I managed to update the Sil SATA bios for my GA-7N400 Pro 2 Rev 1 following Winactive's brilliant guide on page 15, great stuff, my question is, I understand it is possible to update SATA bios's from other vendors also since a user claimed he upgraded his Gigabyte board with an onboard ITU controller.
I have an MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR with a Promise PDC20376 controller onboard, does anyone know if it is possible to get new firmware for this controller? I have looked everywhere but to no avail, I believe it is the equivolent of a promise Fasttrak TX2 controller, but the only download on their website is for a PCI card, can anyone advise?
I've registered to thank winactive for his quick guide (on page 6 - it took me a couple of minutes to do all the stuff), and others off course for sharing their experiences.
Though, I must say I'm disappointed in Borg Number One' s BIOS modd which I downloaded and installed: I see your a skill full one, but if you were a little bit wiser now your BIOS were still in my main board - if u really want happy customers, never again freeze ones pc until " press any key ..." happens - 10-30 second may be enough.
As for me I'm still using this main board (GA-7n400pro2-Rev2\) and I'm very proud off it . I don't know for how long though, as I own another 2 laptops for day by day use and I'm planning to upgrade the desktop for tougher tasks :bigggrin:
I needed this update for my WD 1TB Black Caviar.
A little update to thy guide:
- CBROM can be downloaded here (the other link works no more)
- latest SiI315 can be found here (that would be 4.3.84 at the moment)
In the attached file (7n400p2_fk_SiI3512_4384.bin/zip) you can find the version I just made and successfully booted without any nag screen or stupid key press requirement.
Prepare a suitable directory on your machine where you can download the files you need to work with. I suggest C:\BIOS as it is easy to navigate to from a command prompt.
Download your chosen BIOS revision for your board and extract only the binary image to the working folder (C:\BIOS). If you are having trouble locating your BIOS, or are wondering about the flash procedure this article has useful background and some good links.
Next you will need the appropriate SATA BIOS binary - download from this page and select the appropriate controller.
For most of you reading this thread, this will be the Sil3112A - extract the binary from the download to the working directory - for motherboard BIOS integration you need ONLY the 42xx.bin file, DO NOT USE the r or b prefixed binaries as they are for the standalone controller cards.
Finally, download the CBROM tool to the working directory from this page, some threads suggest that CBROM215 is buggy, but personally I have not encountered a problem. CBROM207 has failed to return to the command prompt several times when I have used it, so I prefer to use CBROM215.
Switch to a command prompt window (type cmd in the Run box).
Switch to your working directory by typing the path, e.g. cd c:\bios
Before beginning, check the present files by obtaining a directory listing, type dir
You should have the following files;
cbrom2xx.exe (modding utility) 42xx.bin (SATA BIOS binary) an7_19.bin (mobo BIOS binary, this example is for my ABit AN7, release 19)
Next type cbrom2xx an7_19.bin /pci release (remembering of course to substitute your chosen BIOS binary name and the version number of CBROM you are using).
You will see something like this;
in the above example, the options are A or B, obviously the 4250.bin is the old SATA BIOS binary, so b is the option, then we are returned to the command prompt.
Integrate the SATA BIOS by typing cbrom2xx an7_19.bin /pci 42xx.bin (remembering of course to substitute your chosen BIOS binary name, SATA BIOS binary name and the version number of CBROM you are using).
Finally, confirm integration with cbrom2xx an7_19.bin /d (remembering of course to substitute your chosen BIOS binary name and the version number of CBROM you are using).
You will see something like this;
As you can see, the 4283.bin is integrated successfully into PCI option ROM (B)
The filename of the BIOS binary is not changed, and it is this file that you should flash using the appropriate flash utility, see this article signposted earlier for more info.
N.B. Remember to use the correct driver as indicated on the Silicon Image download site for the SATA BIOS version.
[LE:]
of course, you use it on your own risks
[LE2:]
it also contains an bios update for the ITE part, don't remember which, but now is 2 times faster when it comes to detecting new devices on the IDE extension chipset
I managed to update the Sil SATA bios for my GA-7N400 Pro 2 Rev 1 following Winactive's brilliant guide on page 15, great stuff, my question is, I understand it is possible to update SATA bios's from other vendors also since a user claimed he upgraded his Gigabyte board with an onboard ITU controller.
