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Looking for a Scsi integrated motherboard for a P4.

Skip the integrated SCSI, get whatever mainboard you like, and plug a Tekram 390U3W or 390U4W dual channel U160/U320 card.
Why? Because SCSI adapters tend to survive a couple of mainboard upgrades, but if they're on the mainboard, you got to buy a new one every time you want to swap mainboards.
And there's no performance won by having it on the mainboard either. It's the same PCI bus as on the slots.
 
Just wanted to echo Peter's comments, why do u want an integrate scsi controller. My guess is the standalone card would be more reliable as well. And just as Peter said it will survive as one of your peices of hardware that you can put into any box for many years to come.

I've still got like 6 year old SCSI controllers that I use, slow but still reliable.
 
I have an old 1 gig athlon sys that took a crap( I suspect the motherboard or cpu after the process of elimination), and dont want to use the 29160 retail controller, had a heck of a time with irq probems ect on original setup, but would like to recover all my info from the two 10k scsi drives in the sys.
Thanks for the advice !
 
If you didn't try it already, study your motherboard manual and you will probably find that there's one "best" PCI slot that isn't sharing its IRQ. If you already got rid of your 29160, remember that you can get an LSI for $90 (including cable & terminator) from hypermicro. Googlegear carries them too.
 
IRQ problems with a SCSI card? Most probably, absolutely, not. Basically noone actually has IRQ problems, that's a myth. It's just that every unsolvable mystery is declared an IRQ problem. Forget that idea.

But if you believe in that BS, anyway, let me say again that onboard devices sit on the same PCI bus and set of interrupt lines as the cards in the slots do.

For the 239847619723rd time: PCI devices MUST, by definition and standard, be able to share IRQ. So do AGP devices. This is not your problem, even if three thousand internet "experts" suggest so. It's all either buggy drivers, or in case of SCSI, improper cabling and device setup.

Vent over, back to the topic. LSI's or Tekram's SCSI controller cards (which also use LSI chips, firmware and drivers) happily accept HDDs that have been on Adaptec controllers before. Use those.
 
I appreciate all the feedback and advice, thanks! I want to replace the motherboard and chip, do a Win XP repair(after the crash I could not get it going again,as I was getting a BAD_POOL_CALLER BSOD at about the 70% install point) and recover all the info on the 2 Quantum drives that I need.

I dont know what ill do with the sys then, but well see what happens. Im trying to do this with as little agravation as possible!

Thanks for you input guys!
 
Even though PCI devices are supposed to be able to share IRQ's, they do not do this always, and successfully. They _should_, but you know how elevators are rated for way more weight that you could possibly fit in there? You don't want to take chances 🙂

That said, keep in mind that SCSI integrated on the motherboard is nothing more than an Adaptec 29160 (chip + connectors) attached to the PCI bus. It will not have any more or less problems than a real 29160, aside from being non-removable. SCSI is not something that's integrated with the soutbridge.

To solve "IRQ conflicts" check the IRQ routing table for your motherboard, or if such isn't available, install cards one at a time, and check the listing of PCI devices shown just prior to OS bootup to make sure as few conflict as possible. Onboard PCI devices and PCI slots are hard-wired to share IRQ's in some fixed manner. (for instance- a secondary IDE controller can be set up to share an IRQ with PCI slot 4). If you notice devices sharing, move those devices that you can to other slots. The reason for this is that there are a total of 4 to 6 IRQ channels allocated to PCI devices.

To increase the pool of possible IRQ's disable anything you aren't using (onboard sound, COM and LPT ports, PS/2 mouse port). You want to disable everything you don't need so that you actually HAVE 4-6 IRQ's available for the previous paragraph technique to work. Just because slot A and slot B aren't hard-wired to share IRQ's, doesn't mean they won't if they have nowhere else to go.
 
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