Zen: Windows setup wont detect USB floppy

Copper · Post by **Copper** » Thu Feb 26, 2004 4:22 pm

I've discovered a bit of a problem. When I put the shuttle together I transfered my hard drive and pci to SATA card from the old system. I didn't need to install windows because it was already on the drive. Now I'm trying to reinstall windows on the drive but when I press F6 to install the sata card driver it doesn't find the usb floppy. Without the driver, windows wont install.

Will a usb floppy simply not work on this board without windows to run it? Cause the floppy works fine with windows booted?

dannybruk · Post by **dannybruk** » Fri Feb 27, 2004 2:38 am

Does a USB Floppy drive come under the 'Legacy USB Devices' category in the bios? Worth checking there maybe?

replay0 · Post by **replay0** » Fri Feb 27, 2004 3:19 am

There is no option for Legacy USB support.

When I was fdisking/formatting my HD, DOS recognized my USB FDD as a bootable A: drive. Did you enable the USB FDD as a boot device maybe, so that it searches for a USB FDD when you're booting up?

Copper · Post by **Copper** » Fri Feb 27, 2004 9:18 am

Hi Replay0,

Can you get the Zen to boot a USB floppy? It has the option to do so in the bios but mine wont do it. I set the usb floppy as the first and only boot device and it wont boot it. The system just stops, it doesn't even report a "no system disk" error. It boots the hard drive and the ide cdrom fine, but it doesn't recognize the usb floppy.

Copper · Post by **Copper** » Fri Feb 27, 2004 10:47 am

I have some more quirks to report with the Zen.

1) The device manager in windows XP reports that there are 3 monitors on the system. This seems odd considering I have only 1 monitor and 1 (onboard) video driver. One of the monitors is reported as a "plug and play" monitor. The other 2 are reported as "default" monitors. If I remove them from the system using the device manager windows will "redetect" and install them when I reboot.

2) HD Tach reports the following for my Raptor: 50MB burst, 45MB avg read, and 50MB max read. Using the same drive on the same PCI to SATA card using the same driver in my Iwill, HD Tach reported: 115, 65, 75, respectively. It would appear that the ATI chipset is, for whatever reason, only supplying 50MB of the PCI bus bandwidth to the PCI slot. This quirk, along with the apparent inability to load 3rd party host controller drivers from a USB floppy should be weighed heavily by anyone considering using anything other than an IDE drive in the Zen. Windows XP gives no other option than to load those drivers from a floppy drive.

3) At boot there is an extended delay while the first Windows XP splash screen appears (the one with the little animated progress bar at the bottom). In my Iwill, the progress bar would go across one time, the splash screen would disappear, a short 2 or 3 second delay with a blank screen would transpire, then the welcome screen would appear. In the Zen, everything seems to be the same with the exception of the length of time the splash screen is present. It remains up for no less than six swipes of the progess bar, adding several seconds to the overall boot time. It should be noted that I'm using a faster bus (800 mhz compared to 533), faster ram (DDR400 compared to DDR266) and a slightly slower CPU clock speed (3.00 compared to 3.06) with the Zen than I had in the Iwill. Those numbers would leave me to expect that performance would be improved rather than degraded at boot. The rest of the system does seem to be improved, however. Things are snappier with the Zen.

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Fri Feb 27, 2004 12:36 pm

Copper wrote:I have some more quirks to report with the Zen.

1) The device manager in windows XP reports that there are 3 monitors on the system. This seems odd considering I have only 1 monitor and 1 (onboard) video driver. One of the monitors is reported as a "plug and play" monitor. The other 2 are reported as "default" monitors. If I remove them from the system using the device manager windows will "redetect" and install them when I reboot.

Mine shows the same thing. All "3" monitors also show up in the Display Properties screen.

Copper wrote: This quirk, along with the apparent inability to load 3rd party host controller drivers from a USB floppy should be weighed heavily by anyone considering using anything other than an IDE drive in the Zen. Windows XP gives no other option than to load those drivers from a floppy drive.

That's not MS's fault. Shuttle decided not to put a floppy header on the mobo. IMHO, that's a stupid decision. The floppy is far from dead, no matter how much the anti-floppiests might wish it were.

Copper wrote:3) At boot there is an extended delay while the first Windows XP splash screen appears (the one with the little animated progress bar at the bottom). In my Iwill, the progress bar would go across one time, the splash screen would disappear, a short 2 or 3 second delay with a blank screen would transpire, then the welcome screen would appear. In the Zen, everything seems to be the same with the exception of the length of time the splash screen is present. It remains up for no less than six swipes of the progess bar, adding several seconds to the overall boot time. It should be noted that I'm using a faster bus (800 mhz compared to 533), faster ram (DDR400 compared to DDR266) and a slightly slower CPU clock speed (3.00 compared to 3.06) with the Zen than I had in the Iwill. Those numbers would leave me to expect that performance would be improved rather than degraded at boot. The rest of the system does seem to be improved, however. Things are snappier with the Zen.

