AX4C Max - BIOS & RAID Controllers

Hello

I recently purchased a new Aopen AX4C Max mainboard for a upgrade to my
previous system. I had in my previous system a Promise Fasttrak TX2 RAID PCI
controller with 4 Western Digital 80GB JB series hard drives in RAID 0+1
array. So I have transferred this to this new mainboard and used the
Hercules PCI slot for this controller card. I use Windows XP Professional
SP1 with all the latest updates. In the device manager the on-board Promise
378 controller has a problem with an unable to start error 10. The PCI
Fasttrak TX2 is listed and functions perfectly.

I did initially have some problems getting the Promise Fasttrak TX2 to boot
as I had another IDE drive connected and it wanted to boot from this. A
previous Gigabyte GA-8KNXP board I had used a BIOS with an excellent
selection screen for the order in which the RAID controllers boot. It also
picked up my Fasttrak TX2 and listed it so I was able to have this boot as
the first device but still access both the Intel RAID controller and the
Silicone Image one in order to add additional drives. I was using Bios
version 1.04 and could not get the system to recognize my additional WD
200GB IDE hard drive either when connected the on-board Promise 378
controller either on the PATA 133 channel or the SATA via a SATA-PATA bridge
board or the Intel SATA controller via a SATA-PATA bridge board. I have now
updated to Bios 1.07D and now my 200GB drive is recognised via the Intel
SATA controller using the enhanced setting in the BIOS with the SATA-PATA
bridge board.

So I would like to use the on-board Promise 378 controller so is this just
an issue with the fact that it cannot coexist with another Promise
controller card such as my Fasttrak TX2. If this is the case this seems very
poor as the performance of my Fasttrak TX2 is much more efficient than the
on-board 'lite' versions of the controller chips. Also I am certainly not
confident that a RAID 0+1 will run efficiently using two SAT ports and two
PATA IDE 133 ports. As I have 4 PATA IDE hard drives I would need to use 2 x
SATA-PATA bridge boards in order to run RAID 0+1.

I have scoured various newsgroups, online information and both Promise and
Aopen support for some information on this but unfortunately found nothing
relevant. This is not an urgent matter as my system is running fine at
present but I would like to be able to use something that I paid for in the
Promise 378 on-board controller in the future.

I would also like to see the AX4C Bios updated to be able to select more
effectively the RAID controllers that I want to use.
For example:
1. Promise Fasttrak TX 2 PCI Controller
2. Intel ICH5 SATA Controller
3. Promise 378 Controller etc.
Also under the first device etc in the Bios there is no SCSI item which
would also help this issue as the system sees the Fasttrak TX2 etc as SCSI
devices and this was what I used on my previous Aopen AX34 Pro II mainboard.

Would appreciate some feedback and look forward to hearing from you and
using some of these features in the near future.

Best regards
Mark