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Author Topic: Help .....Adaptec 2940UW SCSI problem.  (Read 17664 times)

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Offline melottTopic starter

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Re: Help .....Adaptec 2940UW SCSI problem.
« Reply #14 on: August 12, 2004, 05:07:23 AM »
@Adolescent

Yes I'm sure I have the correct drivers installed.

Uhhh...  :-?  I didn't check the Control-A, totally
slipped my mind.

Stealth ONE  8-)
 

Offline Trev

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Re: Help .....Adaptec 2940UW SCSI problem.
« Reply #15 on: August 12, 2004, 05:15:24 AM »
The acronym "BIOS" is used to mean lots of different (and confusing) things. In this case, we have four separate entities at work:

1. PC BIOS
2. PC Setup Utility
3. Host Adapter BIOS
4. Host Adapter Setup Utility

The setup utility is usually stored in ROM, EEPROM, or flash memory and is often confused with the actual BIOS. The setup utility is used to get and set values that are referenced by the BIOS.

(This next part is pretty basic, so please forgive me if you don't need this stuff.)

The PC BIOS is what FDISK uses to locate disks. It issues specific interrupts and service calls to find the disks, get their capacities, etc. The host adapter's BIOS can hook into the PC BIOS and provide information about its disks whenever that information is requested from the PC BIOS.

Once Windows boots, however, the 32-bit host adapter device driver kicks in, and the host adapter is accessed directly. (FYI, host adapter = SCSI adapter.)

Trev
 

Offline melottTopic starter

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Re: Help .....Adaptec 2940UW SCSI problem.
« Reply #16 on: August 12, 2004, 05:24:29 AM »
@Trev

Its time for me to go to bed ..... :-D

I'll have to go at this somemore tomorrow.
This is not really basic to me as this is only the second
time I've setup a SCSI drive on a PC. The last time was with
an old (AHA 1510) card I think.

Thanks
Stealth ONE  8-)
 

Offline yogisumo

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Re: Help .....Adaptec 2940UW SCSI problem.
« Reply #17 on: August 12, 2004, 06:02:30 AM »
Quote

Trev wrote:
After pressing CTRL+A to enter the host adapter's setup utility, you should see an option to "Enable SCSI BIOS" or something similar. This should be set to Yes. During the boot process, you should see a flag that says something like "SCSI BIOS installed" or "SCSI BIOS not installed."


   You only need to enable the bios if you need to boot from the scsi controller.

Quote

As for the 50-pin side working . . . well, it depends. Different host adapters do different things. Some adapaters only support booting from ID 0, some ID 6. In the case of the 2940UW, you can specify the boot device, and it shouldn't matter which bus (narrow or wide) it's on. (OK, that was a bit off-topic.) Termination or ID conflicts are usually the cause of this kind of problem.


   Termination is the big one.
   Adaptec scsi controllers need "active" termination.  If you're terminators are not active, then it won't work properly.  Double check your drive.  If it doesn't have built in termination, and I think a lot of drives do, then you'll need a terminator.  Cable length can also be an issue.  Total cable length on a bus including external cables matters.
 

Offline yogisumo

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Re: Help .....Adaptec 2940UW SCSI problem.
« Reply #18 on: August 12, 2004, 06:12:14 AM »
Scsi bus needs to be terminated at both ends.  If you only have one drive on the controller, the drive will need termination and the controller also.

terminated controller----------------------terminated drive

If you have an external drive, then you'll need to remove termination on controller and set it on external drive.

Terminated ext drive------------controller-----------Terminated internal drive

 

Offline melottTopic starter

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Re: Help .....Adaptec 2940UW SCSI problem.
« Reply #19 on: August 12, 2004, 03:02:21 PM »
Hmmm....... it looks like I don't have all the
software I need to get this card working.

I tried 'Control-A' on startup and I get nothing,
just alot beeping from the speaker.

I checked Adaptec downloads again and I have the files
they offer but apearently I need the SCSI Utils or
whatever else is needed to get the BIOS setup.
Anyone know where I can get these files??
Stealth ONE  8-)
 

Offline adolescent

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Re: Help .....Adaptec 2940UW SCSI problem.
« Reply #20 on: August 12, 2004, 06:11:30 PM »
You don't need any extra software, it is built into the card.  It sounds like you are pressing CTRL-A when the machine is first starting.  The BIOS I was refering to is known to Adaptec as SCSISelect Utility, sorry I wasn't clear.  You should see information at startup (after POST (memory checks, ide devices, m/b perhiperal display, etc), but before your OS boots) regarding the Adaptec card.  If you do not, the BIOS is not enabled.  You should however still be able to get into the SCSISelect Utility by pressing CTRL-A.  Try hitting it after your normal POST, but before your OS boots.  It won't hurt to hit it more than once.  (you can also stick a bootable floppy in the drive so you don't have to boot into Windows every time in case you miss it).

Once you're in this utility, you can scan the bus for the drive.  Turn on off different addresses, speeds, connectors, termination, etc.  It might be a good idea to reset everything to defaults (F6 I think).

Time to move on.  Bye Amiga.org.  :(
 

Offline melottTopic starter

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Re: Help .....Adaptec 2940UW SCSI problem.
« Reply #21 on: August 13, 2004, 03:43:43 AM »
Ummm.. well still no luck.
I read all the install docs and manually copied
all the files to the correct dirs.

But I'm not getting the 'Adaptec installed' on the boot
screen. I still think I'm missing something in the setup.
Device Manager properties says the drivers are installed
and working correctly.

I'm just not convinced yet that the card is bad, it does
work on the 50 pin side.

But I can't bring up 'ScsiSlect'.

