Ok, I'm ready - Let's GO!

I want to keep this modification as simple and easy to understand as possible, so I won't get much into how/why this mod works, Tom Pabst explains it quite nicely. There are a couple of things you need to do BEFORE you starting soldering your board so read carefully.

Before you do anything you will need to make sure you flash your Ultra/66 card's BIOS with the Fasttrack/66's found on Promise's site. After your download is complete, place the unzipped files onto a 3.5" floppy disk, and reboot your computer. To complete the flash procedure you will need to make sure you boot into a pure DOS environment, so before windows starts to boot hold down the shift key, which should bring you to the boot menu. Choose DOS prompt only. Now, you should be able to flash your BIOS, I recommend making a back up of your current Ultra/66 BIOS, just incase the modification doesn't work and you want to get the old BIOS back. Once the BIOS update is complete shut down your system and remove the card.

There are a number of different ways to complete the modifications needed, one of which is not only unbelievably simple, and fairly safe, but is also rather professional looking. This particular method involves making only one solder to the EPROM's pin #23 (pin #7 from the left, facing the PCI connector) to a ground, effectively deactivating that pin in a sense. There are a number of places you can ground the resistor, to the back plate is one popular option, which is my opinion is a relatively crude method. Rather I choose to ground it to a grounding surface on the board itself. Here's a picture:

Note where the resistor touches the EPROM chip's #23 pin.

Remember to be VERY careful when soldering around the EPROM, the BIOS is extremely heat sensitive. You shouldn't have to solder around the ground because after soldering the resistor onto the EPROM's pin it should stay in place nicely, you'll want to try and do as little soldering as possible.

This method and a number of other methods are also listed over at Ole Pedersen's page. That page also has a good forum where you can get help with any problems you may encounter while performing this operation.

Finished

Once you have completed the necessary hardware modifications, and the Fasttrack/66 boot loader appears, you're all set to go. Setting up the different RAID arrays themselves is not very difficult as promise included a nice auto-setup feature which when selected will help you define an array with two or more formatted HDs. Performing this simple mod will not only offer you a RAID controller on the cheap, but also give you a higher sense of worth, and bragging rights which should help you score higher with the ladies … (yeah right).

by Ryan Wissman

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