Software layer between SCSI ASPI and Operating System?

[serzone]

My boss recently gave me his old Acer Proliant 486DX66. I thought I could use it for something - Linux, the kids, whatever - he was going to throw it out. It has a Adaptec 1710a SCSI card in it and a 450MB hard drive.

The boss had some sensitive data on the box so I agreed to format the drive. I updated the Bios with the latest version I could find and also loaded the Adaptec drivers to make sure the SCSI card was recognised (ASPI layer, I think this was called). However, the problem is I can't seem to find a driver or software for the next layer - the one which tells DOS that there's a hard drive installed.

When I try and boot the box with a Dos or 95 boot disk, it cannot find the hard drive. Before I formatted the disk the actual name of the drive (Toshiba something or other) appeared after the Bios post and before the operating system kicked in.

Maybe the drive is fried or something, but I'm kinda hoping that there's some software that sits between the bios and the o/s telling DOS there's a physical hard disk and its SCSI ID.

Can anybody help?

 

[dkozloski]

There is no sotware required for DOS to see the drive. The SCSI card should have a BIOS that takes care of this function. If it doesn't it won't boot. It sounds like it was making its presence known to start with but you have somehow disabled it. Ctrl-A at boot should get you into a setup routine that lets you change settings in the SCSI card. Most of this stuff is pretty obvious. When you first boot the system the BIOS that is on the SCSI card is installed in system memory and assumes the function of controlling the hard drive. Later in the boot process drivers specific to the operating system of choice are loaded but even if this load fails the SCSI card BIOS can still allow the drive to operate in 16bit mode.

 

[interchange]

In fact, you shouldn't even care if DOS sees the drive.

SCSI drives are the only drives that a true low-level format can be performed on. If you can get into the SCSI BIOS, it should be simple to figure out how to do that.

If the SCSI BIOS does not show up, however, I would suggest there is something wrong with the SCSI card. I can't think of another explanation, unless the BIOS is halting the system before it gets there, which is unlikely.

If you're still having problems, post the exact message you get when the system halts.