Why does everything need a driver???? Grumble grumble....

I bought a PCI card from ebay for the computer that has a broken SATA
connector. Rather that attempt to repair that connector, It was
suggested to me to just install a PCI card for SATA drives. I found a
card on ebay, with a SATA cable and supposedly a CD with the drivers.

Due to some shipping errors, it took nearly a month to get it. When I
got it, I got the card and cable, but no CD. I complained to the seller
and to ebay. The seller apparently dont speak english.... Ebay said I
can return it, but I have to pay the return shipping.

I usually am pleased with ebay purchases, but not this time. By the time
I pay return shipping for this $11 card, I may as well just keep it and
obtain a driver online. I'm sure that CD only contained a driver anyhow.
I dont really need the CD, just the driver.

This seller will get negative feedback from me anyhow. If they cant
speak english, they should either learn to speak it, or quit selling on
ebay. After all, there are websites that convert languages, and my
request for the CD was simple english, saying my request in few words.

I did plug it in, and found that XP cant provide the drivers, so I need
to get them online. But this card has no info on it. It says Made in
China. Has 1417 on the board. Thats it. But the main (and only) chip
says:
V/A
VT6421A
1123CD TAIWAN
21A0021301

I did some searching and found it's probably VIA (the company).
The second row appears to be the chip number.
There appears to be a website for thatr company, but it refuses to load
for me. That one called driversguide.com shows a download is available,
but that miserable site has stung me before. It claims to have drivers
for lots of stuff, but then make you go thru numerous hoops to get the
driver, while trying to trick you into downloading some crap instead. I
got to a point on that site where I needed to deal with a captcha. Once
I get to those, I'm finished. My old browsers can not handle captchas.

Maybe I'll have to go to town and use the WIFI, but either way, I'll try
to avoid sites that make me jump thru hoops to get a simple driver....

All of them sites can shove that program called Doc to Pdf up their
assholes. That seemsd to be the most common spam crap on all of them.
That must be a very miserable piece of software to spam everyone with
it. Rant Rant Rant....

Anyhow, I know Paul helped find the driver for my network card (Thanks
Paul), maybe he or someone can locate the REAL driver for this card.
But all I really have to go on, is that chip number.

I always thought that XP contained drivers for all that stuff. Then
again, I dont see why everything needs a driver anyhow. Why cant the
hardware communicate with the motherboard directly???

In this case, I cant see how a driver is going to work, when I need the
hardware to use that card long before XP boots up. In other words, if I
want to boot using this card, how is that possible if the card cant be
accessed directly from the hardware. Or maybe I have a card that wont
ever allow for booting, and I am still forced to use the built in SATA
connector. (I do have one SATA connector on the MOBO that works. Or I
suppose I could also use IDE drives.

The MOBO contains one SATA and one IDE connector as it sits now. There
should have been a second SATA connector but it's broken. And if I use
IDE drives I can only use ONE because the other one goes to the CD
drive.

One of these days I hope to be able to afford a Macintosh computer. I
never hear of them having all the problems that PC computers have...

On 27/11/2017 20:04, wrote:

If they cant
speak english, they should either learn to speak it, or quit selling on
ebay.

Who told you that they are selling on eBay just for you? You must be
mad. They don't have any interest to sell anything to an idiot like you.

They are selling on eBay to whoever wants to buy, irrespective of
whether buyers can understand their language or not. You are silly to
buy anything on eBay anyway and now you are blaming the vendors. Aren't
you just confirming what I have always believed about nutters buying on
eBay?

How many languages can you speak? Can you speak Swahili? Or can you
speak Chinese-Mandarin? At least these guys can speak some English and
they should be congratulated for trying to learn a foreign language
unlike an American who are all like George W Bush or Donald Trump.

By the way Windows Operating System now belongs to Indians so you better
find an alternative.




--
With over 500 million devices now running Windows 10, customer
satisfaction is higher than any previous version of windows.

wrote:

I bought a PCI card from ebay for the computer that has a broken SATA
connector. Rather that attempt to repair that connector, It was
suggested to me to just install a PCI card for SATA drives. I found a
card on ebay, with a SATA cable and supposedly a CD with the drivers.

