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The "Not Quite Amiga but still computer related category" => Alternative Operating Systems => Topic started by: melott on August 12, 2004, 02:29:21 AM
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I picked up an Adaptec 2940W/2940UW (dual 68 and 50 pin)
SCSI card on EBay. I don't think the card is bad.
The problem is it won't access a 68 pin drive. When I
install a 68 pin drive all the settings are ghosted.
Can't do anything with it. Device manager says the drive
is there and working properly and also the controller is
working properly.
When I install a 50 pin drive everything works great.
I've D/L'ed the install software from Adaptec and I think
its installed correctly.
It acts like a software setting is not correct, but I have
no idea what it is.
As you know.. Adaptec doesn't do Tech support unless you
buy directly from them and have a receit.
(My opinion .. they made the hardware .. they should support
it, reguardless where you got it from. That turns me off
about them :pissed: )
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There are quite a few revisions of the 2940UW, but they mainly fall into two major categories--the 2940UW and the 2940UW PRO.
On the 2940UW PRO, you can use any combination of connectors.
On the 2940UW, you can only use two connectors at a time:
1) 68-pin internal, 50-pin internal
2) 68-pin internal, 68-pin external
3) 50-pin internal, 68-pin external
You must set the SCSI controller's termination based on how you're using the connectors. [Searching Adaptec's web site. . . .] Check the AHA-2940Ultra Wide Installation Guide (http://download.adaptec.com/pdfs/installation_guides/aha2940v220_ig.pdf) (p.4) for more information.
Trev
EDIT: Always ask for pre-sales engineering support when contacting a vendor. You'll end up talking to a techie who couldn't case less about his employer's support policies and price structure.
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@Trev
I read that and followed the instructions but no luck.
The way it acts, it seems like I missed something.
But what......
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Assuming that your drive is functioning properly, it's quite likely a termination issue. Is your drive at the end of a chain? Is the drives termination enabled? Is the 2940UW's termination set properly also?
Are you certain that the drive in question is functioning properly?
Drives can ID to the host card and still not work when they're broken.
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As you know.. Adaptec doesn't do Tech support unless you
buy directly from them and have a receit.
This is news to me. I've always used Adaptec SCSI controllers in my PC's, never bought any from the company, (2 of them I got on ebay), and I've never had any issue receiving support from them. Last time I called them was about a year ago on an OEM 19160 card I got online, they gave me outstanding support.
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Some of their older products are no longer supported.
You will have to look at the product page for the 2940UW
on their website and see what the support status is.
C Snyder
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If you're running Windows 95/98/Me, you need to partition the drive using FDISK.
If you're running Windows NT/2000/XP/2003, you should be able to see the drive in Disk Administrator (Windows NT) or Disk Management (Windows NT/2000/XP/2003).
If all else fails (i.e. you've verfied that the SCSI bus is properly terminated, the host adapter recognizes the drive, and the Windows disk tools don't recognize the drive), you could try low-level formatting the drive. This is rarely necessary, but if the drive was used on a different host adapter or operated for an extended period of time in a different physical orientation (i.e. horizontal versus vertical), it might help.
Trev
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I've tried every config of termination (not many options)
and still the same results.
I can't format it, I can't do anything to it.
The settings are 'ghosted' (not available to change).
The drive is a brand new Fujitsu (compaq) 68 pin wide ultra.
I've also tried an old generic Quantum Atlas 68 pin drive.
Same results for both drives.
Oh.. I'm running Windows 98 SE.
My MotherBoard is a new (6 months old) ASUS A7V266-EX
1.3gig.
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I'm not sure what you mean by "ghosted"--to which process or property sheet are you referring? Device Manager lets you change SCSI communication options for some devices (scanners, printers, CD-ROM drives, etc.), but otherwise, it's just for show.
Does FDISK recognize the drive?
EDIT: Are you sure the drive is single-ended? It could be differential (HVD), which is the "other" SCSI bus signaling method, mostly intended for reliability and long cable runs. However, low-voltage differential (LVD--Ultra2, Ultra320, etc.) should work fine on a single-ended bus. Given that the drive was sold by Compaq, it's probably not HVD if was intended for use in a ProLiant server.
Trev
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@Trev
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Does FDISK recognize the drive?
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No.. FDisk doesn't reconize the drive.
