PROMISE TECNOLOGY TECHNICAL NOTES


The following is meant to assist Promise Technology customers in 
trouble-shooting problems they may be experiencing.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ BOOTUP PROBLEM ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


SYMPTOM:  

System hangs after counting through system memory. May receive error 
messages such as "GET CONFIGURATION FAILED!!" or "HDD CONTROLLER 
FAILURE".

POSSIBLE CAUSE: 

- Bad or no RAM on the controller (Must have minimum of 512K to operate)
- No hard drive attached to the controller.
- Timing problem due to certain Master/Slave configuration (See 
  COMPNOTE.TXT)


TROUBLESHOOTING:

- Replace the RAM on the controller, or if you are using four SIMMs,        
take the two SIMMs out of BANK 1, using only the two SIMMs in BANK 0. If 
the problem persists, replace the two SIMMs in BANK 0 with the two that 
were taken out from BANK 1. If the problem goes away, then one or more 
of the SIMMs may be faulty.

- Attach a hard drive to the controller. If none is attached, the system 
will hang.

- Work with only one hard drive attached. Remove the IDE cable from the 
slave drive, configure the first drive as a "Single" drive, and                                                
indicate drive D: is "NOT INSTALLED" in the system CMOS . If the system 
now boots up, then try swapping the drive order, or hooking the drives 
up separately to each IDE connector on the controller (DC200 and 
DC4030VL-x only).



SYMPTOM: 

System hangs when trying to boot from the hard drive.

POSSIBLE CAUSE:

- Timing problem with hard drive.
- Motherboard conflict when using controller's BIOS (DC200 or DC4030VLx)

TROUBLESHOOTING:

- Boot from a floppy and check to see if hard drive can then be 
accessed. If so, try transferring the system files to the hard drive by 
doing "SYS C:" at the command prompt. (The SYS command must be on the 
boot floppy.)

- If using DOS 6.x, press the F5 key at "STARTING MS-DOS" MESSAGE to 
bypass the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files. If system then 
successfully boots,determine which line in CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT is 
causing the conflict.

- If system does not boot when DISK I/O HANDLER mode is set to FAST or 
TURBO, but does work when set to NORMAL, try loading the DOSDRV.SYS 
driver from CONFIG.SYS. This will give the same performance as setting 
the I/O HANDLER mode to TURBO (DC200 and DC4030VL-x only).



SYMPTOM: 
Error message "Bad or missing command interpreter" when DOSDRV.SYS, 
DC2000.SYS, DC2300.SYS, or VLIDE.SYS is loaded from CONFIG.SYS.

POSSIBLE CAUSE:

- You have a CPU such as an IBM SLC2 or other CPU which uses a 16-bit 
data path.

TROUBLESHOOTING:

- Add /W option to the drivers. This tells the drivers to operate in 16-
bit mode. This option must be used on all drivers loaded (e.g. - 
Windows, OS/2, Netware. See README file on your utility disk for 
instructions.).



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ PROBLEMS DURING OPERATION~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


SYMPTOM: 

System hangs intermittently during usage.

POSSIBLE CAUSE:

- Bad memory on controller card.
- Bad VESA slot in motherboard.

TROUBLESHOOTING:

- Replace the RAM on the controller card.
- Try putting the controller in a different VESA slot. If you have a 
VESA video card also, try swapping in a 16-bit video card if you have 
one. Some motherboards may become unstable with 2 VESA cards in the 
system. There is a greater likelihood of this happening at 50MHz.






~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ PROBLEMS WITH WINDOWS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


SYMPTOM:

Upon starting Windows, receive a "Microsoft Validation Failed" message.

POSSIBLE CAUSE:

- Cylinders set to above 1024 in the system CMOS.

TROUBLESHOOTING: 

- Set number of cylinders to 1024. In a DOS/Windows environment, this is 
  the maximum amount of cylinders that can be used. It is suggested that 
  you repartition and reformat with the new CMOS settings.



SYMPTOM:

Upgrade to Windows 3.11 and system reboots when Promise Windows drivers 
are loaded and 32-Bit File Access is enabled.

POSSIBLE CAUSE:

- Older version of Promise Windows drivers did not support 32-Bit File 
Access.

TROUBLESHOOTING:

- Make sure you are using Promise Windows drivers dated 12/93 or later.


SYMPTOM:

Files on drive(s) attached to second connector of controller cannot be 
seen in Windows. (DC200 and DC4030VL-x)

POSSIBLE CAUSE:

- Promise Windows drivers are not loaded and 32-Bit Disk Access is 
enabled.

TROUBLESHOOTING:

- Install the Promise Windows drivers or turn off 32-Bit Disk Access.











~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Miscellaneous ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



SYMPTOM:

Errors reading or writing to floppies.

POSSIBLE CAUSE:

- Another card in the system has a floppy controller on it (usually a     
multi-I/O card with Hard Drive/Floppy/2 Serial/1 Parallel port support. 
Even if the Floppy Drive controller is disabled on that card, we have 
run into situations where they don't always properly disable 
themselves). 

TROUBLESHOOTING:

- Remove the other card from the system and see if the problem remains. 
If it goes away, then use a card that just has the COM and Parallel 
ports on it and no Hard Drive or Floppy support.