Due to some shipping errors, it took nearly a month to get it. When I
got it, I got the card and cable, but no CD. I complained to the
seller and to ebay. The seller apparently dont speak english.... Ebay
said I can return it, but I have to pay the return shipping.

I usually am pleased with ebay purchases, but not this time. By the
time I pay return shipping for this $11 card, I may as well just keep
it and obtain a driver online. I'm sure that CD only contained a
driver anyhow. I dont really need the CD, just the driver.

This seller will get negative feedback from me anyhow. If they cant
speak english, they should either learn to speak it, or quit selling
on ebay. After all, there are websites that convert languages, and my
request for the CD was simple english, saying my request in few words.

I did plug it in, and found that XP cant provide the drivers, so I
need to get them online. But this card has no info on it. It says
Made in China. Has 1417 on the board. Thats it. But the main (and
only) chip says:
V/A
VT6421A
1123CD TAIWAN
21A0021301

I did some searching and found it's probably VIA (the company).
The second row appears to be the chip number.
There appears to be a website for thatr company, but it refuses to
load for me. That one called driversguide.com shows a download is
available, but that miserable site has stung me before. It claims to
have drivers for lots of stuff, but then make you go thru numerous
hoops to get the driver, while trying to trick you into downloading
some crap instead. I got to a point on that site where I needed to
deal with a captcha. Once I get to those, I'm finished. My old
browsers can not handle captchas.

Maybe I'll have to go to town and use the WIFI, but either way, I'll
try to avoid sites that make me jump thru hoops to get a simple
driver....

All of them sites can shove that program called Doc to Pdf up their
assholes. That seemsd to be the most common spam crap on all of them.
That must be a very miserable piece of software to spam everyone with
it. Rant Rant Rant....

Anyhow, I know Paul helped find the driver for my network card (Thanks
Paul), maybe he or someone can locate the REAL driver for this card.
But all I really have to go on, is that chip number.

I always thought that XP contained drivers for all that stuff. Then
again, I dont see why everything needs a driver anyhow. Why cant the
hardware communicate with the motherboard directly???

In this case, I cant see how a driver is going to work, when I need
the hardware to use that card long before XP boots up. In other
words, if I want to boot using this card, how is that possible if the
card cant be accessed directly from the hardware. Or maybe I have a
card that wont ever allow for booting, and I am still forced to use
the built in SATA connector. (I do have one SATA connector on the
MOBO that works. Or I suppose I could also use IDE drives.

The MOBO contains one SATA and one IDE connector as it sits now. There
should have been a second SATA connector but it's broken. And if I use
IDE drives I can only use ONE because the other one goes to the CD
drive.

One of these days I hope to be able to afford a Macintosh computer. I
never hear of them having all the problems that PC computers have...

James,

Driver can be found he

http://download.viatech.com/en/suppo...versSelect.jsp

1. Select Windows

2. Select Windows XP

3. Select IDE, SATA & RAID

4. Select Discrete Serial ATA RAID Controllers VT6420, VT6421, VT6421A

Then click Download version 6.10A

Or direct link:
https://d34vhvz8ul1ifj.cloudfront.ne...AID_v6.10a.zip

HTH

JT


--

JT wrote:
wrote:

I bought a PCI card from ebay for the computer that has a broken SATA
connector. Rather that attempt to repair that connector, It was
suggested to me to just install a PCI card for SATA drives. I found a
card on ebay, with a SATA cable and supposedly a CD with the drivers.

Due to some shipping errors, it took nearly a month to get it. When I
got it, I got the card and cable, but no CD. I complained to the
seller and to ebay. The seller apparently dont speak english.... Ebay
said I can return it, but I have to pay the return shipping.

I usually am pleased with ebay purchases, but not this time. By the
time I pay return shipping for this $11 card, I may as well just keep
it and obtain a driver online. I'm sure that CD only contained a
driver anyhow. I dont really need the CD, just the driver.

This seller will get negative feedback from me anyhow. If they cant
speak english, they should either learn to speak it, or quit selling
on ebay. After all, there are websites that convert languages, and my
request for the CD was simple english, saying my request in few words.