I have an MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR with a Promise PDC20376 controller onboard, does anyone know if it is possible to get new firmware for this controller? I have looked everywhere but to no avail, I believe it is the equivolent of a promise Fasttrak TX2 controller, but the only download on their website is for a PCI card, can anyone advise?
Many thanks
James
I will take a look at this at the soonest opportunity and provide the Flash ROM if possible.
Hi EQuito, Spinner, winactive and all the others who've been so helpful in this forum. My first time here and it is so impressive - the knowledge, generosity and considerate tone. As others have said in different words, after days of trawling the net, finding this site is like water, oxygen and hope all at once.
I'm in the embarrassing position of hitting this problem years after most of you. Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro 2 Rev 1 (yep, not even Rev 2!), XP-Pro SP2.
Two optical drives, 2 IDE drives, tried to add a 1500 GB Samsung SATA drive, hangs at point of trying to recognize the drive.
Re:..
I have a Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2(Rev 1.x) F11 Bios. Mine is Stock! Has anyone ever intergraded ITE Tech IT8212 bios updates is there a link or download for it. I only see updates for the rev2 of this motherboard.
for the Current GA-7N400 Pro2(Rev 1.x) ITE Tech inc. v1.41
Gigabyte never intergrated ITE updates!
On ITE Tech. Inc. website (IT8212)
<FOR Card PCI>these are updated up to these versions now. Can these be intergraded into the rev1 F11 bios or Not?
RAID BIOS (for RAID, IDE) v1.7.1.94
ATAPI BIOS (for ATAPI device) v1.7.1.59 12
Controller bios updates
Can anyone make me an updated F11 (Rev 1.x) bios with these updates Please and or any other mods that are working for this type of motherboard would also be great. If Anyone is able to Help Please send to matrix@gainbroadband.com
PS: I would like to thank anyone for the help of an updated bios mod
As far as I can tell this build was not posted, but presumably was sent directly to GodSpeed, as the last thing I could find from him/her was that he/she was going off to try the update. Would anyone still have that update and be able to retrieve and post without too much trouble? I would be extremely grateful.
I think it was you Spinner who said some time earlier that this probably wouldn't solve the problem for the GB board, but reading the entire thread it does look as though it may have worked for some, so I;m very keen to give it a go.
Thanks in anticipation.
Hi EQuito, Spinner, winactive and all the others who've been so helpful in this forum. My first time here and it is so impressive - the knowledge, generosity and considerate tone. As others have said in different words, after days of trawling the net, finding this site is like water, oxygen and hope all at once.
I'm in the embarrassing position of hitting this problem years after most of you. Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro 2 Rev 1 (yep, not even Rev 2!), XP-Pro SP2.
Two optical drives, 2 IDE drives, tried to add a 1500 GB Samsung SATA drive, hangs at point of trying to recognize the drive.
Re:..
As far as I can tell this build was not posted, but presumably was sent directly to GodSpeed, as the last thing I could find from him/her was that he/she was going off to try the update. Would anyone still have that update and be able to retrieve and post without too much trouble? I would be extremely grateful.
I think it was you Spinner who said some time earlier that this probably wouldn't solve the problem for the GB board, but reading the entire thread it does look as though it may have worked for some, so I;m very keen to give it a go.
Thanks in anticipation.
Here is the f11 BIOS with the updates to Si3112 and ITE8212F
Revisions as in filename - please use at own risk.
I too have the dreaded GA-7N400 Pro2 (Rev 2.x) rev 2
I am having problems using an SATA drive as well. I tried the last bios rev posted in this thread but my @bios program from gigabyte keeps telling me it is the wrong one!
Thanks heaps winactive. Now interstate for 2 days for work so wont get to try till Sunday. Will advise success or otherwise. Again thank you.
Ok I promised feedback and here it is. A longish story, and not at the machine in question so may not be able to verify a few details - no actually the problem is so much happened and in the thick of it not all gets recorded and at my age not all gets remembered. Spoiler: it's now working!
