SCSI problem

knithat · Apr 24, 2003

i've got an adaptec 2940 UW scsi controller. when i hook up a hard drive to the ultrawide channel (68 pin) and a tape drive to the wide channel (50 pin), neither show up in the bios. but if i hook only the hard drive up or only the tape drive up, they are recognized just fine. anyone have any ideas? thanks!

Trashman · Apr 24, 2003

seems as if they both are sharing the same SCSI ID. Each device must have its own ID.

knithat · Apr 24, 2003

sorry, i should have put more info in the last message.

HD has SCSI ID #0
tape drive has SCSI ID #1

i have tinkered with setting termination on and off on each device and it doesn't seem to make a difference.

redbeard1 · Apr 24, 2003

Is the termination set to auto in the adaptec scsi bios? Are both mounted internally? Do you have terminators on the cables or are you using the drive termination? What termination on the drives were you using, just the plain terminator enabled, or was it terminator power to bus enabled, or terminator power to drive? Do you have the latest bios for the card installed, some of the newer ones give better error messages.

Though they are different channel's, on that card, I've had one channel's termination, screw the other channel up.

Generally, I use active terminators on the end of all cables and turn the terminators and anything related to terminating, off on all drives.

knithat · Apr 24, 2003

Is the termination set to auto in the adaptec scsi bios? Are both mounted internally? Do you have terminators on the cables or are you using the drive termination? What termination on the drives were you using, just the plain terminator enabled, or was it terminator power to bus enabled, or terminator power to drive? Do you have the latest bios for the card installed, some of the newer ones give better error messages.

termination is set to auto in the scsi bios. both are mounted internally. no terminators on the cables as far as i know, just on the drives themselves. plain terminator enabled, not the terminator power to the bus or drive. how can i tell if the cables themselves have termination?

latest bios is a different story. the card came in a dell system and dell never released a new bios for the card. adaptec did but they claimed that it might wreck my card.

thanks for the help!

bozo1 · Apr 24, 2003

You can tell termination on the cable by the last drive connector. If the cable itself is terminated, there will be a terminator plugged into it.

knithat · Apr 25, 2003

definitely no terminators on the cables.

so what should i try? turning the terminators off on everything and turning the termination off on the adaptec card? or should i turn the terminators on on the devices and enable terminator power on the devices? i'm really at a loss.

thanks for the help!

redbeard1 · Apr 25, 2003

The card needs the termination on usually. You can try using all variations of terminating on each drive. You also can try terminating only one drive and seeing what happens.

Do you have a computer store near you that you could get an active terminator or two? When you go into the bios of the scsi card, is there different settings for ID 1?

What model hard drive and tape drive do you have?

bozo1 · Apr 25, 2003

Make sure both drives are terminated via the proper jumper. Try setting the termination on the host adapter to manual. The setting should be low-off, high-on for the configuration you want.

You didn't mention it so I assume you are not also hooking up an external device as well as that adapter doesn't support all 3 connections being used at once.

fornax · Apr 25, 2003

Try disabling termination on the card. I'm not sure how exactly it's configured, but if both devices share the same bus and the card is terminated, you'll have a bus with termination on both ends AND in the middle. Only the ends of a SCSI bus must be terminated.

knithat · Apr 25, 2003

Do you have a computer store near you that you could get an active terminator or two? When you go into the bios of the scsi card, is there different settings for ID 1?

i'll have to check, but i'm sure i could dig something up. what would i do with the active terminators?