I did plug it in, and found that XP cant provide the drivers, so I
need to get them online. But this card has no info on it. It says
Made in China. Has 1417 on the board. Thats it. But the main (and
only) chip says:
V/A
VT6421A
1123CD TAIWAN
21A0021301

I did some searching and found it's probably VIA (the company).
The second row appears to be the chip number.
There appears to be a website for thatr company, but it refuses to
load for me. That one called driversguide.com shows a download is
available, but that miserable site has stung me before. It claims to
have drivers for lots of stuff, but then make you go thru numerous
hoops to get the driver, while trying to trick you into downloading
some crap instead. I got to a point on that site where I needed to
deal with a captcha. Once I get to those, I'm finished. My old
browsers can not handle captchas.

Maybe I'll have to go to town and use the WIFI, but either way, I'll
try to avoid sites that make me jump thru hoops to get a simple
driver....

All of them sites can shove that program called Doc to Pdf up their
assholes. That seemsd to be the most common spam crap on all of them.
That must be a very miserable piece of software to spam everyone with
it. Rant Rant Rant....

Anyhow, I know Paul helped find the driver for my network card (Thanks
Paul), maybe he or someone can locate the REAL driver for this card.
But all I really have to go on, is that chip number.

I always thought that XP contained drivers for all that stuff. Then
again, I dont see why everything needs a driver anyhow. Why cant the
hardware communicate with the motherboard directly???

In this case, I cant see how a driver is going to work, when I need
the hardware to use that card long before XP boots up. In other
words, if I want to boot using this card, how is that possible if the
card cant be accessed directly from the hardware. Or maybe I have a
card that wont ever allow for booting, and I am still forced to use
the built in SATA connector. (I do have one SATA connector on the
MOBO that works. Or I suppose I could also use IDE drives.

The MOBO contains one SATA and one IDE connector as it sits now. There
should have been a second SATA connector but it's broken. And if I use
IDE drives I can only use ONE because the other one goes to the CD
drive.

One of these days I hope to be able to afford a Macintosh computer. I
never hear of them having all the problems that PC computers have...

James,

Driver can be found he

http://download.viatech.com/en/suppo...versSelect.jsp

1. Select Windows

2. Select Windows XP

3. Select IDE, SATA & RAID

4. Select Discrete Serial ATA RAID Controllers VT6420, VT6421, VT6421A

Then click Download version 6.10A

Or direct link:
https://d34vhvz8ul1ifj.cloudfront.ne...AID_v6.10a.zip

HTH

JT

Yeah, the driver appears to do JBOD. So one disk off a
SATA port on that card should work, even though it says RAID.

https://web.archive.org/web/20090301...icleID=467&P=2

VIA no longer has the ViaArena site, and a squatter has grabbed
the site. You should not click any links found on the
viatech.com site that lead to viaarena as the links are
defunct. However, you can plug a URL from one of those
old viaarena links into archive.org and get to the page again.
That's why the link above looks a little weird.

The VIA driver offerings are very confusing, and attempts
to make info pages are almost as bad as figuring it
out by trial and error :-)

*******

I found the quote I need, on silicon compatibility.
There is VT6421 and VT6421A. However, to tell the
"good" VT6421A chips, they're sorted by date code.
You have to check the date of manufacture. The poster
LarryMoenCurly used to be a regular on USENET.

https://www.avforums.com/threads/sat...ata-i.1369303/

"Regarding SATA 150 controllers and SATA 300 drives,
only a few old SATA 150 controllers from SiS and VIA have
that problem, including the VIA VT8237, VT8237R, and VT8237A
(but not VT8237S) chips found on motherboards and
PCI controllers with VIA VT6420, VT6421, VT6421L,
and probably early versions of the VT6421A.

The VT6421A chips I have, marked "0949CD"
(2009, 49th week, version CD) work fine with SATA 300
drives, as do really old SATA 150 controllers from
Intel, Promise (Marvell), and Silicon Image."

That's the issue where the drive won't detect, and
you attempt to fix it with the Force150 jumper. So
apparently, a "modern enough" VT6421A, fixes that,
to some extent. Time will tell.