So I was trying to add a 1.5TB Samsung SATA drive to the above board. Problem was it would lock on booting with said drive attached. Couldn't find any combination of BIOS settings to make any difference. Interestingly, I could hot plug it when the OS (Win XP SP3) was up and running, and it seemed to be able to see and use the drive - but not a satisfactory long term solution, and besides I wanted to try running Windows 7 on it.
Much searchng on the net lead to best help I found being in this group & thread. Appears I needed later Silicon Image drivers than Gigbyte had included. Silicon Image on their site strongly warn against trying to use their sample drivers directly - they advise to go to the MB makers and get the version customized for your board. Gigabyte, both from posts and from what I found on site seemed to have washed their hands of stuff so old - although even back at the time when most people had the problem they didn't seem to be any more help. They did have a later bios available for download and flashing - version 11 I'm fairly sure - which I did. It flashes via a little Flash program (Flash789??) that also comes with the download and is called from a 1 line Autoexec (also in download). I put both in root and flashed successfully. But alas, no help.
Reading above it seemed I needed to incorporate a later SI driver into the GB bios, something I was not confident in doing (or at least without blowing a couple more days of learning, and maybe my MotherBoard). Enter the kindness of people on this board, with Winactive riding to the rescue and generating the appropriate file for me (see above)(all care etc..). I downloaded it and replaced the one in root I had previously flashed and tried to do the same autoexec trick. Unfortunately it didn't work (and I still haven't traced why - could the flash program from Gigabyte have some sort of check/protection that it is in fact a valid file of theirs?)(slaapusilly at one stage I was getting told wrong bios too - might have been here). So started to research other ways to flash the MB, and realized GB also had a windows based utility to do the same thing. This worked! I could now boot with the drive attached.
I was about to post my joy at my problems being solved, but fortunately checked a little further first. It seemed now the Bios was happy with the drive, but Windows no longer was! XP would boot, even get into user logon, but then crash and reboot, seemingly as soon as it tried to look at the new drive (though can't prove that - whatever, it wouldn't stay up with the drive attached). And Win7 couldn't see the drive to install on.
Again tried bios settings, but due to advice earlier on this group focused on keeping the 'RAID' setting - possible mistake I found later.
So 1 step forward, 1 or 2 back. Back to the drawing board.
Further research showed a 'SATAaid' Java app available on the SI site. I downloaded and installed this on XP and voila, it worked! (I'm skipping quite a bit of heartache here). It installs a little blue man* in the taskbar (*technical description).
So that left Windows 7. Again SI came to the rescue. On their site was a driver listed as 'install' (as opposed to bios) - from memory about 1Mb. It had the warnings mentioned above about not using it, only using the one from you motherboard supplier. But given the success of using their code in the bios, I thought I'd try it. Windows 7, by the way, was booting to the stage of saying 'which disk, or add driver?', and couldn't see the SATA disk. I downloaded the driver from SI and put it on the IDE drive so I could navigate to it at install time, and once Windows 7 could see the '.inf' file it was happy. Well sort of - I still had to modify the Bios settings to change from 'RAID' to 'BASE', against, as I say, advice earlier in this group. (Actually, and I apologize for the unclear memory, this may have been a requirement to get the XP version going above too, in addition to the sata-aid utility).
Hope this is of use to someone else, and thanks again for the help.
My only questions are why the DOS flash program didn't work and, more importantly, what the implications are of running in bios 'BASE' mode rather than 'RAID' mode.
Hi - I believe BASE mode uses the high transfer speed of the controller, but does not support the RAID configurations.
RAID is used primarily for striping (performance) and mirroring (live data backup). Higher level RAID also supports error correction, redundancy, hot swap, etc. Read up on it;
DOS flash programs may not work for a variety of reasons, mainly due to versioning supporting only a fixed range of motherboards or flashchips.
Glad you worked through the driver issue - I'd always advise reading the BIOS/Driver release notes as quite often drivers are revised as a result of the feature set implemented in the BIOS.
DOS flash programs may not work for a variety of reasons, mainly due to versioning supporting only a fixed range of motherboards or flashchips.
...
Thanks. Re the DOS Flash program, I take your point, but had reasoned that in this case it should work - and arguably be the safest option - as it was the actual Flash program supplied by the MB manufacturer, for that board, from their website. That's why it puzzled me. Cheers.
