This document provides some frequently asked questions about SiSoft Sandra. Please read the Help File as well!
Q: Sandra tells me the PC is not PC-98 compliant. What does this mean?
A: This is a NEC standard which defines the specification of a Japanese '98+ PC. This flag is returned by the BIOS and does not mean that the complete PC is PC-98 compliant but rather that the BIOS provides support for the PC-98 specification. This is relevant to Japanese PCs only, not any other types. Update to Sandra version 4.20 or later.
Q: Sandra tells me to increase Drive/CD-ROM cache size, but it's already at maximum!
A: Sandra is platform independent - meaning that it does NOT know what the maximum setting of your OS is. This is for compatibility with Windows 95/98/NT. The value is calculated based on the system's physical memory. If you already set it to maximum, ignore this tip.
Q: My ATAPI drive (CD-ROM, ATAPI ZIP, etc.) is detected as a SCSI drive or my SCSI drive is detected as an IDE/EIDE device!
A: Iomega's ATAPI ZIP manual says at page 4 (Windows NT installation): "Note: Windows NT installs drives or
adapters that use the IDE interface as SCSI adapters". However, they seem to be a bit economical with the truth. It should say: "Note: Windows installs drivers or adapters that use the ATAPI interface as SCSI adapters". This makes sense since ATAPI is quite similar in many ways to SCSI, but this
adds to the confusion. There is no (easy) way to determine whether a device is really ATAPI or SCSI in Windows at high-level.
Q: There is no DMA options in the drives configuration dialog on my system!
A: You need Windows 95 OSR2 / 98 this to work. Or you can try to obtain bus-mastering drivers for your chipset from the mainboard manufacturer. If you're using non-Microsoft bus-mastering drivers, the checkboxes will not appear. You can find out whether they work by benchmarking the drive. If the burst transfer rate exceeds ~17MB/s you're using DMA mode.
Q: The DMA checkbox is the drives configuration dialog does not stay checked!
A: This means that the drive in question (e.g. CD-ROM, ZIP) does not support DMA transfers, only PIO. You have to leave it this way.