Having problems with SCSI MO drives

From: Vintage Computer Festival <vcf_at_siconic.com>
Date: Wed Sep 8 10:40:08 2004

On Wed, 8 Sep 2004, Jules Richardson wrote:

> > Is there a
> > termination issue? As far as I can tell both sides of the chain are
> > terminated. The drive is hooked up externally and I'm using an active
> > terminator. The host adapter should be terminating internally.
>
> Hmm, do check that the drives don't have their own termination jumper
> that's set - having the bus terminated twice at one end could cause all
> sorts of problems (and in theory damage devices on the bus, although
> I've never seen that happen in practice)

The problem is I'm trying to get a system working with several different
old MO drives (Maxoptix Tahiti 1, Pinnacle Micro REO-650/1300, Sony
<forgot the model>). The Maxoptix is not even being recongized, and may
well be dead dead dead. The Pinnacle is being recognized but I'm getting
the errors mentioned. The Sony drive gets recognized OK and the system
boots but then I get a bizarre message in the Adaptec BIOS that says it's
not a disk drive(!) Well then what is it? It's a Macinstor drive (ugh,
can't think...forgot who the manufacturer is).

> > What generally causes the above errors? I'm getting it on multiple drives
> > across multiple adapters.
>
> Are you certain the card(s) and driver(s) are set OK?

Yes, as far as I can tell. I have two of the adapters and have used each
without troubles before.

> eg. under linux I can do:
>
> cat /proc/scsi/sg/host_strs
>
> and get:
>
> Adaptec AIC7XXX EISA/VLB/PCI SCSI HBA DRIVER, Rev 6.2.8 <Adaptec
> 29160 Ultra160 SCSI adapter> aic7892: Ultra160 Wide Channel A,
> SCSI Id=7, 32/253 SCBs
> Adaptec AIC7XXX EISA/VLB/PCI SCSI HBA DRIVER, Rev 6.2.8 <Adaptec
> 2940A Ultra SCSI adapter> aic7860: Ultra Single Channel A, SCSI
> Id=7, 3/253 SCBs
>
> ... so I can tell that the system's talking to the two controllers I
> have in this machine, regardless of the state of any connected devices.
>
> Maybe Adaptec have some DOS-based diags you can try by booting from a
> floppy.

The board is happy when the drives are NOT attached :)

> I have no idea if the 1542 auto-terminates; it's probably too old - but
> IME Adaptec's auto-termination sucks and I always set termination for
> their boards via jumpers just to be on the safe side.

The board's BIOS has an option to force termination but the setup says you
should just leave it on automatic. So I won't trust it and will try again
forcing termination on the board.

-- 
Sellam Ismail                                        Vintage Computer Festival
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Received on Wed Sep 08 2004 - 10:40:08 BST

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