So, thanks to all the board experts for putting in the leg work on this.
I am now the proud owner of an apparently functional Samsung HD103SJ 1TB SATA 3.0Gbps drive connected to the much maligned Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2 v2.0 motherboard.
here is exactly what I did if anyone else has exactly the same problem...
I downloaded the customised 7n400p2_fk_SiI3512_4384.bin bios supplied by kata-lin (who I think was following winactive's detailed howto), and then, being a non-windows type of person, I followed the instructions from... linuxinsight.com (search for "how-to-flash-motherboard-bios-from-linux-no-dos-windows-no-floppy-drive") to make a bootable cdrom (because I don't have a floppy drive).
Specifically, I used FreeDOSfrom fdos.org together with AWDFLASH.EXE from bios-mods.com and the 7n400p2_fk_SiI3512_4384.bin bios listed above.
In linux command line speak:
#then put a blank CD-R in the CD writer drive and run:
cdrecord -v bootcd.iso</code>
I booted off this cdrom into FreeDOS, then from there ran AWDFLASH.EXE to flash the new BIOS. And...It worked!
Note that I had previously followed various advice on other boards...i lose track which ones...to attach a jumper on the harddrive to force 1.5Gbps operation ... but this was stopping the drive from showing up at all in the BIOS or to the system. So I spent a good couple of hours grinding my teeth before removing it...maybe I had it on the wrong pins...I dunno, but it wasn't doing any good.
Also, I found that after removing that jumper, the hard drive was functional whether or not I had the SATA settings to [BASE] or [RAID] in the main BIOS (under the peripherals menu).
Anyway, thanks again to all who have put effort in to solve the lax support offered by Gigabyte et al.**
Cheers all!
**I should mention that I am yet to try the combination of a stock Gigabyte FK BIOS together with a HDD without that accursed jumper attached to the hard drive. But It certainly didn't work with the original FB version of the BIOS, with or without the jumper.
I have BIOS version 1.7.1.59 ATAPI With 1.7.1.92 RAID That i extracted from another SYSTEMS BIOS. It is named IT8212FC.BIN . It works in both ATAPI AND RAID Modes in the system bios. I've tested it with my GA-K8NP Pro .
Presuming your mobo is exactly the model you specified and not 'Pro 2' or 'Pro 2 revision 2', then the below is the latest bios revision for your board modded with the latest SI3112A controller BIOS. Try it then post back.
Cheers
I want to thank you and GodSpeed for all your efforts in putting files together that allowed me to upgrade my HD on an older system. I can't afford to buy a newer one, and I had HDs that were too big.
Hi - I believe BASE mode uses the high transfer speed of the controller, but does not support the RAID configurations.
RAID is used primarily for striping (performance) and mirroring (live data backup). Higher level RAID also supports error correction, redundancy, hot swap, etc. Read up on it;
DOS flash programs may not work for a variety of reasons, mainly due to versioning supporting only a fixed range of motherboards or flashchips.
Glad you worked through the driver issue - I'd always advise reading the BIOS/Driver release notes as quite often drivers are revised as a result of the feature set implemented in the BIOS.
IN BASE mode, I was able to successfully boot and keep my XP Pro SP3 system running BECAUSE, I am finding out, folks such as yourself are pretty darn smart and generous with your time to make this all happen!
I am finding out, folks such as yourself are pretty darn smart and generous with your time to make this all happen!
THANK YOU!
Best wishes!
Faustoii
I'm sure I speak for all the contributors when I say, you're very welcome, it's great to be able to help and the occasional "thank you" makes it all worthwhile.
I have BIOS version 1.7.1.59 ATAPI With 1.7.1.92 RAID That i extracted from another SYSTEMS BIOS. It is named IT8212FC.BIN . It works in both ATAPI AND RAID Modes in the system bios. I've tested it with my GA-K8NP Pro .
