| IDENTIFYING THE CONTROLLER CHIP |
| CHIPSET | ATA Spec | Device ID |
| PDC20262 | ATA-66 | 4D38 |
| PDC20263 | ATA-66 | 0D38 |
| PDC20265 | ATA-100 | 0D30 |
| PDC20266 | ATA-100 | 4D30 |
| PDC20267 | ATA-100 | 4D30 |
| REPLACING THE CONTROLLER BIOS |
With the use of special purpose BIOS manipulation utilities written by the BIOS manufacturers themselves it's actually possible to insert and remove BIOS modules in to and out of the main motherboard BIOS. These BIOS modules are actually referred to as "PCI BIOS Extension Modules" because what they actually to is add support to the motherboard BIOS for other devices that may be on the motherboard. Both AWARD and AMI have the required utilities for this manipulation so before you continue you'll need to grab the relevant utility to suit you motherboard BIOS.
| BIOS | PROGRAM |
| AMI | AMIBCP |
| AWARD | CBROM |
Once you have the required program you can begin exploring the depths of your BIOS file and inserting / removing modules, I'll give an example for each of the two programs.
| AMI BIOS (AMIBCP) EXAMPLE |
| Type AMIBCP XXXXX.ROM (substitute the name of your own rom file), this will load your BIOS file into memory and present you with a menu. Since this is a very user friendly program to use I'm not going to mention what keys do what for a particular screen, just look at the grey section at the bottom of the screen, all the editing keys and functions are displayed for every page. Cursor down to "Edit BIOS Modules" and press enter, you will now see a list of all the modules in the BIOS, have a look for one of more called "PCI AddOn ROM", these are the modules for PCI devices and are the ones we want to look at more closely, to gain more information on a particular module cursor onto the module you are interested in and press enter. You will see some info about the module on the screen, of particular interest are the "PCI Device ID" and "PCI Vendor ID", from these you can work out which module is which and remove anything with a "Vendor ID" of 105A this will be your old IDE module. Now insert your modified IDE module, it will bring up the details of the bios, just press F10 to save and exit back to the Modules list, now press ESC to get back to the main menu and press F10 again to save the actual file to disk and exit the program. You should now have a new modified BIOS file that you can flash back into your motherboard with a program such as AMIFLASH (or whatever came with your motherboard/BIOS upgrade). |
| AWARD BIOS (CBROM) EXAMPLE |
| Type CBROM XXXXX.BIN /D (substitute the name of your own bin file),
this will display a list of the modules in your bios. Look for any modules
with names like the following.
ulbios.bin These are just some of the possible names and the modules could really be called anything, they could also be stored under a different "Item-Name", for example. FNT0 ROM u100b20.bin from ASUS CUBX-E motherboard PCI driver[A] ulbios.bin from 694D Pro AR motherboard PCI driver[B] rd131B16.bin from 694D Pro AR motherboard OEM1 CODE u100b21.bin from ASUS A7V motherboard Only remove modules if you are sure you know what they are. Otherwise it best to extract a copy out of the BIOS file (without changing it), and load it into an editor to read any text present and get an idea of what it is, a HEX editor is best but if you only want to read the text you could get away with something as simple as WordPad. To extract a module (without actually altering the BIOS file) use a command something like the following commands depending on what Item-Name the rom is stored under. Type CBROM XXXXX.BIN /FNT0 extract It changes from board to board so I can't give you and exact method but I'm sure you will pick it up fairly quickly. Once you've run that command correctly you will have a copy of the PCI module sitting the current directory, use an editor as mentioned above and you will be able to see what the rom is for. Once you've found the module you want to remove use the same command as above but instead of the word "extract" use the word "release". This will remove the module from the BIOS file, be careful as it won't leave a copy of the module in the current directory this time, it'll just delete the module from the BIOS file all together. For example. Type CBROM XXXXX.BIN /FNT0 release Now all's you need to do is inset your modified module into the BIOS file, again you use the same command but instead of extract or release you just type the name of the module file you want to install, here's an example assuming the name was "raid.bin", substitute it for the name of the file you wish to install. Type CBROM XXXXX.BIN /FNT0 raid.bin You should now have a new modified BIOS file that you can flash back into your motherboard with a program such as AWDFLASH (or whatever came with your motherboard/BIOS upgrade). |
| MODIFYING THE MOTHERBOARD |
You will need one or two resistors valued at 150 ohms, these should be soldered onto the back of the primary ATA-100 connector as follows.
If your onboard chip is ATA-66 (PDC20262 or PDC20263), then you only require one resistor and it should be soldered between pin 36 and ground.
If your onboard chip is ATA-100 (PDC20265, PDC20266 or PDC20267), then you will require two resistors one should be soldered between pin 36 and ground, the other should be soldered between pin 37 and ground. If you motherboard ships with the "LITE RAID" bios preinstalled then you only need the resistor from pin 37 to ground, the other resistor is already built onto your board.
Ok that's it, all done. Now you just need some Drivers.
Have fun with you new RAID configuration