I sure don't have that problem with my ST62K. It cold boots to a fully loaded desktop in 35 seconds. The progress bar shows up right after the POST screen and takes about 1.75 swipes before the desktop starts loading. My guess is that you have some driver issues, or more likely, something with your add-in SATA card.

Copper · Post by **Copper** » Fri Feb 27, 2004 1:30 pm

Hi Ralf,

I guess ATI just like to think there are three monitors.

My only concern is/was that there is hardware that is being misidentified by windows.

That's not MS's fault. Shuttle decided not to put a floppy header on the mobo. IMHO, that's a stupid decision. The floppy is far from dead, no matter how much the anti-floppiests might wish it were.

I agree that it was a bad decision on Shuttle's part. I think MS bares a little of the responsibilty as well, however. The host controller driver install procedure need not be limited to sourcing at the floppy and the floppy alone. It could just as easily display an "open" dialog where the path could be specified. As it is, the windows XP - Zen combo prevents loading windows onto drives attached to a host controller that windows does not have a driver for natively.

sure don't have that problem with my ST62K. It cold boots to a fully loaded desktop in 35 seconds. The progress bar shows up right after the POST screen and takes about 1.75 swipes before the desktop starts loading. My guess is that you have some driver issues, or more likely, something with your add-in SATA card.

The drive was pulled from the Iwill with XP and all of Iwill's drivers already loaded. Hence my interest in formatting the drive for a fresh start with XP. It may well be driver related.

The SATA existed on the Iwill without issue. It could be ATI to SATA issues? I received some strange readings from HD Tach.

HammerSandwich · Post by **HammerSandwich** » Fri Feb 27, 2004 2:06 pm

Copper wrote:The drive was pulled from the Iwill with XP and all of Iwill's drivers already loaded. Hence my interest in formatting the drive for a fresh start with XP. It may well be driver related.

Yeah, you really can't complain about weird behavior when you're running Intel-chipset drivers on an ATI-chipset mobo. Windows is pretty finicky about that kind of thing.

Copper · Post by **Copper** » Fri Feb 27, 2004 3:20 pm

HammerSandwich wrote:Yeah, you really can't complain about weird behavior when you're running Intel-chipset drivers on an ATI-chipset mobo. Windows is pretty finicky about that kind of thing.

You may be right. But then again windows searches for hardware and loads the appropriate drivers at every boot. All the ATI drivers were loaded the first time the Zen was run. But I suppose that antiquated and unneeded drivers may still be being loaded.

Unfortunately, I can't reinstall windows to see if that's where the PCI bus and boot delay problem is coming from.

If I can't solve that problem I'm screwed.

Copper · Post by **Copper** » Fri Feb 27, 2004 9:49 pm

I ordered a seagate tonight. It was cheap so I'll try that. Hopefully loosing the SATA altogether will solve the quirks. Well, all except the the the "3" monitors.

Replay0,

If you can try to get yours to boot a USB floppy that would be great. I'd like to rule out it being an issue with my specific Zen or USB floppy drive.

Ralf,

I think you're pretty busy around here, but did you try to boot a USB floppy with yours? Or is booting a USB floppy something we shouldn't be expecting to be able to do with the Zen?

replay0 · Post by **replay0** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 3:16 am

Copper:
Did you try enabling the "Boot Other Devices" options under BIOS just for giggles?

Yes, I did it again tonight and it booted off my USB FDD. HOWEVER, it for some reason would not work on my left-most, front USB port, but worked just fine on my right-most, front USB port. I did not try the rear ports. Plugged into the left one, WXP sees the FDD, but the booting sequence does not see it. Plugged into the right one, the boot screen saw the USB device and loaded my W98 floppy. I use a Teac
FDD-100, it's about a year old.

I also have 3 monitors listed under my Device Manager. 2 being standard monitors and the 3rd one being a PnP monitor (it does not recognize the *.INF drivers I have for my Sharp LL17D4 LCD.). Since there are no error messages, I don't see a big deal with it.

http://home.surewest.net/rlaw/DSC00796.JPG

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 6:04 am

Copper wrote:Ralf,

I think you're pretty busy around here, but did you try to boot a USB floppy with yours? Or is booting a USB floppy something we shouldn't be expecting to be able to do with the Zen?

I'd try but I don't own a USB floppy.

(looks like replay0 sort of got it working though)

I never got around to buying one cause the only thing I use an FDD for is booting into low-level apps and until fairly recently most mobos wouldn't support that under USB. Maybe some day I'll edge closer to the 21st century and get a USB floppy. And maybe in another 10 years or so I'll ditch floppies altogether.....

