Formatting an AMIGA SCSI drive on a PC?

[Ral-Clan]

Hi,

I was given an older PCI SCSI Ultrawide card (Adaptec AAA-131).  I have been wondering what I could do with it, then I thought - perhaps I could use UAE to set up and format SCSI hard drives connected to my Windows XP PC for use in a real Amiga.  I know this is possible as others have done it.

However, I looked up the AAA-131 card online and it appeared there are two problems:

- The card was not supported under Windows XP.  However, some people have reported that using the Win2000 drivers worked.  Fine.

- Although I know a lot about early 1990s Amiga SCSI, I know next to nothing about SCSI RAID.  I just want to use this card as "normal" SCSI controller card (I don't want to set up an array).  I just want to control one hard drive - and perhaps occassionally a SCSI scanner that I used to use on my Amiga.  Is it possible for a SCSI RAID controller to function as a "normal" SCSI hard drive controller?

The description of the card is here:

http://www.adaptec.com/en-us/support/_eol/aaa_raid/aaa-131/

and

http://www.ascendtech.us/adaptec-scsi-raid-array-1000-controller_i_cntsadtaaa131b.aspx

The line that has me confused in the product description is: "...for systems that already have embedded SCSI or an installed add-in host adapter for low speed devices".  This makes me think that the AAA-131 can't be used as a regular SCSI controller if it requires the system to already have an embedded SCSI controller installed.

I do realize that this card has 68 pin connectors externally, so I'll have to get an adapter.  But it does have a 50 pin header internally, too.

[Ral-Clan]

I would just try it out. Put it in and see what Windows says about it. If drivers are needed, try to find some and install them. Then connect a harddrive and check what Windows disk management tells about it. If disk management sees the hdd, WinUAE should, too.

I will try it.  I hope that a card such as this, which designed primarily for hard drive arrays deals well non-drive devices too, like the scanner I intend to try.

[Ral-Clan]

Okay, I tried it.

Software wise - it worked.  The card was recognized by Windows XP and the Windows 2000 drivers installed.

But hardware wise, there was a conflict.   The BIOS on my Thinkcentre P4 computer complained of a PCI/PNP Error Resource Conflict - PCI Mass Storage Controller on Motherboard Bus: 04, Device 04, Function: 00

I think there was some sort of conflict between the motherboard's PCI bus controller and the one on the RAID card.  Adaptec has the following to say which I *mostly* understand but not enough to see if there is a solution:

Incompatibility with PCI2.0 Motherboard PCI-TO-PCI Bridge

The AAA-13x uses an industry standard PCI 2.1 compliant PCI-to-PCI bridge. Certain systems use PCI-to-PCI bridges on the MOTHERBOARD to get additional PCI add-in slots. Some earlier systems used PCI 2.0 compliant PCI-to-PCI bridges(e.g. Digital part numbers DEC21050 or DEC21052) to get these additional PCI slots. If AAA-13x is installed on BUS1, the secondary side of a PCI 2.0 PCI-to-PCI bridge an incompatibility may exist. It is recommended that the AAA-13x be installed on BUS 0 (the primary side).

[Ral-Clan]

OKAY!  I plugged the SCSI RAID card into a different PCI slot (away from the AGP slot) and now it works (partially - read below).

The card now is recognized by the BIOS and boots fine.  I've installed the Windows 2000 drivers and all appears to functioning fine.  I was able to format one SCSI drive but two other drives proved problematic (A Barracude 4MB drive slowed the booting of Windows to a snail's crawl and the other (and old 80mb drive) wouldn't show up in drive management so I couldn't even format it.

Finally a 500MB seagate drive worked.

Another note:

I seem to have lost the ability to put the computer into SLEEP mode since installing the SCSI card - I read about this on other forums.

Not sure if I want to keep the card installed if I can't put the computer into sleep mode as I use that mode quite a lot.

[Ral-Clan]

Another note:

I seem to have lost the ability to put the computer into SLEEP mode since installing the SCSI card - I read about this on other forums.

Not sure if I want to keep the card installed if I can't put the computer into sleep mode as I use that mode quite a lot.

PS: Windows XP Disk Management Tool doesn't see the drive as connected either, so I can't even format it from there.