I have a motherboard with VT8237S on it, and can
confirm it works with SATA II drives OK. That's the only
VIA I own here for this purpose.

Paul

On Mon, 27 Nov 2017 22:34:37 -0500, Paul wrote:

JT

Yeah, the driver appears to do JBOD. So one disk off a
SATA port on that card should work, even though it says RAID.

https://web.archive.org/web/20090301...w.viaarena.com
:80/default.aspx?PageID=5&ArticleID=467&P=2

VIA no longer has the ViaArena site, and a squatter has grabbed
the site. You should not click any links found on the
viatech.com site that lead to viaarena as the links are
defunct. However, you can plug a URL from one of those
old viaarena links into archive.org and get to the page again.
That's why the link above looks a little weird.

The VIA driver offerings are very confusing, and attempts
to make info pages are almost as bad as figuring it
out by trial and error :-)

*******

I found the quote I need, on silicon compatibility.
There is VT6421 and VT6421A. However, to tell the
"good" VT6421A chips, they're sorted by date code.
You have to check the date of manufacture. The poster
LarryMoenCurly used to be a regular on USENET.

https://www.avforums.com/threads/sat...ata-i.1369303/

"Regarding SATA 150 controllers and SATA 300 drives,
only a few old SATA 150 controllers from SiS and VIA have
that problem, including the VIA VT8237, VT8237R, and VT8237A
(but not VT8237S) chips found on motherboards and
PCI controllers with VIA VT6420, VT6421, VT6421L,
and probably early versions of the VT6421A.

The VT6421A chips I have, marked "0949CD"
(2009, 49th week, version CD) work fine with SATA 300
drives, as do really old SATA 150 controllers from
Intel, Promise (Marvell), and Silicon Image."

That's the issue where the drive won't detect, and
you attempt to fix it with the Force150 jumper. So
apparently, a "modern enough" VT6421A, fixes that,
to some extent. Time will tell.

I have a motherboard with VT8237S on it, and can
confirm it works with SATA II drives OK. That's the only
VIA I own here for this purpose.

Paul

I installed the drivers and the card works fine for slave drives.
However, as I expected, you can not boot from a hard drive connected to
the card. It's not a huge deal. I have the boot drive connected to the
one SATA connector on the MOBO. But I tried to connect it to the card
instead and the computer said "no Operating system found".

But I guess it's obvious, that if it needs a driver installed in
Windows, it's not going to boot, because the driver is not installed
till the OS is loading.

But my main goal in buying this card was because my second SATA plug on
the MOBO is broken. With this card, I can not use two hard drives, or
three (I think). Maybe even four????

This card has THREE SATA and ONE IDE connectors on it.

(Plus the MOBO has one of each too).

wrote:


I installed the drivers and the card works fine for slave drives.
However, as I expected, you can not boot from a hard drive connected to
the card. It's not a huge deal. I have the boot drive connected to the
one SATA connector on the MOBO. But I tried to connect it to the card
instead and the computer said "no Operating system found".

But I guess it's obvious, that if it needs a driver installed in
Windows, it's not going to boot, because the driver is not installed
till the OS is loading.

But my main goal in buying this card was because my second SATA plug on
the MOBO is broken. With this card, I can not use two hard drives, or
three (I think). Maybe even four????

This card has THREE SATA and ONE IDE connectors on it.

(Plus the MOBO has one of each too).

If the card has three SATA connectors (on a two port chip),
there should be four jumper plugs which select one
of two connectors to use. The jumper plugs select the
"wiring" of one of the ports.

An add-in card can boot, if the EEPROM on the add-in
card includes a loadable Extended INT 0x13 module.

When a card has the EEPROM on it, sometimes the user
has to change the firmware. When this happens, only
certain brands of EEPROM, the public flasher will work
with. So *if* you buy a dual personality card (has
firmware for both RAID and IDE mode), there is a
chance when you buy the RAID card, you'd need to flash
in the IDE version. And then you do your researches to
see what issues come with that recipe.

*******

OK, so let's analyze one of these cards. Ugh!