And yes.. the Fujitsu is a LVD drive.
I contacted Fujitsu support when I was trying to get
these 2 Fujitsu drives to work on my A3000 (didn't happen).
They said I shouldn't have any problems on a PC.
(They didn't know much about Amiga)
But this still doesn't answer why the Quantum Atlas shows
the same results. This Quantum 4.3 gig is a generic and
should work on just about anything.
I have a Quantum Atlas 9 gig on my A3000 (same family) and
it installed with no problems. I want to save the Quantum
as a spare for my A3000.
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If FDISK doesn't recognize the drive, then the SCSI controller isn't telling the computer's BIOS about the drive. Windows can still see the drive by enumerating the devices on the SCSI bus, which is probably why it's showing up in Device Manager. Are you positive that the SCSI controller's BIOS is enabled (i.e. the BIOS hook--not the ROM setup utility)? If you're booting from the SCSI controller, then the BIOS is almost certainly enabled.
A good, quick way to rule out Windows would be booting directly to DOS, preferrably with MS-DOS 6.22, but Windows 98 SE DOS should do in a pinch. Try creating an emergency repair disk and booting from that. You can copy fdisk.exe to the disk if it isn't there already.
You can also try fiddling with the performance and compatiblity settings by disabling 32-bit disk access. (I think this is done from the System applet--I'm a bit rusty with respect to Windows 98.)
Also, are you sure the drives don't require a jumper change to work on a single-ended bus?
Trev
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Couple of questions.
1. Does the drive show up in the Adaptec BIOS? (CTRL-A at startup?)
2. Do you have the correct AHA-2940UW drivers installed? (ie. not the plain 2940 drivers)
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@Trev
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Are you positive that the SCSI controller's BIOS is enabled (i.e. the BIOS hook--not the ROM setup utility)?
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:-? Well, no I'm not sure.
What do you mean by Bios hook??
Would the 50 pin side work if this was not setup right??
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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."
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.
Many drives have two sets of jumper blocks--make sure you're using the right one. Also make sure that SCAM is disabled in the setup utility and that each device has had its SCSI ID set manually.
Trev
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@Adolescent
Yes I'm sure I have the correct drivers installed.
Uhhh... :-? I didn't check the Control-A, totally
slipped my mind.
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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
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@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
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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.
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.
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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
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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??
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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).
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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??
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Don't give up! You may eventually end up tossing the card, but in the meantime, you'll learn quite a bit about SCSI and PC hardware in general. :-)
Even if you're not seeing the "press + to enter SCSISelect" banner, you can still press CTRL+A when the AHA-2940UW banner appears. If you're not seeing the banner at all, then try the troubleshooting steps that follow.
Is the card in a busmaster capable PCI slot? Is busmastering enabled on the PCI slot? Your motherboard's manual should provide instructions for how to verify busmastering settings.
Have you tried the card in a different system?
Does your motherboard have an extra onboard SATA, IDE, or RAID controller? If so, try disabling it. It should be OK to leave the IDE controllers managed by the chipset enabled, but it wouldn't hurt to disable them just for testing.
Have you removed all other cards from your system? (Although, it's a probably a good idea to leave the video card in. :-))
Have you tried moving the card to a different slot (kind of goes hand-in-hand with verifying busmastering capabilities and troublshooting card incompatibilities)?
Trev
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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.
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What are you using for termination with the Fujitsu right now?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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@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
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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.
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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) (http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/support/driverdetail.jsp?sess=no&language=English+US&cat=/Product/AHA-2940UW&filekey=afuv220.exe) 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.)
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A simple question, do you have a terminator attached at the end of the Wide SCSI cable?
/Martin
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The Adaptec controller has a setting to turn off display of the "Press CTRL-A ..." message. It will still respond to CTRL-A, though, and once in the BIOS you can change the settings. I believe the message is off by default. Adaptec controllers also came in two flavors, OEM and Retail, and both were a little different in some ways depending on the model. The exact model is very important: the AHA-2940UW and AHA-2940UW PRO differ in how many connectors you are allowed to use at one time as was mentioned earlier. Also, the BIOS updates are model specific and the OS drivers for the AHA-2940UW PRO will work with the AHA-2940UW, but not vice versa. You'll want to try and get into that CTRL-A BIOS setup, though. If the drive is seen in the BIOS, then you can concentrate on figuring out why the OS isn't letting you see it. It doesn't hurt to double-check the termination settings. I've had a drive that I thought I had set up termination correctly, but after downloading information from the manufacturer, I realized I had it slightly wrong. You might want to check your settings against the documentation from the harddrive manufacturer just to be sure. Good luck! :)
-David
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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.
