when she put them back). The disks make noises at power on and the CD ROM's tray can be opened, so we're pretty sure they are getting power.

We've looked through the BIOS several times for 'enable IDE' options. As far as we can see all possibly relevant things are enabled.

We reset the BIOS's nonvolatile memory fairly early in the process, with no useful effect.

The IDE cable is plugged in the right way round both according to the manual and the physical keying.

Naath's two drivers were configured as master and slave and remain so. We tried them both ways around on the cable, and also attaching only one of them at a time. The other drive I tried on its own configured as master and then using cable select.

The system can see SATA and USB devices fine, and boot off both. I booted an Ubuntu Dapper installer off a CF card and it could tell there was an IDE controller but didn't spot any devices attached t it.

Does anyone have any further suggestions of things we could try before concluding that this motherboard's IDE is bust? Current best suggestion for a workaround seems to be a PCI or PCIe IDE adaptor and use that.

Comments

[damerell.livejournal.com]

I've encountered at least one with a jumper to turn ATA interfaces off. Worth Googling up a motherboard manual?

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Already read the manual and didn't see anything like that. Couldn't spot any mysterious looking jumpers either though that check may not have been 100% exhaustive.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I had another look. There simply aren't any jumpers on the motherboard that could be changed even if one could figure out what they did without the manual. There is a three-contact group of solder pads that looks like it might be designed for a terminal of some sort to be attached that is marked "JPT3", but even supposed I was prepared to start soldering, who knows what it actually does?

[damerell.livejournal.com]

Another good explanation sunk by facts.

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

The IDE cable is plugged in the right way round both according to the manual and the physical keying.

The only thing I can think of, given that everything sees the controllers, is that the keying is the wrong way round. I think I've had this happen once. Any visible pin 1 markers? Try the other way round?

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Interesting thought which might require hacking away at a cable to test l-)

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

You might be able to find one without a location pin; if you can find one that doesn't have a blocked up hole you could dekey it by cutting off the external keying tab on it. :)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I now have a de-keyed cable (and managed to avoid making any holes in myself in the process). Doesn't make any difference l-(

[sweh.livejournal.com]

I've seen motherboards where if the BIOS is set to "RAID" mode then the disks just don't seem to show up at all because the raid isn't configured.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

There is a RAID mode but it's disabled; should've mentioned that.