Sellam - this one is racked in a tower box as well with TEN 5 1/4"
half height drive bays - is that what you are using? I can't begin
to imagine TEN 5 1/4" FULL HEIGHT drive bays, but if that
is what you really meant, then I guess this box is only half the size.
But in addition to the 6 SCSI drives listed below, there are:
two EIDE 40 GByte hard drives - eventually to be expanded to four
one 3 1/2" floppy 1.44 MByte
one 5 1/4" floppy 1.2 MByte
one IDE CDRW burner
one IDE CDROM
Total drives = 12
the 2 (eventually 4) EIDE drives are hanging on two brackets OUTSIDE
the box - so I can see the LEDs flash on them - the LEDs are on the
bottom of the drive in the middle. The drives are hanging from secure
solid brackets at the 90 degree angle orientation so they stick out only
a total of 1 1/4" from the box - very little torque on the brackets. This
idea was from a recent suggestion about hanging drives from convenient
locations inside the box - thank you (I forget who gave the suggestion -
I simply extended it to hanging the drives outside).
I have been able to do the following with a single internal SCSI cable that
is terminated via an active external terminator (#1 configuration):
SCSI hard drive #0 FAT32 - ID=0
SCSI hard drive #1 FAT32 - ID=1
SCSI hard drive #2 FAT32 - ID=2
SCSI Iomega Zip Drive - ID=4
SCSI CDROM Drive #0 - ID=5
SCSI CDROM Drive #1 - ID=6
It all boots and work fine under W98.
I can also use an external cable as well (#2 configuration - includes #1):
Sony SMO S501 - ID=0
Sony SMO S501 - ID=1
Sony SMO S501 - ID=2 (this one only is terminated)
In this case, I MUST remove both SCSI CDROM drives from
the internal cable (not just power them down), but ONLY power
down the three SCSI hard drives. This also boots and works fine.
On many occasions, I wish to switch between the three Sony
drives and the three SCSI hard drives. Since W98 and the device
drivers think that the Sony drives are removable, none of the
software complains if I switch off (i.e. JUST turn off the power)
the Sony drives and power on the SCSI hard drives - no cables
are added or removed and I use a spare PC power supply for
SCSI hard drives, so the internal power supply for the PC is not
affected. This all works fine and since it is the minimum configuration
that I need right now, I am VERY pleased and satisfied.
Question: Can anyone suggest why I must remove the SCSI CDROM
drives from the internal SCSI cable before I can attach the external cable
with the three Sony drives - otherwise W98 does not complete the boot?
Hint: If I attempt to boot with the same configuration as #2 (i.e. with
the 3 Sony drives attached via the external cable) but now with the
3 Sony drives turned off and the 3 SCSI hard drives turned on, I also
can't boot - i.e. if I want to be able to switch between the Sony drives
and the SCSI hard drives, I must boot with the Sony drives powered
on and the SCSI hard drives powered off - and the SCSI CDROM
drives removed from the SCSI internal cable.
Please don't say I am not allowed to switch between the Sony and the
SCSI hard drives in the first place - that is something I often require -
it works and I am satisfied - if it ever stops working on future systems,
I will obviously need to find a solution.
=================================================
A note added this morning. My son#3 suggested that I eliminate the
external cable completely. Just attach a connecting cable to the end
of the internal 50 pin flat cable (remove the active terminator) to the
external Sony drives (my case will always be run with the sides off)
and put the active terminator at the end of the Sony daisy chain (instead
of having that last Sony drive apply termination - so that when I turn
off the Sony drives and power on the SCSI hard drives termination
will still be there). This all works just fine. Except that when I boot
from a floppy to be able to copy a GHOST backup file from a CD
to the D: hard drive, I must unplug the power from the SCSI CD internal
drives as only TWO CDROM drives are recognized by the floppy
when DOS from W98 boots. Since the SCSI CD internal drives
are OT (10 years old and slow), I certainly want to use the "newer"
IDE CDROM drives which are much faster. The reason that I will
just copy the GHOST back-up file to the D: hard drive is that GHOST
will not work when I boot with CDROM support - after I do the
copy from the CD to the D: hard drive, I must boot again without
CDROM support in order to run GHOST.
All in all, the restrictions was very few. I now can now normally boot
with all four CDROM drives and the three Sony drives. Or if the
Sony drives are off, then I can boot with the three SCSI hard drives
turned on and they will be recognized as permanent had drives with
correct FAT32 file structures (I did need to do an FDISK). Of course,
in this latter case, I can't switch to the Sony drives.
The only time that I need to do something a bit unusual is to unplug
the internal power to the two SCSI CDROM drives when I boot from
a floppy and I want to copy a file from a CD to the D: drive - and then
only because of the time it takes with the old SCSI CDROM drives
as opposed to the new IDE CDROM drives.
Question: Is there agreement that the probable cause of the original
problem when there was both an external and an internal cable was
likely to do with termination? But is there a specific explanation as
to why the SCSI CDROM drives needed to be removed from the
SCSI 50 pin internal flat cable when the three Sony drives were
plugged into the external cable?
'Tis a puzzle, but now a satisfactory solution has been found.
Received on Mon Feb 11 2002 - 10:31:40 GMT
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