# ASUS K8V-MX motherboard doesnt recognize ide or sata drives



## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

I had recently had trouble finding a 754 motherboard cheap. Bought a cheap Intel board simular speed with processor bundle used off ebay to get my desktop going again. Fine, but still had my good sempron 3300 processor. Then see cheap K8V-MX listed as broken. Seller said it wouldnt detect his ide or sata drives. It will detect usb drives and it will detect floppy drive.

I get it and sure enough, wont detect ide drive. I tried bios setting combinations galore, even flashed last available bios upgrade 0501. And it does recognize usb drives. I got it to boot Puppy Linux off my portable laptop usb hard drive.

I would however like to have my spare dvdburner installed. I can get ide to usb cable or I can try cheap ide controller pci card. Nicer if I didnt have to buy anything.

Anybody have any other suggestions. It does seem weird that it wont detect either sata or ide drives.


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## MELOC (Sep 26, 2005)

i guess you could try replacing the bios chip, but you would probably do just as well getting the pci card.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

I suspect that the IDE controller is the problem, so a new BIOS chip won't help. You'll need a SCSI controller that can interface IDE drives to use that mainboard, but I don't know where you'll find that kind of SCSI card for less than a similar mainboard.


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## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

You can pick up a controller card as cheap as $6 shipped on ebay. Probably one of old Promise cards used or new no name Chinese version. Can get ide to usb cable for around $4. If I have normal install of burner inside case, can route usb cable out one of unused slots and plug it into external usb port on back. Then use normal power supply to power the burner.

I dont have any SATA drive at this point but thats the thing both the ide controller and sata controller would have to bad. Previous owner said his SATA drives werent recognized. Just seems weird. Oh well, this at most is backup system, and has usb 2.0 so probably ide to usb cable for $4 shipped cheapest way to go if I have to buy something. Only reason I bought this motherboard was knowing at worst I could do everything I wanted to do via usb. Little tricky installing windows to usb drive but Puppy is perfectly happy with usb even running off usb flash key or card.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

HermitJohn said:


> You can pick up a controller card as cheap as $6 shipped on ebay.


Maybe. That's fine if you can find one for that price.


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## Gary in ohio (May 11, 2002)

Unless you can turn off the onboard IDE thats broken you might have issues booting from an PCI ide controller attached drive.


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## MELOC (Sep 26, 2005)

oops...that is RAID. never mind.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

Gary in ohio said:


> Unless you can turn off the onboard IDE thats broken you might have issues booting from an PCI ide controller attached drive.


That's true, and that's why I said he would need a SCSI controller that can interface IDE drives. The thing is that two IDE controllers can't coexist in the same system, so if there's any hint at all that the native IDE controller is there, an add-on IDE controller won't work.

However, an IDE and SCSI controller should coexist in the same system with no problem.


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## MELOC (Sep 26, 2005)

have you tried to configure using either the primary or the secondary IDE channel?


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## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

I've tried various ide cables I had around, drives, jumper settings on drive, and every variation of bios setting thought might have any effect. Nothing.

Oh not that big of a deal, I just ordered the $3.50 ide to usb cable. Pretty much know its going to work whereas the controller card maybe some slight doubts.

just going to be backup computer and run Puppy off my usb external hard drive when needed, no permanently installed hard drive. Already got it to boot ok. This cable will let me use spare dvd burner.


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## Gary in ohio (May 11, 2002)

Nevada said:


> That's true, and that's why I said he would need a SCSI controller that can interface IDE drives. The thing is that two IDE controllers can't coexist in the same system, so if there's any hint at all that the native IDE controller is there, an add-on IDE controller won't work.
> 
> However, an IDE and SCSI controller should coexist in the same system with no problem.


If it can interface with IDE drives its an IDE controller. SCSI to IDE available. At least cost effectively. If she can turn off the internal IDE controller or move it to a secondary role you can add a second IDE controller. Nothing stopping you from having multi IDE controllers in a box, but they must be selectable primary/secondary.


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## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

Musta been a fast boat from China. Got my cheapo ide to usb cable. Have dvd burner hooked up with it now. Booted a live Puppy Linux cd with it and using that Puppy to post right now. Burner software recognizes it hooked this way no problem. Only slight hassle was ide plug on adapter cable has bulgy ends so very tight fit next to plug from computer power supply since dvd burner manufacturer put ports very close. Little trimming on power supply plug and fine. Cable even turns over and can hook to a laptop hard drive. Thats handy.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

Gary in ohio said:


> Nevada said:
> 
> 
> > That's true, and that's why I said he would need a SCSI controller that can interface IDE drives. The thing is that two IDE controllers can't coexist in the same system, so if there's any hint at all that the native IDE controller is there, an add-on IDE controller won't work.
> ...


Sorry for the delay in reacting to this post. I have been dealing with a serious illness & injury to a loved one...

There are SCSI controllers that can interface IDE drives. The system sees those IDE drives as SCSI drives, and they work fine. But just because a controller interfaces with IDE drives doesn't necessarily make it an IDE controller. For example, common RAID controllers are a good example of SCSI controllers that can interface with IDE drives.

I first ran into this problem with older IBM machines (back in the 386 days), which had proprietary IDE controllers which could only interface with particular models of IBM IDE hard drives. IBM charged an arm & a leg for their proprietary hard drives and the native IDE controller could not be disabled. Try as I did, I couldn't get an add-on IDE controller to co-exist on that mainboard with the native IDE controller. Finally, a computer guru friend gave me the axiom; "Two IDE controllers can't co-exist in the same system." I haven't found an exception to that axiom since.

Certainly though, if the native IDE controller can be disabled then another IDE controller should be able to take its place. But as long as the native IDE controller is active I don't see how a second IDE controller could co-exist, or even be addressed, in the same system.


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## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

I picked up a Promise Ultra100 (not TX2) ide controller card for $4 total. It has its own bios. Out of package, it saw both ide hardrive and the ide dvd-rom drive that I plugged into it. I could boot from the ide hardrive but not the ide dvd-rom drive. So looked and there was a bios update that supposed to deal with the issue.


After flashing the Promise card's bios, the Promise card bios now in big letters says "THERE IS A BOOTABLE CD IN THE CDROM DRIVE". However the regular motherboard bios still only sees the ide hard drive, doesnt see the dvd-rom. And I can mount the dvd-rom no problem once operating system boots, I just cant boot from the dvd-rom.

Now using the usb adapter cable, the motherboard bios does see the dvd-rom as a bootable device in the bios, but it still wont boot from it.

And I have tried couple trick floppies both Smart Boot Manager floppy and the BCDL 150Z floppy for ancient computers allowing computer to boot from floppy but then hot boots any bootable cd in cdrom. Neither can see the usb cdrom nor cdrom connected to the Promise card.

Some info for TX2 version of this Promise card, but very little for the earlier version that I have, took long time just to find the bios update since Promise website kept trying to direct me to the TX2 bios update.


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