Strange SCSI behaviour - maybe missing terminator?!?

[JohnFante]

I recently bought a A4000 with a CSPPC, CVPPC etc.

There are three HD's, two CD's and a zip drive connected to the SCSI-controller.

However I think there is a missing terminator on one end of the SCSI-chain.

I get an strange behaviour with one of the HD's when I install OS4.1 (see picture). It installs fine on one of the other HD's (not the one with the error) but my system has an tendency to lock (with only a reset as the cure) when I copy huge amount of data from one HD to another.

As far as I can see my chain is

Terminator
CSPPC
Seagate ST150176LW 0001 - 46,5GB
IBM DRHS36D 0110 - where OS4.1 is installed
CD-ROM PX-32-TS
HP35470A (ZIP)
CD-R PX-W124TS
Quantum Viking II 4,5WSE5520

I have attached a photo of the last drive (the Quantum) and as far as I can see there is no terminator after the Quatum.

Does anybody know what could be the cause of the behaviour, and do I need a proper terminator after the Quatum HD and what kind should it be?

I do not know if it is any help but SCSI-config (on 3.9) gives this:

Units:
Board 0 - Unit 1 - DRHS36D
Board 0 - Unit 2 - CD-ROM PX-32-TS
Board 0 - Unit 3 - HP35470A (ZIP)
Board 0 - Unit 4 - CD-R PX-W124TS
Board 0 - Unit 5 - ST1250176LW
Board 0 - Unit 8 - Viking II 4,5WSE5520

Thank you in advance.

[JohnFante]

Are all these guys (devices) attached the the 68-pin cable?

At least 4 of these are SCSI 1/2, the hard drives I can't tell by looking (I'm in bed typing on my iPhone with a fat white cat on my chest). Are any of the hard drives UW160/320?  These questions have nothing to do with your problem, because, YES. You near an "active, wide, LVD/SE Terminator" at the other end of the cable.

The CSPPC SCSI device can reach near 40MB/s with SCSI-3 (so known as UltraWide) supported. The SCSI 2 will slow you bus down to 10MB/s or less. The drive transfer types compatible with the SCSI 3 bus are also listed as U160 or U320; Amy won't reach those speeds, but these drives are real inexpensive used.

But yeah, get on the web (*Bay) and score a Terminator, and don't spend more than 10 USD for one (good ones have an LED that glows to prove its active).

Everything is connected to the same cable. Some have adapters so the cable can connect but that is that. One long chain.

Thanks for the advice on the terminator. Any specific suggestions for wich one?

[JohnFante]

Thank you for your help.

I think I will take the ZIP and CD-burner of the chain and get a new terminator.

Can anybody recommend any good ones that you can buy online (a link would be nice :-))?

[JohnFante]

Could I use something like this?:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SCSI-3-Half-pitch-68-male-active-terminator-Ultra-Wide-/130592807947?pt=UK_Computing_Drive_Cables_Adapters&hash=item1e67f01c0b

[JohnFante]

Thank you for the suggestions. :-)

Earlier in the post you wrote that "devices next to the ends should be supplying termpower." How can I tell if it does that?

It will be either the Quntum HD or the Plextor CD drive that will be next to the end in the chain. The Quantum just plugs in and the Plextor plugs in with an adaptor.

Do I need to buy a termpower device or do I alter the HD/CD to supply termpower?

Sorry if the question is rather silly!

[JohnFante]

Do NOT put an old narrow SCSI device at the end of the chain. Its terminator (resistor packs are useless anyway) would only terminate the lower 8 bits of the 16 bit bus, leaving the upper half unterminated. By far the easiest way is to put a wide device on the end, otherwise you need an adapter with a 'half terminator'.

Termpower is the power supply for the terminators, they won't work without. At least one device needs to supply termpower. I usually use the two at the ends powering their own terminators or the cable terminators right next to them.

Are you thinking about the Quantum HD or the Plextor CD?

[JohnFante]

Thanks for all the great advice. I have so far ordered the "cheap" 99p terminator.

I plan to rebuild my chain to this:

Terminator (it is an Active terminator)
CSPPC
Seagate ST150176LW 0001 - 46,5GB (where I have OS 3.9 etc.)
IBM DRHS36D 0110 - where OS4.1 is installed
CD-ROM PX-32-TS
Quantum Viking II 4,5WSE5520 (plan to install MorphOS)
Terminator (the new 99p one)

The Quantum drive has theese specs: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/storage/Quantum4G/Specs.htm

As far as I can see it has termination power enabled by default. If I look at the specs it also has a active terminator built in but only for singled ended chains.

I am wondering if I should put the CD just after the CSPPC? Any suggestions to the the chain would be welcome.

Thank you in advance.

Specs in case you need them:

Specs for the Seagate HD:
https://www.codemicro.com/support/disc/manuals/scsi/29471c.pdf

Specs for the IBM HD
http://www.netcomdirect.com/ibmdrul36367.html

Specs for the CD:
http://www.netcomdirect.com/plpx32xsccdd.html

[JohnFante]

Well .... just a quick status ... and a cry for help.

I bought a active terminator on Amigabay. Removed the Quantum and put it on the end. It looked like it did the trick but I was not sure since my OS4.1 install somehow got messed up when I removed the Quantum. I therefore removed it again and put the terminator jumper on the last Plextor PX-32TS CD.

However .... now all my SCSI drives are gone in the boot menu. Nothing is there and it goes directly to the 3.1 "put a floppy in" boot menu.

I am a very afraid that I have somehow fried my SCSI controller!! :-(

Any advice/suggestions. I have removed everything from the chain except a single HD and the CD to test. But so far nothing.

HELP!!