Sorry This is for the ITE IT8212 Giga-raid firmware. not Sil
Maybe you might have any idea about my strange problem:
I bought a new motherboard (Asrock z68 Pro3) with no IDE controller. I have a PCI Innovision DM-8401r IT8212F based RAID controller which I inteded to use to connect my old HDD and ATAPI devices. I pluged the PCI card to the first of the two available PCI slots (only that one appears "bootable"), I powered the PC and the IT8212 RAID BIOS showed. I then flashed the card with the ATAPI BIOS. And after that the system failed to boot. If I took out the PCI card or move it to the other PCI slot - it boots, but the IT8212 BIOS doesn't show.
The strange thing is that the PCI card works one every other computer that I tried with any of the BIOSes. And again - all of the BIOSes that I found on the Internet fail to boot at the new motherboard. Unfortunately I don't have a backup of the original BIOS and I have no idea which version it was... Do you have any idea what could be the cause of this strange behaviour? The size of the int13h.bin file is 48kb while the flash chip is 64kb (if this matters)... Do you have any older version that I could try (before 1.6.1.8)
Maybe you might have any idea about my strange problem:
I bought a new motherboard (Asrock z68 Pro3) with no IDE controller. I have a PCI Innovision DM-8401r IT8212F based RAID controller which I inteded to use to connect my old HDD and ATAPI devices. I pluged the PCI card to the first of the two available PCI slots (only that one appears "bootable"), I powered the PC and the IT8212 RAID BIOS showed. I then flashed the card with the ATAPI BIOS. And after that the system failed to boot. If I took out the PCI card or move it to the other PCI slot - it boots, but the IT8212 BIOS doesn't show.
The strange thing is that the PCI card works one every other computer that I tried with any of the BIOSes. And again - all of the BIOSes that I found on the Internet fail to boot at the new motherboard. Unfortunately I don't have a backup of the original BIOS and I have no idea which version it was... Do you have any idea what could be the cause of this strange behaviour? The size of the int13h.bin file is 48kb while the flash chip is 64kb (if this matters)... Do you have any older version that I could try (before 1.6.1.8)
It's not strange behaviour, AFAIK when you load the ATAPI BIOS it's just a controller card that works with Windows drivers, so there is no 'BIOS' function. You'll have to reflash back to RAID BIOS to enable it, I think.
If I understand you correctly, the ATAPI BIOS works OK in other boards? The .bin file being a different size shouldn't matter if the flash util does the 'paddding' or skips the unneeded areas. You could try UNIFLASH. Unfortunately, it's no longer being develped by the original authors. Not sure specific builds are easy to find.
The board you have is a new UEFI board, I'd wager the other test boards are traditional BIOS ROMs, maybe the interaction between the two is not all it could be or even possible. Have you tried Enable/Disable PCI Legacy mode in South Bridge in UEFI? Are you using on-board controller at all or is it set to IDE mode? I would suggest AHCI/RAID on this controller or disable if not in use. I would suggest you liaise with ASRock Technical support (and maybe suggest you get SATA drive )
If you are suggesting to extract a IT8212F .rom image from the BIOS images in this thread, I would say not a good idea. It never worked with the Silicon Image controllers, so I would say not with ITE controllers.
I can only find newer (or possibly same) RAID & ATAPI images than what you request, here;
Thank you very much for your reply!
The normal behaviour of the ATAPI BIOS is to scan for IDE devices. Both the ATAPI and the RAID BIOSes work fine on other boards, and none of them works on the new board, except the one that was originally on the card (and which is now lost ). I tried everything that I can think of - all possible settings of the integrated SATA controller, manually edited the 3rd byte of the binary as shown in this tutorial: http://bbright.tripod.com/information/cardbios.htm
Made a new checksum... Works everywhere but on this board... I am 99% sure that it is a bug in the board's firmware, but why did it run the first time!?
I flashed different BIOSes to the motherboard, cleared the CMOS several times...
Comments
I managed to update the Sil SATA bios for my GA-7N400 Pro 2 Rev 1 following Winactive's brilliant guide on page 15, great stuff, my question is, I understand it is possible to update SATA bios's from other vendors also since a user claimed he upgraded his Gigabyte board with an onboard ITU controller.
I have an MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR with a Promise PDC20376 controller onboard, does anyone know if it is possible to get new firmware for this controller? I have looked everywhere but to no avail, I believe it is the equivolent of a promise Fasttrak TX2 controller, but the only download on their website is for a PCI card, can anyone advise?
