New motherboard / sata compatability

[mr soft]

Hi
I'm wondering if some of the newer asus gigabyte MB,s, have easier sata detection/installation.
At the moment I have an asus a8v deluxe, and it's a pain trying to find and install third party drivers and such.

I'm looking to buy a new MB. as there so cheap, but as most now only come with 1 x ide input, I will have to think about going sata.

[Doom9]

Isn't this more a question of chipset and settings? For instance, in AHCI mode, you'll need drivers, whereas most chipsets, when used in default SATA mode, would remain backward compatible and thus be recognized by Windows (probably only pre-vista since I'm assuming vista supports a lot more hardware) without needing any additional drivers (the exception being some older intel chipset.. I remember one dell box at work insisting on drivers that need to be loaded via Floppy drive - and as it so happens the machine has no floppy).

Although, I cannot imagine how finding the SATA drivers is an issue.. they come with the MB. It's the getting the thing to load upon Windows installation that is a PITA if you have no floppy and are not using Vista.

[mr soft]

Hi Doom9

My chip set is a K8T800
I had a lot of trouble finding the right drivers on my MB cd. :confused:

After installing what I thought were the right raid drivers
I rebooted to a black screen, after 3 windows installations I ripped out the HD and put it in an external sata case.

I find it incredible that new toys {sata} rely on old toys {floppy}
to get up and running.

I also don't have a floppy and am running xp pro.

I'm sure I'm doing it all wrong; I was just wondering if newer MB's or chipsets are less of a drama.

I thought jumper settings and cable selection were a pain.

[Blue_MiSfit]

It's typically very simple as Doom9 says.

I've never loaded SATA drivers - if you set the BIOS to "IDE Emulation" mode (also known as many other things, conveniently enough), it works fine.

Vista does make it easier in that you can load drivers off a flash drive on setup.

Also, for XP you can create a custom ISO image with the drivers slipstreamed (and all the latest updates, DirectX redistributibles, .NET frameworks, etc etc)

Check out nLite. Good stuff!

~MiSfit

[burfadel]

Hi Doom9

My chip set is a K8T800
I had a lot of trouble finding the right drivers on my MB cd. :confused:

After installing what I thought were the right raid drivers
I rebooted to a black screen, after 3 windows installations I ripped out the HD and put it in an external sata case.

I find it incredible that new toys {sata} rely on old toys {floppy}
to get up and running.

I also don't have a floppy and am running xp pro.

I'm sure I'm doing it all wrong; I was just wondering if newer MB's or chipsets are less of a drama.

I thought jumper settings and cable selection were a pain.

Download the drivers for your chipset from viaarena (the link below is directly to the initial page where you select the operating system):
http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=2&Type=1

That covers chipset information (like the Intel INF), IDE driver, Raid driver, and AGP driver for your K8T800 as well as many other chipsets. Its safe as it installs automatically!

The separate IDE driver link is NOT needed, thats for a very old driver that is no longer supported.

If you want to update your ethernet and audio driver whilst your there, go right ahead! the later via drivers for audio supposedly sound significantly better, but you'll have to choose the right one!

Either way, it wouldn't be practical for you to upgrade just your motherboard, because a new motherboard won't give you anything that your current motherboard doesn't provide. If you updated your motherboard to a modern one, you'd have to do the cpu, graphics card (as AGP is retired...), RAM, basically a whole new computer!

If you managed to find an old stock motherboard replacement it would have to be dirt cheap, its not worth spending $100 on a replacement board that is in itself old.

[Surf]

I echo what Burfadel said. You need to obtain the most update drivers from VIA. One rule of thumb, never use the ones from the included CD. They are almost obsolete by the time you need them.

Win XP with SP2 was created in August 2004....there have been 81+ security updates/patches until 09/2007. This nLite(google) is fantastic in creating the near current operating system. One may integrate all the current drivers thus avoiding the floppy method(press F6).

Intel Conroe based motherboards since P965 chipset do NOT support IDE. The lone IDE socket is provided by a Third Party conroller such as JMicron, Marvell.....which in turn may also give you the so called e-SATA connection.

So, if you hope to install your 500gb sata driveS, be prepared with providing the ACHI/RAID controller's driver.

Vista has the drivers and that's why you won't face such a pain in the.

[mr soft]

Thanks very much for the detailed and helpful posts.

I'm playing with nlite as we speak, it's a dream come true. The via arena page is very good. The VIA Hyperion drivers will be merged in with that nlite iso I'll be making.{amongst many others}
My MB. was one of the first with sata conn. I think, as it only supports 150mbs transfer speeds. :(

A total rebuilds out unless I find an odd stick of ram, or a cpu under the x mas tree.:D