What model hard drive and tape drive do you have?

hard drive - quantum atlas III (i think...it's a LVD ultra 160)
tape drive - compaq sdt 9000 (it's really a sony, just rebranded as compaq does)

You didn't mention it so I assume you are not also hooking up an external device as well as that adapter doesn't support all 3 connections being used at once.

i'm impressed that you knew that! no, i don't have an external device hooked up to the card, but i have done that in the past and it worked fine even though adaptec said it wouldn't.

thanks again, all!

fornax · Apr 25, 2003

OK, Adaptec 2940UW is a single-channel card. So yes, you MUST disable termination on the card and terminate both drives. You have three SCSI devices on the same bus: IDs 0 (HDD), 1 (tape), and 7 (or 15) for the card. The physical ends of the bus (HDD on one end and tape drive on the other) must be terminated, and nowhere else.

bozo1 · Apr 25, 2003

hard drive - quantum atlas III (i think...it's a LVD ultra 160)

That could be your problem right there. If it really is an LVD drive, then it has to be operating in SE mode since your adapter is not LVD. It is very common for LVD drives to not play well with other non-LVD devices, even when forced into SE mode. Even though you are hooking it up to a different connector, it is still the same SCSI bus.

knithat · Apr 25, 2003

allow me to throw another wrench:

the drive works fine if, instead of the tape drive hooked up to the 50 pin cable, a cd-r drive is hooked up to it. the cd-r drive is a TEAC 55S or something (quad speed. it's been a while since i used it).

does this change any diagnoses?

knithat · Apr 25, 2003

okaleedokalee, here's what i did:

-enabled termination on both drives
-set host adapter SCSI termination to Low OFF/High ON

and it didn't work. then i

-left the termination on both drives
-set the host adapater SCSI termination to Low OFF/High OFF

and that didn't work. stubborness pushing me forward i then
-left the termination on both drives
-set the host adapter SCSI termination to LOW ON/HIGH ON

and guess what? both devices were recognized in the SCSISelect Utility. BUT - during boot, while the system is identifying the SCSI devices attached to the controller, the system stalls after detecting the hard drive and then says that the device is not ready. so i set then i disabled Ultra SCSI speeds. no dice.

then i went to verify the media and now i'm getting a host adapter status of 00h = No host adapter error. ugh.

wait, i screwed something up. apparently i had the terminator power enabled, but not the terminator itself. whoops. enabling the terminator gives me the same No host adapter error. disabling the terminator on the drive gives the same error. now i'm getting a little nervous.

okay, tape drive is unattached to the controller. still getting the same error on the drive.

last ditch effort: enable termination on the drive.

no dice. looks like i better call quantum.

sleefer · Apr 25, 2003

Termination is required on all Atlas 10K III hard drives. They do not provide on-board termination. You will have to provide termination on the end of the cable. LVD drives in general do not have on-board termination whether the drive is 68 or 80-pin makes no difference. Put a terminator on the end of the 68-pin cable.

redbeard1 · Apr 25, 2003

Maxtor\Quantum Atlas III Jumpers

The Atlas III wide disk drive is manufactured as an Ultra2 Multi-Mode LVD device only. This drive does not provide for onboard SCSI bus termination. Refer to your system or SCSI controller documentation regarding recommendations on SCSI bus termination.

Enable Narrow Jumper across pins 23-24

EDIT Sleefer is right, that is what I should have said. EDIT

That drive is 68 pin LVD, so you need to force it to single end or narrow mode and have it on a terminated cable.

Scsi is so much fun

sleefer · Apr 25, 2003

I disagree with that, redbeard1. I don't believe that you would want to disable wide mode on the drive. Check the 28-pin jumper block on the bottom of the drive (J-3). You will want to jumper pins 13-14 to force single-ended mode. By jumpering 23-24 you would limit the drive to to the narrow 8-bit transfers only.

EDIT: Here's a link to the manual for the drive. Look under bookmark 3.4.2.3.

knithat · Apr 25, 2003

the sweet smell of success. i think.

the sticker on the hard drive has some misinformation, as far as termination goes. with all the tinkering that i've been doing, i unjumpered "spin up", which, obviously, prevented my drive from spinning up. after rejumpering it, i set the termination on the card to LOW ON/ HIGH ON and the system recognized both the hard drive and the tape drive. groovy.

thanks for all the help!!! everyone was awesome.

SCSI problem

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