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DMA enabled? [new IDE driver installed]

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DMA enabled? [new IDE driver installed]

Postby Jon_J on Thu Oct 09, 2003 8:35 am

I use Win89 SE
Before installing new drivers for PCI to EIDE, (SiS 5513 PCI IDE controller),
I was using Windows generic drivers and I had 3 sections for Drives in device manager:

CD-Rom drives
Disk drives
Hard drives

Now I have just 2 sections

CD-ROM drives
Disk drives

My hard drives are in disk drives section now with the floppy drive.
I used to have a check box for DMA in each of my CD-ROM drives and Hard drives.
Now there is no check box for DMA.
In BIOS UDMA is enabled and reports as mode 4 upon bootup
Also when I read the release.txt with the drivers it mentions this for Windows 95:

"Automatically detect IDE device's mode ( PIO, DMA, or Ultra-DMA ), then run its optimal mode."

If my drives are running in DMA or Ultra DMA, How do I know?
Is there a place in the registry where I can look?
In Win 95, there is a section in sys.ini that "loads" DMA/UDMA (as mentioned in the readme for the drivers.)
There is no mention in the readme as to how one can tell which mode is loaded in Windows 98

Thank you for reading this
Jon

Pentium III @ 600mhz
256MB Ram
HDD #1 10GB
HDD #2 20GB
Plextor PX-708A DVD±R ±RW
Toshiba SD-M1402 DVD reader
Win98SE and all updates as of Sept 03
Adaptec Aspi 4.60
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Postby Action Jackson on Thu Oct 09, 2003 9:35 am

If you are using a PCI controller card then that feature will not show up.

I don't have experience with SiS chipsets, but after the OS install, the first thing I install is the chipset drivers which I would suggest you give a try.
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Postby Jon_J on Thu Oct 09, 2003 9:45 am

Thank you for your reply Action Jackson,
It is onboard IDE and is the chipset driver for it.
SiS only has chipset drivers. (They don't manufacture components, just chipsets).

It seems like my computer is more stable now and I haven't noticed a slowdown in disk access. I just wish I knew if I have DMA enabled in Windows. Seems like there would refrence to it somewhere in Windows, (besides device manager)

Thank you,
Jon
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Postby CDRecorder on Thu Oct 09, 2003 1:23 pm

Some times, the chipset drivers don't display whether or not the drive is using DMA or PIO. The best way to tell is to run a transfer rate test on each drive. If it seems too low or if your CPU usage goes to 100%, your drives are probably running in PIO.

BTW, I have two older computers with SiS chipsets. Those computers are running Win98. The IDE drivers for those computers don't show whether the drives are using DMA or PIO, either.
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DMA

Postby wicked1 on Thu Oct 09, 2003 2:09 pm

Will Nero's DriveTool work?It tells you if your drives have DMA enabled.I dont know if it works for those drivers though.
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