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This is correct...... I see the card listed in the Bootup
but 'Ctrl-A' won't get me into the Bios.
Also my card is taged as an 'AHA2940"W"/AHA2940UW'.
I found no listing of the 2940"W" /2940UW at Adaptec,
What I found is the AHA2940"U"/2940UW, I don't know how much
difference that would make.
I tried making a DOS boot disk as per docs but that doesn't
work eather.
I D/L'ed the AFUV220.exe file and will try it tomorrow.
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Not being able to get into the bios is a pretty good sign that somebody tried to flash the bios and screwed it up. I had that problem with my 2940UW. If you are going to flash it, do it in a system with a pci video card and nothing else in it. In my case, I had a Matrox AGP card in the slot and the flash appeared to go well. Even got success return code but flash was still screwed. Adaptec tech support says to remove all cards and flash only with barebones system... It might work for you without going to all this trouble but... You definitely want to make sure you don't have an IRQ conflict...
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As to "fictional", the above information is what came with my Adaptec Card. You will get conflicts with the different bios"s, however, the mixed up flash sounds like it was the cause but then why would one disk show up and not the other?
The comment "conflicts are easily fixed if you know what to do" is not helpful cuz that's why they're asking the questions. Some of us like to Use our computers, not spend the day messing with them. (Then why do I still fire up the 'ol 2500 and fix another broken part?) Anyway, I wish he'd post the final outcome!
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One disk might show up if it was scsi fast and the other might not because it was scsi ultrawide. The Adaptec bios allows you to set the speed of each drive/id. It also allows you to turn allow or disallow each id to be included in the bios scan. The bios settings might still be set but the corrupted bios would not allow changing the settings.
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I guess the card is parically broke.. It does reconize
a 50 pin drive although the "Adaptec Bios loaded" does
NOT show in the boot up.
I bought another AHA 2940W/ 2940UW card and it works
fine. It shows up in the boot as loaded.
Now all I have to do is get these 68 pin Compaq drives
to work :-?
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melott wrote:
I guess the card is parically broke.. It does reconize
a 50 pin drive although the "Adaptec Bios loaded" does
NOT show in the boot up.
I bought another AHA 2940W/ 2940UW card and it works
fine. It shows up in the boot as loaded.
Now all I have to do is get these 68 pin Compaq drives
to work :-?
Is the new card having equal trouble with those, or are you just talking formatting? I've missed what you're using for termination, so I'll have to look back in the thread as to that.
If you just mean formatting, there's a good chance there *are* bad things that could happen to zap only the wide chain (my understanding is that pretty much any SCSI controller that routes the chain through the chip is odd like that -- it 'should' just be straight through, but in practice, the chip has to act as a sort of active bridge to compensate for the different electrical properties of silicon vs. cabling, so there are 'transceivers' for both wide and narrow sides that could theoretically blow)... but if you can't get the Compaqs to show at all, you might want to double-check whether they're HVD, or just dead!
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Another situation. I was throwing out old computer books tonite and as I was thumbing through an old PC Repair Book, in the scsi section it mentioned the following about the Adaptec 2940 specifically. If the harddrive your using to boot was used with a previous scsi card, the 2940 will not recognize it as it writes a specific file to the harddrive. At best they suggest rewriting the MBR but say that probably won't work and you'll have to reformat the Harddrive completely including the MBR. Is that the situation?
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@HikerMike
No .. this system has never had a SCSI controller in it
before. (I built it myself)
I don't know why the first 2940 card doesn't work in
68 pin mode. I bought another card (factory refurbished)
AHA 2940UW and it works fine.
The problem now is it won't do the drives that I bought
it for. They are (new) Compaq 4.3 gig 68 pin LVD drives.
I D/L'ed the error codes from Adaptec but I can't make
sense of them, they don't match the error massages I'm
getting from the BIOS.
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Just bought 2940UW but it can't find my Quantum ProDrive LPS 50MB SCSI, just stuck in Scanning SCSI ID after pressing Ctrl+A :(