[JohnFante]

Forget about termination on a narrow (50-pin) device, it won't work. Terminate the bus with a wide device (68-pin) or a cable terminator. Using a cable terminator, you need to make sure that any on-device terminators are turned off.

Well I connected all the devices again, removed the termniator jumper on the CD-drive and connected the terminator at the end of the chain.

Now my drives dos'nt even spin up :-( ... and it still goes directly to the 3.1 boot screen.

I think I have a loose connection somewhere. But where ...

I know SCSI-drives are the fastest for Amiga but my god it is a pain to setup proberly ....

[JohnFante]

how's you getting on dan? i shouldn't think you've fried the cyberstorm... maybe if you put just the two hard disks on the chain, physically either side of the cyberstorm, and set the drives to terminate, this should terminate the bus without the worry of narrow devices, or possibly dodgy terminators.
do they show in early startup?
once you have one or two devices showing, then add the rest one at a time...
i remember having devices on the bus for the sake of it. zip, jaz, RW MagnetoOptical, yadda yadda. do you really need a zip drive? and two hard disks? can you not consolidate?

just thinking "out loud" best of luck!

Its not Dan's problem :-) as far as I know ....

Good to know that I "probably" havn't fried the Cyberstorm. I must admit I am rather concerned thou. I disassembled all the drives. Checked the SCSI-id's, the jumpers and the power cables (as good as I could) and put in the two HD's and the CD-rom and the terminator in the end.

Still nothing. The HD's dos'nt spin up anymore and the system goes to the floppy boot.

I will try with only one HD but to be honest I am not very optimistic. I think I need some physical assistance to sort this one out.

I will get back when I - hopefully - find the solution.

Thank you for all the help.

[JohnFante]

WOOOHOOOO!

Things are running again. :-D

When I removed the CD-ROM (Plextor PX-32TSi) so I only had the two HD's (Seagate and IBM) and a terminator at the end the HD's spinned up and I was able to boot my OS4.1 install.

And as far as I can feel the HD's works a little bit faster with the Quantum drive of the chain.

Now I only need to get the correct jumper settings for my CD-ROM drive to solve the conflict I have.

Anybody have any experience with how to correctly configure a Plextor PX-32TSi CD-ROM drive or a Plextor-W124TSi CD-RW drive?

Thank you in advance.

[JohnFante]

As far I can see there are two causes of the problem:

There is some kind of conflict between my Plextor CD-Rom drives and the rest. Probably a dodgy terminator.

I lack terminator power. And I think this is the real culprit.

My two HD's have SCSI-ID 0 and 1. I have set the ID for the CD-drive to 2, turned on parity, turned of termination. See the attached photo for a detailed layout of the jumpers.

Both drives (I have tried them individually) show the same error. When I try to boot my drives dosn't spin up and I go directly to the Kickstart 3.1 bootmenu.

The Seagate HD (wich has ID 0 and is first in the chain) has a jumper for termination power. At the moment it is off.

The IBM HD (which has ID 1 and is the second in the chain) dos not have the ability to supply termination power. Only the 68SE model has that and mine is not that. It connects through a rather strange interface. Se photo.

Can I enable termination power on the first drive (Seagate) without risking to cause damage? Or do I have to move it to the last place before the terminator?

If I do not move it the chain would then be:

Active terminator
CSPPC
Seagate HD (with termination power enabled)
IBM HD
CD-ROM
Active terminator

Thank you in advance.

[JohnFante]

Well I moved the HD's so that the chain is as follows:

Active terminator
CSPPC
IBM ID0 - no term power
Seagate ID1 - term power
CD-ROM ID2 - no term power
Active terminator

When I have that chain I still go to the kickstart 3.1 boot menu.

When I remove the CD-ROM it boots into OS4.1 fine (placed on the IBM).

I most admit I am loosing hope here. Once during my fideling around I got the CD to work. Then I put all hardware in its places and changed som ID jumpers and then it didn't work again. Do not know why? :-(

I have an old IDE DVD-drive laying around. Can I use that on the IDE channel? I know it is not that fast but since I am will not be using it for anything but installation that would be just fine.

SCSI kind a suck right now ....

[JohnFante]

Is the cdrom a 68pin cdrom or are you trying to adopt a 50pin cdrom to a 68pin UWscsi chain?

It is a 50pin CD-ROM with a 68pin to 50pin converter. It is a Plextor PX.32TS. Se photo. Just to be clear. It has worked fine but has stopped working because I removed a HD, attached a terminator etc.

Have you went into the csppc early menu and checked the scsi setting? perhaps something is off? You might set everything to auto until you get up and running.

I have set everything to auto. No result

Maybe the cdrom drive is bad? 15-20 year old scsi drives do fail sometimes.

I have thought about that but since it has worked flawlessly until now combined with the fact that It worked very shortly during my "fideling" and the fact that I get the same error when I use a Plextor PX-W124TS CD-ROW dirve I would say that it is unlikely.

You could use a cd/dvd drive on the internal ide with no problems. it will be slow,but as you say, something is better than nothing. Be sure to set it as master if its the only ide device.

Great :-) I will dig one out and see what happends.

[JohnFante]

When a narrow device is connected somwhere in the middle you can simply use an ordinary adapter.

Only if you connect that device to an end and need it to provide termination (no cable terminator) then you need a half-terminating adapter to take care of the high byte.

I moved the CD-ROM to the middle of the chain and changed the ID's so that it is:

Active terminator
CSPPC
IBM ID0 - no term power
CD-ROM ID2 - no term power
Seagate ID5 - term power
Active terminator

Stil the same. :-(

Maybe my terminator is no good? It has no LED so I can not see if it has termination power. But when I remove it (and the CD-ROM) my system will not boot so it must be doing someting.