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Aaeon PCM-4896 help

I have a PCM-4896. The used board I got doesn't have a video chip, so I had to install a video card over it in the PCI slot using a flexible riser. The problem is that I need to assign an IRQ to this card to get it working properly and the PCM-4896 bios doesn't have an "assign IRQ to VGA" option. Also, the card doesn't have a jumper to do that.

Whenever I check the card through the version of Windows XP I'm running (I used XP lite to strip down most of the OS so it runs fine on there), there is no IRQ assigned to the card. Right now I'm using a standard PC HAL, which is recommended in ATI's FAQ for this card. Should I try switching to an ACPI HAL?

I also tried going to AAEON's website and getting the newest bios image. The problem is that awdflash.exe always tells me the bios image is not the right size - even when I tried flashing the backup image of the bios I have now back into it.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. I'm out of ideas at this point and it's driving me nuts. I would have thought that any board in the PCI slot would get an IRQ.

I also can't get windows to enable DMA, even though I have selected DMA if possible in device manager. It always reverts back to PIO mode. This also seems like a bios problem to me. According to Aaeon's FAQ, I should set the PCI configuration for IRQ15 to Legacy ISA to get DMA to work. No change. Any suggestions on this?

Unfortunately, Aaeon doesn't provide any customer support. I keep having to email a distributor for it and they never get back to me. So whatever you guys suggest, I'll try...

Reply to
louloizides
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What resolution are you running at, and are you using acceleration features? If you are running at a standard VGA resolution and not using acceleration, an IRQ is not used. (This is why video drops down to std VGA if there is an interrupt conflict with the display adapter).

Why do you care if there is an interrupt assigned to the card?

Are you using the correct version of awdflash, contemporaneous with the board? There are at least two generations. The modern generation is not backwards compatible with the older generation.

What is the device being accessed? If the drive doesn't support ATA modes 3+ then it will not support DMA.

Reply to
larwe

As far as the video card, I need to assign an IRQ to get some of the video acceleration enabled. Because the SBC can't really handle anything, I was hoping to unload some off it onto the video board. If in the end it doesn't work, it'll be a problem but something I can deal with. I'd really like to get it working, though, and I have a couple of weeks to figure something out.

As far as the flash, I don't know if I'm using the correct version or not. I downloaded the awdflash utility off of Aaeon's website, but maybe I'm using an older version of the board? How would I tell? Is there another flash utility that I can use? Aaeon must have changed some things in the board because Rev 1 of the manual says 128 megs SDRAM max and the newer revs say 256 megs max. This is something else I currently have to figure out because I want to max out the RAM.

Rev 1 of the manual says the board supports P-ATA-33. There's also an "enable UDMA" support option for the IDE controller in the bios and I have that selected. I'm not sure what any of that means. Microsoft says to try uninstalling and reinstalling the HDD controller on their website so I suppose I could try that.

Reply to
louloizides

If you install the driver for the video card, what happens? Does it simply not load? Are you sure it's the right video driver?

I believe you will have no way within Windows of seeing if there is an IRQ assigned to the video card until you have a driver loaded that uses the IRQ.

formatting link

Yes, yes, but I asked about the _DRIVE_ you are using. If the _DRIVE_ does not support DMA, that is the end of the story. If it's a flash media card, it's quite possible that it will not support DMA.

There are other circumstances (i.e. driver bugs) that can force XP back into PIO mode and the user interface will not allow you to reset it. First look at the _controller_ in Device Manager and verify that Transfer Mode is set to "DMA if available" for the channel to which the drive is connected, probably Device 0 on Primary IDE Channel.

Then go to HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\000x\ (x - 0 to .... - find the entry corresponding to your hard drive, probably 0002) and delete the MasterIdDataCheckSum value, then reboot. XP will redetect the drive capabilities.

Reply to
larwe

Thanks - that's good advice. As far as the drive, I ended up borrowing a 30gig laptop drive out of an old laptop so I think should support DMA. I have "DMA if available" selected, but I'm now wondering if I had the bios set to DMA when I originally installed the system. I'll check the drive and try the registry thing.

As far as the IRQ, I was checking under device manager as well as the resources tab in the video card properties. It doesn't show any IRQs used, as I would have expected. The driver is definitely the right one.

Would using Winflash be a bad idea? I'll also try those different versions of awdflash when I get home later. Thanks for the link.

Reply to
louloizides

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