Copper · Post by **Copper** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 9:24 am

replay0 wrote:Copper:
Did you try enabling the "Boot Other Devices" options under BIOS just for giggles?

Ya, "boot other devices" is enabled. Following your example, I tried all the usb slots front and back to see if I could get it to work. No luck though. If it boots yours then it might be a floppy drive issue on mine. It's a Teac as well but I don't have a clue what model it is or how old it is. I picked it up second hand. I'll see about replacing the floppy drive in a litte bit.

Copper · Post by **Copper** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 9:44 am

replay0 wrote: http://home.surewest.net/rlaw/DSC00796.JPG

I just noticed the picture you posted. Are you sure that it's not your hard disk that is booting? The screen looks like the windows startup menu you get when you press F8, rather than a DOS boot from floppy.

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 11:25 am

Copper wrote:
replay0 wrote: http://home.surewest.net/rlaw/DSC00796.JPG
I just noticed the picture you posted. Are you sure that it's not your hard disk that is booting? The screen looks like the windows startup menu you get when you press F8, rather than a DOS boot from floppy.

Hmm, you're right.

replay0 · Post by **replay0** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 1:52 pm

Yup, I pressed 'F8' repeated as it was doing the boot-up process because I figured the right USB port would not work, like the left USB port, and I didn't want it to get all the way into WXP for me to realize it didn't boot the floppy. But that is a boot off the floppy. Hitting 'F8' repeatedly if it didn't boot off the floppy would've given me the Windows XP extended-options boot screen.

Copper · Post by **Copper** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 7:22 pm

Replay0,

I'm not a 100% sure but it sounds and looks like your usb floppy is being bypassed and the hard drive is being booted. To find out for sure go into the bios and set the first boot device to usb floppy and then disable the second and third boot devices. Also disable "boot other devices." The boot other devices is a saftey net that the bios uses if the boot devices you have specified are not found.

The bios will first attempt to boot the devices you specify, in the order you have them specified. If the devices you have specified are not present one of two things will happen. If "boot other devices" is disabled the bios will simply post then sit idle. If "boot other devices" is enabled the bios will search for and use any available boot device in whatever sequence is programmed in the bios.

So if you listed the usb floppy as the first boot device and disabled the second and third boot devices, and have "boot other devices" enabled it will, like mine, fail to find the usb floppy and boot the hard drive even though it is not a specified boot device. This assumes yours is actually failing to find the usb floppy.

Yu can test this yourself. Unhook the usb floppy, go into the bios, disable the first second, and third boot devices, but leave boot other devices enabled. Exit and save then reboot. Your hard will get booted. Then go back into the bios and leave everything as it is with the exception of boot other devices. This time disable boot other devices. Save and exit, then reboot. The bios will post, then sit idle. Your hard drive wont get booted.

replay0 · Post by **replay0** » Sun Feb 29, 2004 3:58 am

Tried it again, booted right off my Win98 floppy. Made all the usual read noises and the LED light came on during the process. I took some more digital shots but I don't think that will help you with your problem any more.

Copper · Post by **Copper** » Sun Feb 29, 2004 7:57 am

It must be my floppy then.

Copper · Post by **Copper** » Wed Mar 03, 2004 7:31 pm

I bought another usb floppy at walmart tonight, no luck. At least I have a nice new floppy drive.

The seagate 7200.7 40GB arrived today. It's installed and running well. The pci bus bandwidth apparently was a driver problem. I'm getting a burst speed of over 85 megs with the seagate. The seagate is quieter than the raptor but is already up to 42C running idle. That surprised me. I thought it would have run cooler than the raptor which ran at 35C idle.

mas92264 · Post by **mas92264** » Wed Mar 03, 2004 9:32 pm

The seagate is quieter than the raptor but is already up to 42C running idle.

Not to worry. My 'Cuda V runs at 43C at idle in my SN45g and the 2 platter 7200.7 shows 38C in my SB62G2. Both are solidly mounted in the drive tray.

M

Copper · Post by **Copper** » Thu Mar 04, 2004 1:59 pm

Thanks, mas92264.

It's nice to know that the temps aren't out of the ordinary.

Copper · Post by **Copper** » Sat Apr 17, 2004 8:48 pm

Just for giggles I tried installing my Raptor on my SATA controller card again tonight and Windows setup found and used the USB floppy. I don't know what could possibly be different from when it wouldn't work before. Must have been the weather?

Unfortunately though, I'm not getting any better results with HDTach than I did when the drive had all the old hardware drivers on it. There is seemingly a PCI slot bandwidth problem. I'm only getting ~50MB/sec burst speed where on my old computer with the same drive on the same controller card I was getting ~115MB+/sec. I even cranked my underclocked system bus back up to 200Mhz without any luck. It went from ~40MB/sec to ~50MB/sec.

Any ideas?