Asus P4PE and Tekram DC-395UW SCSI problem!***SOLVED***Thanks, Peter!

[gonzo2k]

I've tried all the PCI slots and my P4PE refuses to boot with this card in ANY of them.
I've also tried giving it several IRQ settings, but these are ignored.
Gets through Promise RAID BIOS and Tekram SCSI BIOS fine and then hangs.
I pull the card and all is well...any suggestions?

I love this Tekram card-it has an internal 68-pin UW connect for my Orb drive & an external HD50 connect for my scanner.
I don't want to move these components to another machine!

 

[fishingeek]

I am running the DC-390UW in mine without any problems. I have it in slot #5 if that helps. I have no idea why yours would act like that though, strange problem

 

[Hamburgerpimp]

I had a problem with my Adaptec 29160 in a couple PCI slots, then found one that works. I'm sure it's the Mobo/BIOS since the Tekram cards work on almost everything out there. Does the Tekram run on other machines?

 

[gonzo2k]

Thanks for the posts.
Tekram was working fine in previous board and (I think) didn't develop problems with the P4PE until I set up RAID 0 with a SATA converter.
I had to pull the SCSI card to get both drives recognized or it would stall after POST like it does now. Maybe some incompatibility with the Promise chip.
I'll try it with a non-RAID HDD on the primary IDE (with RAID drives removed) and see if it still happens....will update results.

 

[Peter]

I had similar things happen recently ... they all turned out to be system BIOS bugs. Talk to ASUS about that.

 

[BDawg]

Your SCSI card could also need a BIOS upgrade to work with the P4PE. Is it up to date?

 

[gonzo2k]

Here's an update on my situation. I reverted to BIOS 1002 from 1003.002(beta).
I pulled my RAID and put in a single HDD on primary IDE- results: tekram card worked fine!
I reconnected my RAID drives but used the single HDD on primary IDE as boot drive- results: NO GO! stalls again.
Definately some incompatibility with the Promise RAID (or my SATA converter) and the SCSI card.

Still trouble shooting.
I also have a case # working with Asus tech support & will post results.

I'm using a Parallel-to-Serial Converter CBL-P-SATA from 3ware.com and it has 2 jumpers on the board. Anyone have a clue what they are for? No documentation shipped and I can't find any information about it.

BTW, Dawg- I have the latest BIOS update for the Tekram.
I'm using the RAID_IDE/SATA(with adapter) for my array. Primary and secondary IDE(non-RAID) have my DVD/CDRW.

 

[ALstonLoong]

i wonder are you using sata and IDE together ? If yes ...... i remember some mobo cannot use sata and IDE together . If you use IDE , sata have to be disable.

 

[gonzo2k]

Bad news from Asus...they tell me that Promise offers no BIOS updates for the RAID controller (my apparent conflict) on Asus boards- the only way to get my SCSI card to work is to disable the RAID controller or get a BIOS update from Tekram (I have the latest from '01).

So RAID will not work with SCSI (mine at least).

Anyone have an Adaptec card (or any other for that matter) working with a RAID array on this board?

 

[QSW]

Same problem here with a LSI (53c1010 chipset) card. I believe Tekram uses LSI's chips. In my case, I cannot get it to play nice with the HPT 372 raid controller (running raid 0) on the Epox 4G4A+

 

[Peter]

The Tekram 3x5 series use Tekram's own "1040S" el-cheapo SCSI engine. In their 3x0 series, they do indeed use LSI's silicon, and in the 390U3 series even LSI's BIOS firmware.

QSW, your problem possibly is that you're running out of UMB shadow memory space (where the PCI ROMs get mapped and run). The LSI SCSI BIOS is quite big at 64 KByte, if you have a large VGA ROM there (got DVI?) and/or the HPT's ROM is large too, those 128 KBytes will be too small. If that happens, the symptom is that depending on card order, one of the ROMs doesn't show up. The solution is to sort the stuff such that the one card where your boot drive is attached gets its ROM started.

 

[Peter]

Originally posted by: gonzo2k
Bad news from Asus...they tell me that Promise offers no BIOS updates for the RAID controller (my apparent conflict) on Asus boards- the only way to get my SCSI card to work is to disable the RAID controller or get a BIOS update from Tekram (I have the latest from '01).

Ah, the joys of onboard peripherals with lazy mainboard companies. I remember similar issues with the SCSI BIOS on ye olde T2P4S. ASUS didn't update that embedded ROM for ages.

If you're really daring, you can try replacing the Promise ROM image module inside the system BIOS ROM using the appropriate (Award/Phoenix/AMI) BIOS binary modification tools.

If you're not, you don't need to disable the RAID controller altogether - just disable its boot ROM support in system BIOS setup.

 

[QSW]

Peter, Thanks for the heads up. I am booting from a scsi hdd.
I tried the LSI card in every slot and played with the bios settings (raid & scsi boot order, 1st boot device... etc). Most of the time, the scsi bios is loaded and the highpoint's bios does not even show up. The closest I had ever gotten was to get both of them detected the drives but in w2k the raid array does not show up I am not sure if this is a problem of running out of UMB shadow memory space. But if I just hook up the ide drives to the hpt controller as non-raid drives, both of them show up and work properly in windows.

It may be a long shot but I will dig out an old Adaptec U2W card to experiment.

 

[gonzo2k]

Thanks for the insight, Peter.

I am running an LCD monitor/DVI on an ATI AIW 7500 AGP card.
I need the SCSI ONLY for an internal Orb drive(UW/68 pin) and an external scanner(SCSI-2)...not to boot.
Can I keep my RAID array and disable boot ROM on my Tekram and still have it work for the peripherals?
If yes, would you know the settings I should change?
If no, is Asus right about this being incompatible?
I'm only brave enough to flash the BIOS on the MB. "Modifying the onboard chip" with a BIOS utility sounds like a 50/50 proposition. I'm not that lucky!

 

[Peter]

Well OK, you don't want to boot off your SCSI drives, so you don't need its BIOS. You can possibly disable everything from its configuration menu, if not, you need to open the bag'o'tricks. Try Plan A first, and if no luck, come back here and I'll tell you

 

[gonzo2k]

Time to crack open that bag o' tricks. I disabled everything that could be disabled via config. menu for the Tekram (except for F2 for Bios access) and it still stalls after BIOS screen for the card.
SCSI Guru time!

 

[Peter]

Nothing to do with SCSI there.

If your system BIOS uses "BBS BIOS boot services", then the Promise and Tekram cards register their boot services with the system BIOS, and you can reorder and take individual ones out from there.

Then, does your system BIOS have a "reserved memory" size and location control (on the PCI/PnP page, usually)? You can use that to limit UMB space further such that the system has no room to run the SCSI BIOS in.

If so, set that to 16k, start with the highest possible address. See whether the SCSI BIOS vanishes. If it doesn't, increase the size. With bad luck, the Promise's ROM disappears first.

Then, you can flash dummy ROM contents into the Tekram adapter (if Tekram offers that for those that have their own chip not LSI's). Your last resort is to physically pull the ROM chip from the adapter card.

 

[gonzo2k]

Well, Peter..
Last resort was the way to go!
I physically removed the BIOS chip from the SCSI card and drivers loaded automatically under XP.
Both my peripherals(Orb & scanner) are functioning properly.
Someday my brain may comprehend why!

Thanks for your help-may it come back around to you if you ever need it (which I doubt)!