Promise Ultra66 Problem, please help...

[allan120]

I have a Promise Ultra66 plugged into a Soyo 6ba+III/p3 800 setup. I flashed it with the latest bios and it shows up fine in Win98SE, with no conflicts. I have a CDROM and Zip250 attached to the 2nd IDE on the mobo. When I attach my boot drive and the mobo bios is set to boot from C:, it gets to "Verifying DMI blah blah" and just sits there. When I set it to SCSI, it hangs at the part where it shows that big box with memory, hd's, etc in the bootup. I have an Adaptec SCSI card that I need for a SCSI scanner (Epson 1200S, beautiful scanner, btw). Could this be a source of conflict? It doesn't show any conflicts in the Win98se Device Manager. Help? Suggestions? Sell lame computer on FS/T for $1? 🙂

 

[Mday]

well, though some people have this setup working, i am still in the position that it can be tough to get the controller working along with an actual SCSI adapter.

the 1200s would be great 😀 though i have a lowly 636u.

if you can't boot, how did you get to device manager?

make sure you have both cards in bus mastering PCI slots which do not share IRQs with other devices. consult your manual for details.

 

[Slikkster]

Yes, no doubt your system is seeing the Adaptec Scsi controller first, so it wants to boot from that. Here's what Promise says to do when trying to boot from an Ultra66 with a SCSI controller already controlled:

SUSPECT: Boot from Ultra 66, SCSI, BIOS, Configuration

QUESTION: How do I boot from the Ultra66 if I already have a SCSI card in the system?

ANSWER: If you have an actual SCSI controller in the system, the computer will attempt to boot from whichever controller is seen first. To get one controller to be seen before another, you must get it?s BIOS to load first. Manipulating the BIOS address that the card is set to use normally does this. However, the Ultra66 is fully PnP. This means that only the PnP BIOS on the motherboard can control which resources our card uses. In most cases, the PCI slot with the highest priority will be assigned the lowest BIOS address. On most motherboards, the PCI slot with the highest priority is PCI slot #1.

 

[allan120]

I got it to boot by connecting to the primary IDE slot. 🙂

Thanks for the advice...time to start swapping cards. Grr...😛

 

[randypj]

I believe Slikkster is correct. PCI pecking order is from 1 to 5. On my setup, I just had to swap cards a few times til things sorted out...Win95b. This is on a PA-2012 w/VIA chipset.

PCI 1--SCSI card w/only burners and readers--it is a bootable card.
PCI 2--Ensoniq sound card
PCI 3--16MB Banshee video
PCI 4--Promise 66, one hd as master on each port. I have my mobo ports diasabled, BTW, but this was not a necessity.
No more PCI slots. I got tired of messing with the AGP/VIA mess, so I have a PCI vid.

Oh, BTW, my mobo BIOS is booting to C:, not to SCSI. Works. Maybe because I don't have a HD on the SCSI. Let us know what works for you.
--Randy

 

[Heywood]

I have drives on my MB, Ultra66, and a SCSI card. To boot off of the MB drive first, you set the BIOS to C. To go off of the Ultra66 or SCSI card first, you set the BIOS to SCSI.

Also, the PCI slot info is correct: lower number = higher priority = boots first. Right now I have the SCSI card in #2 & the Ultra in #5 so the SCSI drive goes first. When I had them switched, though, the Ultra went first.

 

[allan120]

Thanks again for all the input...I won't get a chance to try out the swapping until tomorrow, since the comp belongs to my boss, but I really appreciate it and will post with profuse thanks after I get it to work. 🙂

 

[allan120]

Thanks for the help everyone...it all worked out, took some doing since the Vortex2 was being a pain also, but my boss can now pretend to do work and leave me in peace. 😀

 

[Radarman]

If there are no HDDs connected to the Adaptec controler, and the Adaptec Bios is disabled, there shouldn't be any conflicts between the Adaptec and the Promise controlers, at least I dont't think there should be. Radarman