ultra DMA

Could anyone tell me if This version of motherboard and bios supports ultra DMA?

Win 98se
have ultra ata66 hd 8.4 gig

motherboard v56la.

BIOSDate: 07/01/96
BIOSName: Acer
BIOSVersion: P55C 233 V2.1 08/13/97


Thank you

 

It appears that you have a 233Mhz cpu. If so, check the chipset on the motherboard. If its an Intel 430HX or 430VX you're out of luck. Probably ok with anything else. Post back with the chipset info it it's not an HX or VX and I'll check my manual.

Tin

 

tinknocker

I have an acer aspire 1240

Amd k5 pr166
runs 113-116 mhz But have clocked it to 200mhz = 133mhz
real clock speed. ran good but didn't want to over heat so went back to 166mhz
ALI M1521 A1 chipset

in setup it has advanced pio mode on\off setting is on
have dma checkbox in device mgr hd settings, it stays on when reboot.

thanks

 

Sorry for the delay. Experienced a hazard of the trade... sharp edge x bare skin=trip to the emergency room.

Just to be thorough, DMA functionality must be supported by the chipset and for the chipset to provide it requires the proper driver. I checked my sources here at home and found no definitive answer. Checked the ALi website and there too found nothing certain. But, the website does have a driver download page and an FAQ page.

They do list several chipsets that work with their DMA driver download and yours is not one of them. From this I would assume that the M1521 chipset does not allow use of DMA.

There are add-in cards available to allow UDMA speed increases. E.G., if your motherboard only supports UDMA 33 and you purchase a UDMA 100 HDD the installation of a UDMA 100 card would give you the full use of the new HDD. Whereas without it you could only operate the drive at UDMA 33. I don't know if these cards will work on a motherboard that does not support UDMA initially.

Tin

 

udma

Thank you for the reply:

I.ve been doing some checking on my system with wintune.
If i run a test on my hd without DMA enabled it reports
about 17 megs\s cached speed, if i enable Dma it reports
20mb\s cached speed.
I have the ata66 80 conductor cable hooked up and ata66
enabled on the hard drive.
But the instructions say that if your system can't handle udma
it will default to whatever your bios can handle.
since I'm getting more speed out of the DMA setting, I must be running some mode of DMA, but i guess not UDMA.
the direct memory access controller has no name.
but the driver is vmm32.vxd 4-23-1999 think it came from
win98se system drivers I used to have an oem version of windows 95B osr2 but I bought an upgrade to win98se, and did a reformat and clean install to win98se and i.m using all the win98se drivers for the hardware now, also have internet explorer 5.5 and internet tools.
acer told me my bios is not upgradable.
Thinking about maybe looking for a newer motherboard.
I like to tinker on things maybe get a little experience.
Thank you for not forgetting even with your problem.
hope your injury does ok.

 

Update

I did some checking on tom's hardware guide page.
there were some papers on western digital hard drives.
ata66 5400 and 7200 rpm drives.
They report a read speed of 25mb/s
My hd tests 21mb/s so I guess i'm at least in the ball park
for the type of HD and system I have.
Guess I'll move on to something else.

Thanks Tinknocker!!!