Many thanks
James
I've registered to thank winactive for his quick guide (on page 6 - it took me a couple of minutes to do all the stuff), and others off course for sharing their experiences.
Though, I must say I'm disappointed in Borg Number One' s BIOS modd which I downloaded and installed: I see your a skill full one, but if you were a little bit wiser now your BIOS were still in my main board - if u really want happy customers, never again freeze ones pc until " press any key ..." happens - 10-30 second may be enough.
As for me I'm still using this main board (GA-7n400pro2-Rev2\) and I'm very proud off it
I needed this update for my WD 1TB Black Caviar.
A little update to thy guide:
- CBROM can be downloaded here (the other link works no more)
- latest SiI315 can be found here (that would be 4.3.84 at the moment)
In the attached file (7n400p2_fk_SiI3512_4384.bin/zip) you can find the version I just made and successfully booted without any nag screen or stupid key press requirement.
Thank you all again
[LE:]
of course, you use it on your own risks
[LE2:]
it also contains an bios update for the ITE part, don't remember which, but now is 2 times faster when it comes to detecting new devices on the IDE extension chipset
I will take a look at this at the soonest opportunity and provide the Flash ROM if possible.
Always happy to help.
W
I'm in the embarrassing position of hitting this problem years after most of you. Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro 2 Rev 1 (yep, not even Rev 2!), XP-Pro SP2.
Two optical drives, 2 IDE drives, tried to add a 1500 GB Samsung SATA drive, hangs at point of trying to recognize the drive.
Re:..
As far as I can tell this build was not posted, but presumably was sent directly to GodSpeed, as the last thing I could find from him/her was that he/she was going off to try the update. Would anyone still have that update and be able to retrieve and post without too much trouble? I would be extremely grateful.
I think it was you Spinner who said some time earlier that this probably wouldn't solve the problem for the GB board, but reading the entire thread it does look as though it may have worked for some, so I;m very keen to give it a go.
Thanks in anticipation.
Here is the f11 BIOS with the updates to Si3112 and ITE8212F
Revisions as in filename - please use at own risk.
Thanks heaps winactive. Now interstate for 2 days for work so wont get to try till Sunday. Will advise success or otherwise. Again thank you.
I am having problems using an SATA drive as well. I tried the last bios rev posted in this thread but my @bios program from gigabyte keeps telling me it is the wrong one!
HELP! Thank YOU!
Ok I promised feedback and here it is. A longish story, and not at the machine in question so may not be able to verify a few details - no actually the problem is so much happened and in the thick of it not all gets recorded and at my age not all gets remembered. Spoiler: it's now working!
So I was trying to add a 1.5TB Samsung SATA drive to the above board. Problem was it would lock on booting with said drive attached. Couldn't find any combination of BIOS settings to make any difference. Interestingly, I could hot plug it when the OS (Win XP SP3) was up and running, and it seemed to be able to see and use the drive - but not a satisfactory long term solution, and besides I wanted to try running Windows 7 on it.
Much searchng on the net lead to best help I found being in this group & thread. Appears I needed later Silicon Image drivers than Gigbyte had included. Silicon Image on their site strongly warn against trying to use their sample drivers directly - they advise to go to the MB makers and get the version customized for your board. Gigabyte, both from posts and from what I found on site seemed to have washed their hands of stuff so old - although even back at the time when most people had the problem they didn't seem to be any more help. They did have a later bios available for download and flashing - version 11 I'm fairly sure - which I did. It flashes via a little Flash program (Flash789??) that also comes with the download and is called from a 1 line Autoexec (also in download). I put both in root and flashed successfully. But alas, no help.
Reading above it seemed I needed to incorporate a later SI driver into the GB bios, something I was not confident in doing (or at least without blowing a couple more days of learning, and maybe my MotherBoard). Enter the kindness of people on this board, with Winactive riding to the rescue and generating the appropriate file for me (see above)(all care etc..). I downloaded it and replaced the one in root I had previously flashed and tried to do the same autoexec trick. Unfortunately it didn't work (and I still haven't traced why - could the flash program from Gigabyte have some sort of check/protection that it is in fact a valid file of theirs?)(slaapusilly at one stage I was getting told wrong bios too - might have been here). So started to research other ways to flash the MB, and realized GB also had a windows based utility to do the same thing. This worked! I could now boot with the drive attached.