First problem, is the two connectors near the faceplate side
of the card, share the same port. The interconnect tees off
a single electrical port. Dr. Howard Johnson (electrical
interconnect specialist) would freak out. There's no header
with jumper plugs, to select one connector or the other.
Only the connector facing away from the faceplate, is a "good" one.

https://www.amazon.com/SODIAL-Port-E.../dp/B008SK1AW6

The second issue, is where the "QC Passed" sticker is placed,
is where the EEPROM was supposed to be soldered down. If the
EEPROM had been placed there, and filled with a RAID or IDE
Extended INT 0x13 routine, the card would load that code
and that would enable using the disk on the card as a boot
device. When the chip is missing, it can't boot. (Only a Promise
card, the main chip on those had flash EEPROM space inside it,
so one chip performed both the controller job, as well as
providing the boot code. No other chips seem to include such
functions and then you look for an outboard EEPROM chip.)

Now, this card, cures *both* sins! There is a chip soldered
where the EEPROM is supposed to go. The sticker on top of the
EEPROM, is a declaration to the user as to which flavor of
firmware was loaded in the EEPROM. And at the T-junction,
there are four jumper plugs to select the faceplate connector
or the top-facing connector, as the connector for the second port.
This is out of stock.

https://www.amazon.ca/eSata-Sata-RAI.../dp/B001118UEU

So they do make "relatively good" VT6421A cards.

Paul

On Thu, 30 Nov 2017 03:13:38 -0600, wrote:

On Mon, 27 Nov 2017 22:34:37 -0500, Paul wrote:

JT

Yeah, the driver appears to do JBOD. So one disk off a
SATA port on that card should work, even though it says RAID.

https://web.archive.org/web/20090301...w.viaarena.com
:80/default.aspx?PageID=5&ArticleID=467&P=2

VIA no longer has the ViaArena site, and a squatter has grabbed
the site. You should not click any links found on the
viatech.com site that lead to viaarena as the links are
defunct. However, you can plug a URL from one of those
old viaarena links into archive.org and get to the page again.
That's why the link above looks a little weird.

The VIA driver offerings are very confusing, and attempts
to make info pages are almost as bad as figuring it
out by trial and error :-)

*******

I found the quote I need, on silicon compatibility.
There is VT6421 and VT6421A. However, to tell the
"good" VT6421A chips, they're sorted by date code.
You have to check the date of manufacture. The poster
LarryMoenCurly used to be a regular on USENET.

https://www.avforums.com/threads/sat...ata-i.1369303/

"Regarding SATA 150 controllers and SATA 300 drives,
only a few old SATA 150 controllers from SiS and VIA have
that problem, including the VIA VT8237, VT8237R, and VT8237A
(but not VT8237S) chips found on motherboards and
PCI controllers with VIA VT6420, VT6421, VT6421L,
and probably early versions of the VT6421A.

The VT6421A chips I have, marked "0949CD"
(2009, 49th week, version CD) work fine with SATA 300
drives, as do really old SATA 150 controllers from
Intel, Promise (Marvell), and Silicon Image."

That's the issue where the drive won't detect, and
you attempt to fix it with the Force150 jumper. So
apparently, a "modern enough" VT6421A, fixes that,
to some extent. Time will tell.

I have a motherboard with VT8237S on it, and can
confirm it works with SATA II drives OK. That's the only
VIA I own here for this purpose.

Paul

I installed the drivers and the card works fine for slave drives.
However, as I expected, you can not boot from a hard drive connected to
the card. It's not a huge deal. I have the boot drive connected to the
one SATA connector on the MOBO. But I tried to connect it to the card
instead and the computer said "no Operating system found".

But I guess it's obvious, that if it needs a driver installed in
Windows, it's not going to boot, because the driver is not installed
till the OS is loading.

But my main goal in buying this card was because my second SATA plug on
the MOBO is broken. With this card, I can not use two hard drives, or
three (I think). Maybe even four????

This card has THREE SATA and ONE IDE connectors on it.

(Plus the MOBO has one of each too).


That will be true of any controller that does not have a BIOS level
boot routine.