I Hate SCSI !!!

[save2600]

Within the past few years, various friends have literally given me their companies old Dell servers. Talk about heavy metal! I used one as weight in the back of my trunk one winter. lol  But to those that think SCSI is "dead"... each one of those servers had a wicked SCSI setup in 'em. I've got about 12 drives over here and a couple of PCI<>SCSI2 cards just waiting to be used. And like another user posted... get yourself those 50 pin adapters and you'll be golden!!    

Funny though... the CD-ROMS, floppies and DAT/tape backup units were all IDE in those systems.

[spaceman88]

Hi again,
I've been playing with the setup (I'm using a GVP A4000 - HC+8 series 2 controller and a Quantum hard drive). HDTools doesn't see the setup (just the seagate IDE boot drive), Sysinfo shows the board but not the drive. The cable only has 2 connectors, only one device at a time. The controller and HD each have 3 jumpers marked SCSI ID, I tried moving these in different combinations ( I don't have any manuals or software), I've added and removed the termination jumper under the HD and tried a SCSI CDROM still no luck. What should I do next?
Len

P.S. I still hate SCSI!!!

[CLS2086]

open a cli/shell and put :

hdtoolbox gvpscsi.device

Then you'll see your SCSI devices only your GVP adapter
 :rtfm:

[Tenacious]

You probable need the software for your controller.  Google it.  Get the software and docs.  As was already said, HDtoolBox should be directed to look for GVPSCSI.device

Quantum drives are great and simple. Put a jumper on SCSI ID 1 (in case the controller is calling itself 0).  Also put one on TE (terminate enable), if the drive is less than about 100 Megs (an older design) it will need resistor packs for termination instead.  Finding details of your drive would be great. Google it, too.

If the HD is the only device then it is the last device and needs termination.

What specific HD (size, model)?  When you connect power only to the drive, does it spin up?

[KatManDEW]

HDToolBox never showed any devices on my A2000 with GVP 040 all these years. But after I got an A1200 a few weeks ago, I was recearching the 4 gig limit, and stumbled onto someone mentioning changing HDToolBox to use the gvpscsi.device. I took a wild stab and clicked once on the HDToolBox icon, and selected Icons - Information, and changed the SCSI_DEVICE_NAME= entry from scsi.device to gvpscsi.device, and presto - my GVP SCSI devices now show up in HDToolBox.

[spaceman88]

I found the hard drive on google (VP32210) and found it is junpered to SCSI ID # 1 and has two termination packs installed. For the controller I found some software for an A4008, which I think is the same/similar to my A4000 hc+8.I need to transfer it from my MacBook and "un-DMS" it. But I could not find a manual to tell me the what jumpers to set for ID # 1.
Len

Oh it's a 2.1 Gig drive and it spins up.

[Tenacious]

Hi Len

What are the jumpers on the drive?  There should be about 6 of them.

I've never owned a GVP HC+8, but, I think it is a SCSI interface/ram expansion Zorro II card (meant for the A2000).  The ram is probably 16 bit, not 32 bit.  The SCSI interface should also work in an A4000 (so will the ram, but it will be slower).  It seems that Jumper 4 enables Autobooting.  I think jumpers 10 thru 12 set SCSI ID of the controller itself.  If this is true, the drive and the controller can not have the same address.

There are SCSI diagnostic utilities on Aminet.   I'm not with my Amiga now, but try to find one that will "poll" the SCSI.device.  Get one that will allow you to change the device to GVPSCSI.device.

[Ami_GFX]

I would check the scsi device name--it must correspond to the scsi board used. On the A4000D, HDToolbox is set up for IDE. Open the tools folder, select HDToolbox and click information on the icon menu(or left A key i). There will be a line in the tool types box that reads:
"SCSI_DEVICE_NAME=scsi.device" for the built in IDE of the A4000D. If you want to use the GVP card, you have change this to "gvpscsi.device". Other cards from other manufacturs will have different device names. If you don't have the autoboot enabled on the Gvp card, you have to have a file called "gvpscsi" in your expansion drawer. This is on the install disk which also contains gvp's own hard disk partitioning software.
Once you have the correct scsi device name in the tool types of HDToolbox, it should recognize the drive and you should be able to partition it and have the partitions recognized.

[Ami_GFX]

I just read the whole thread and I see I'm repeating information already posted with a little more detail.

It does sound like your problem is the scsi device name. Try just having one drive connected with termintion on that drive to begin with to avoid having termination issues and once you get that one going, you can expand the SCSI chain. Cheers

[rockape]

Hi Spaceman,

see http://wonkity.com/~wblock/SCSI/SCSIExamples.html

"It seems that the SCSI bus is one of the most misunderstood aspects of connecting hard drives and other peripherals to the A4000 (or, for that matter, any other Amiga model). This section of the guide is an attempt to provide some simple examples of proper SCSI device connections. Please note that in the following section, and in the Guide as a whole, I have used the common term controller when referring to disk adapter boards, although the more accurate description for both SCSI and IDE would be "host adapter."


Regards, Michael

aka rockape