I was about to post my joy at my problems being solved, but fortunately checked a little further first. It seemed now the Bios was happy with the drive, but Windows no longer was! XP would boot, even get into user logon, but then crash and reboot, seemingly as soon as it tried to look at the new drive (though can't prove that - whatever, it wouldn't stay up with the drive attached). And Win7 couldn't see the drive to install on.
Again tried bios settings, but due to advice earlier on this group focused on keeping the 'RAID' setting - possible mistake I found later.
So 1 step forward, 1 or 2 back. Back to the drawing board.
Further research showed a 'SATAaid' Java app available on the SI site. I downloaded and installed this on XP and voila, it worked! (I'm skipping quite a bit of heartache here). It installs a little blue man* in the taskbar (*technical description).
So that left Windows 7. Again SI came to the rescue. On their site was a driver listed as 'install' (as opposed to bios) - from memory about 1Mb. It had the warnings mentioned above about not using it, only using the one from you motherboard supplier. But given the success of using their code in the bios, I thought I'd try it. Windows 7, by the way, was booting to the stage of saying 'which disk, or add driver?', and couldn't see the SATA disk. I downloaded the driver from SI and put it on the IDE drive so I could navigate to it at install time, and once Windows 7 could see the '.inf' file it was happy. Well sort of - I still had to modify the Bios settings to change from 'RAID' to 'BASE', against, as I say, advice earlier in this group. (Actually, and I apologize for the unclear memory, this may have been a requirement to get the XP version going above too, in addition to the sata-aid utility).
Hope this is of use to someone else, and thanks again for the help.
My only questions are why the DOS flash program didn't work and, more importantly, what the implications are of running in bios 'BASE' mode rather than 'RAID' mode.
RAID is used primarily for striping (performance) and mirroring (live data backup). Higher level RAID also supports error correction, redundancy, hot swap, etc. Read up on it;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
DOS flash programs may not work for a variety of reasons, mainly due to versioning supporting only a fixed range of motherboards or flashchips.
Glad you worked through the driver issue - I'd always advise reading the BIOS/Driver release notes as quite often drivers are revised as a result of the feature set implemented in the BIOS.
I am now the proud owner of an apparently functional Samsung HD103SJ 1TB SATA 3.0Gbps drive connected to the much maligned Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2 v2.0 motherboard.
here is exactly what I did if anyone else has exactly the same problem...
I downloaded the customised 7n400p2_fk_SiI3512_4384.bin bios supplied by kata-lin (who I think was following winactive's detailed howto), and then, being a non-windows type of person, I followed the instructions from... linuxinsight.com (search for "how-to-flash-motherboard-bios-from-linux-no-dos-windows-no-floppy-drive") to make a bootable cdrom (because I don't have a floppy drive).
Specifically, I used FreeDOSfrom fdos.org together with AWDFLASH.EXE from bios-mods.com and the 7n400p2_fk_SiI3512_4384.bin bios listed above.
In linux command line speak:
mkdir /tmp/newbios
cd /tmp/newbios
<code>wget http://www.fdos.org/bootdisks/autogen/FDOEM.144.gz
gunzip FDOEM.144.gz</code>
wget http://www.bios-mods.com/tools/Award%20Flash%20Utility/Award%20Flash%20v8.94/AWDFLASH.EXE
wget -O 7n400p2_fk_SiI3512_4384.zip "http://icrontic.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=27308&d=1247918051"
unzip 7n400p2_fk_SiI3512_4384.zip
<code>mkdir /tmp/floppy
mount -t vfat -o loop FDOEM.144 /tmp/floppy
</code>
cp 7n400p2_fk_SiI3512_4384.bin AWDFLASH.EXE <code>/tmp/floppy
umount </code> <code>/tmp/floppy</code>
<code>mkisofs -o bootcd.iso -b FDOEM.144 FDOEM.144
#then put a blank CD-R in the CD writer drive and run:
cdrecord -v bootcd.iso</code>
I booted off this cdrom into FreeDOS, then from there ran AWDFLASH.EXE to flash the new BIOS. And...It worked!
