Whats the problem with DMA ?

Hi,
I built a AMD 1.6 mhz with a ASUS A7V266-E w/ Award Madallion BIOS v6.0 mother board w/WIN98-SE and used a Maxtor 40 gig HD. But for some reason I can't get it to set up DMA. The option does not appear in the
Contro Panel/System/Device Manager. Int13 is checked and grayed out.

It appears that I have to set it in the BIOS. But the only way it allows me to do so is if I manually set up the hard drive perameters. When I set up manually using the specs that came with the HD it fails. So I have to go back to
auto detect for the HD.

 

It's been a while since I've used the VIA systems, but they used to enable DMA automatically and gray-out the boxes in Windows where you'd normally change that. I'd run Sisoft SANDRA or something else that can verify it's enabled, but you should be OK. If it's been a long time since you upgraded them, the latest VIA drivers (currently called Hyperion) would be a good idea anyway.