Any other ideas before I scrap this card??
Stealth ONE  8-)
 


Offline Floid

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Re: Help .....Adaptec 2940UW SCSI problem.
« Reply #23 on: August 13, 2004, 05:46:47 AM »
Quote

melott wrote:
Ummm.. well still no luck.
I read all the install docs and manually copied
all the files to the correct dirs.

But I'm not getting the 'Adaptec installed' on the boot
screen. I still think I'm missing something in the setup.
Device Manager properties says the drivers are installed
and working correctly.

I'm just not convinced yet that the card is bad, it does
work on the 50 pin side.

But I can't bring up 'ScsiSlect'.

Any other ideas before I scrap this card??
Press CTRL-A when it's listing the drives attached to the card during the boot process.  If you'd like, do it with the 50 pin drive first, so you'll know you have something to look for.  (If you're not seeing *that,* you probably have a rather odd PC -- does it have a graphical splash screen at startup, with a Compaq or Acer logo that fills the whole screen?... or there's some vague chance the card's ROM was misflashed at once point in time... or! you have a Mac edition of the card.  If either of the latter two oddities, you can probably correct it by running the appropriate flash utility... if you can figure out what that is.  It's vaguely plausible that Windows could drive a card with the 'wrong' ROM for the platform, but that the driver may make certain assumptions about things the proper one would set up 'ahead of time.')

In any case, once into the utility (similar to a BIOS configuration screen), you should have the option to enable various things (it's true the card BIOS shouldn't matter, and I'm not sure about Int13h off the top of my head... but let's put it this way: they won't *hurt,* so you may as well) -- and to set termination, scan the bus, run low level formats or perhaps diagnostics, etc.

If you can get in there once, hook up the 68 pin drive, and do whatever seems plausible to test that things work.

---

What are you using for termination with the Fujitsu right now?
 

Offline hikermike

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Re: Help .....Adaptec 2940UW SCSI problem.
« Reply #24 on: August 13, 2004, 07:03:24 AM »
If you have an ide disk on your computer, then you can't enable the scsi bios.  If you boot with the scsi disk, you can't use IDE with it.  If you have an ide disk, do not boot from the scsi but from the ide.  When windows manager sees the "ghosted" then your card is working ok, the disk is not formated correctly which is why the other scsi disk shows up.  I had the same set of probs with my 2940 and darned if I can remember what I did.  I think what I did was to boot it up on a computer as the only drive and then started to install the os so as to format it and it then worked.  There is a more official way but one of the others will have to tell you how to do it.  I also find I have trouble with having both external and internal peripherals on the same card, but that might be because of the 50-68 pin problem previously mentioned.
 

Offline Wain

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Re: Help .....Adaptec 2940UW SCSI problem.
« Reply #25 on: August 13, 2004, 04:07:06 PM »
Quote
If you have an ide disk on your computer, then you can't enable the scsi bios.  If you boot with the scsi disk, you can't use IDE with it.  If you have an ide disk, do not boot from the scsi but from the ide.


With Windows 98 and later I have never had any trouble using both IDE and SCSI on a single machine, I boot with SCSI and have always Used Adaptec cards (2940UW, 2940UWPro, 19160).  You may run into conflicts between the controllers, but they are almost always resolvable.



Also, are you sure that the drive itself is functioning?
A bad HD can still ID to the system, and just not work.
Professional Expatriate
 

Offline adolescent

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Re: Help .....Adaptec 2940UW SCSI problem.
« Reply #26 on: August 13, 2004, 04:15:00 PM »
I concur.  There should be no problem using both IDE and SCSI on the same system.  I've been doing that for years (pre-Windows 95) without problems.
Time to move on.  Bye Amiga.org.  :(
 

Offline Trev

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Re: Help .....Adaptec 2940UW SCSI problem.
« Reply #27 on: August 13, 2004, 06:57:43 PM »
@hikermike

Your motherboard probably lacked an option to boot from either an add-in card or the onboard controller if both were installed. That would be strange, though, as that feature's been available for quite some time (my Intel Zappa motherboard from 1994 could do it).

Trev
 

Offline Floid

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Re: Help .....Adaptec 2940UW SCSI problem.
« Reply #28 on: August 13, 2004, 07:03:22 PM »
Quote

hikermike wrote:
If you have an ide disk on your computer, then you can't enable the scsi bios.  If you boot with the scsi disk, you can't use IDE with it.  If you have an ide disk, do not boot from the scsi but from the ide.
Under normal circumstances, the system BIOS won't *try* to defer to the SCSI BIOS unless the 'Boot from SCSI' option is set in the system BIOS.  Meanwhile, once booted, both the IDE and SCSI controllers are just PCI peripherals to the OS, like anything else... there's nothing special about IDE or SCSI that would make them "conflict."

As such, the above suggestions are entirely fictional; mixed scenarios are quite easy when you know what you're doing.

---

Assuming the initial poster really isn't seeing any Adaptec messages whatsoever when booting, I'm leaning towards the Macintosh ROM/corrupted card BIOS theory, at least as the next thing to try.  AFUV220.EXE (Adaptec.com) is the appropriate update if this is a 2940UW non-Pro (as it probably is); you'll need to reboot to "DOS Mode," unpack it (self-extracting executable), and run whatever it is you run to make it work.

(Don't worry about 'destroying' a rare Mac-edition card by flashing it back to the PC version; these things are now rather useless on the Mac -- not officially supported in OS   X -- anyway.  AFAIK, both Pegasos and AmigaOne are designed to deal with the usual x86-ROM'd cards.)
 

Offline AdMartin

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Re: Help .....Adaptec 2940UW SCSI problem.
« Reply #29 from previous page: August 13, 2004, 07:38:37 PM »
A simple question, do you have a terminator attached at the end of the Wide SCSI cable?

/Martin