Note that I had previously followed various advice on other boards...i lose track which ones...to attach a jumper on the harddrive to force 1.5Gbps operation ... but this was stopping the drive from showing up at all in the BIOS or to the system. So I spent a good couple of hours grinding my teeth before removing it...maybe I had it on the wrong pins...I dunno, but it wasn't doing any good.
Also, I found that after removing that jumper, the hard drive was functional whether or not I had the SATA settings to [BASE] or [RAID] in the main BIOS (under the peripherals menu).
Anyway, thanks again to all who have put effort in to solve the lax support offered by Gigabyte et al.**
Cheers all!
**I should mention that I am yet to try the combination of a stock Gigabyte FK BIOS together with a HDD without that accursed jumper attached to the hard drive. But It certainly didn't work with the original FB version of the BIOS, with or without the jumper.
http://depositfiles.com/files/jucup2qp0
Use Cbrom to integrate.
I want to thank you and GodSpeed for all your efforts in putting files together that allowed me to upgrade my HD on an older system. I can't afford to buy a newer one, and I had HDs that were too big.
Best wishes and continued success!
Faustoii
IN BASE mode, I was able to successfully boot and keep my XP Pro SP3 system running BECAUSE, I am finding out, folks such as yourself are pretty darn smart and generous with your time to make this all happen!
THANK YOU!
Best wishes!
Faustoii
I'm sure I speak for all the contributors when I say, you're very welcome, it's great to be able to help and the occasional "thank you" makes it all worthwhile.
Sorry This is for the ITE IT8212 Giga-raid firmware. not Sil
Maybe you might have any idea about my strange problem:
I bought a new motherboard (Asrock z68 Pro3) with no IDE controller. I have a PCI Innovision DM-8401r IT8212F based RAID controller which I inteded to use to connect my old HDD and ATAPI devices. I pluged the PCI card to the first of the two available PCI slots (only that one appears "bootable"), I powered the PC and the IT8212 RAID BIOS showed. I then flashed the card with the ATAPI BIOS. And after that the system failed to boot. If I took out the PCI card or move it to the other PCI slot - it boots, but the IT8212 BIOS doesn't show.
The strange thing is that the PCI card works one every other computer that I tried with any of the BIOSes. And again - all of the BIOSes that I found on the Internet fail to boot at the new motherboard. Unfortunately I don't have a backup of the original BIOS
It's not strange behaviour, AFAIK when you load the ATAPI BIOS it's just a controller card that works with Windows drivers, so there is no 'BIOS' function. You'll have to reflash back to RAID BIOS to enable it, I think.
If I understand you correctly, the ATAPI BIOS works OK in other boards? The .bin file being a different size shouldn't matter if the flash util does the 'paddding' or skips the unneeded areas. You could try UNIFLASH. Unfortunately, it's no longer being develped by the original authors. Not sure specific builds are easy to find.
The board you have is a new UEFI board, I'd wager the other test boards are traditional BIOS ROMs, maybe the interaction between the two is not all it could be or even possible. Have you tried Enable/Disable PCI Legacy mode in South Bridge in UEFI? Are you using on-board controller at all or is it set to IDE mode? I would suggest AHCI/RAID on this controller or disable if not in use. I would suggest you liaise with ASRock Technical support (and maybe suggest you get SATA drive
If you are suggesting to extract a IT8212F .rom image from the BIOS images in this thread, I would say not a good idea. It never worked with the Silicon Image controllers, so I would say not with ITE controllers.
I can only find newer (or possibly same) RAID & ATAPI images than what you request, here;
http://www.ite.com.tw/EN/products_more.aspx?CategoryID=3&ID=5,91
The normal behaviour of the ATAPI BIOS is to scan for IDE devices. Both the ATAPI and the RAID BIOSes work fine on other boards, and none of them works on the new board, except the one that was originally on the card (and which is now lost
http://bbright.tripod.com/information/cardbios.htm
Made a new checksum... Works everywhere but on this board... I am 99% sure that it is a bug in the board's firmware, but why did it run the first time!?
I flashed different BIOSes to the motherboard, cleared the CMOS several times...