Original message (slightly trimmed) below.
Hi Brad
I hope that the drive coolers are the "two-fan 3.5" to 5.25" bay cooler"
type and not the "little heat sink with fan" type. I consider the later
inadequate by itself for fast spinning drives. To answer your questions:
(1) The 2940UW will supply power for termination so I'd set all drives to
"Term. Power from SCSI bus". I don't see how "Term. Power from drive"
(the default) would cause you problems though. Just don't have the
drive set for "Term. Power to SCSI bus" as having too many devices
doing this could cause problems.
Since you have the IBM drive at the end of the chain, please make
sure the two Seagate drives have their TE jumpers removed. This
could be your problem...having two drives terminated could work
(very poorly) at lowest speeds (only). Check that the TE jumpers
on the Seagates are removed. Then check again. Make sure that you
are looking at the correct pins (not ones at the wrong end of
the jumper block). Try a different little black jumper shunt if
necessary...just to be safe and to make sure you didn't miss a pin.
Also check to see if there is more than one jumper block where you
can set IDs and termination (look at the front, back, sides, top,
and bottom of each drive) in order that you don't have jumpers
set in conflicting ways. Sometimes there is more than one place
where you can make these settings.
Your Granite Digital cable is of good quality and the SCSI IDs
should be okay if you see the drives in the Adaptec BIOS scan at
boot. But be sure that you see all three drives right after the
SCSI banner displays at boot, not just in the SCSI BIOS Disk
Utilities screen.
The cable should be less than 5 feet long. If you have a CD-ROM
drive or any other SCSI device, temporarily unplug it from the
SCSI cable. Is this Granite Digital the only cable you are using?
If you're using one of the other two connectors on the 2940UW,
unplug it. (And never use all three connectors.) In the Adaptec
SCSI Select BIOS Setup, make sure that the 2040UW has its
termination set on "Auto" or "High On, Low On." Try both.
You might check for bent pins wherever the cable plugs into
any device...whether the controller or the drives. Check the
power connectors coming from the power supply and the plugs
at their ends. As a last resort, replace your power supply.
What BIOS does your 2940UW have? I recall that one of the newer
versions had problems. And older BIOS versions might be suspect
as well...particularly with large drives. If you try to use a
9 GB drive in DOS, there could be problems if you go past the
8 GB point or past the 1024 cylinder point on the drive. These
should not be problems however if you FDISK the drive from
within Windows.
Make sure you have enabled support for drives larger than one
Gigabyte in the Adaptec BIOS. If you decide to use the Adaptec
BIOS disk utility to do a low level reformat of one of your
drives, remember that it can take several hours for a large
drive and there will be no indication that anything is happening
...other than the one warning message on your display screen.
(2) If you use "Delay motor start", make sure you have the 2940UW set
for "Send unit start command" in the 2940UW BIOS. Make sure you
don't have both "Delay Motor Start" and "Enable Motor Start"
jumpered on the drives. Also make sure you have Wide and
Synchronous transfer enabled in the Adaptec BIOS and make sure
you don't have "Write Protect" or "Disable SCSI Parity" jumpered
on any of the drives.
(3) DOS should work fine at these speeds. There is something else
wrong.
(4) Although it's a pain, installing the drives one at a time (remember
to rejumper them each time) would be very good diagnostic practice.
If you have two settings wrong, this would likely be the easiest
way to discover the problem.
I'd suggest that you start with the IBM drive and see if DOS works.
(You'd have to change it's ID to 0 temporarily.) Then add the
Seagate drive with ID=1 and see if you can FDISK and format this
drive. See if you can read and write to it while in DOS. Does the
IBM drive still work? Then unplug this Seagate drive and substitute
the other Seagate drive for it (change it's ID so it's not 0 since
the IBM is 0). Check the drive out.
If necessary, remove the IBM drive and see if the Seagates work
one at a time and then together. Be careful about SCSI IDs and
Termination. Make sure you have a drive at the end of the cable.
(Having a length of cable tailing out after the last drive is
not advisable.)
When all three drives work together, set the drives so one of the
Cheetahs has ID=0 and the drive at the end is the only terminated
drive.
Let us know how things go!
Regards,
Bill
At 21:11 1/13/2000 , Brad Loomis wrote:
>System is ABIT BX6, PII233, 64MB, Adaptec 2940UW.
>4.5GB UW IBM
>http://www.storage.ibm.com/hardsoft/diskdrdl/prod/9esprod.htm
>two Seagate 4.5GB ST34501W [Cheetahs]
>http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/scsi/st34501w.html.
>
>They are [all] 68 pin SE drives. I tried to set it up as ID 0 Seagate,
>ID 1 Seagate, ID 2 IBM, with the IBM having the termination jumper
>installed. They are cabled in that order from host to IBM, Granite
>Digital cable, All are recognized in the Adaptec BIOS scan. All have
>PC Power & Cooling Bay coolers.
>
>I started...with the transfer rate at 40. I got many error messages...
>I reset the rate to 10MB transfer and was able to get things installed,
>but not without some trouble...
>Windows took over two minutes to boot and was not pleasant to use. I
>never was able to get Office97 installed. I tried to set up a FAT32
>swap partition on the second Seagate with Partition Magic 5.0. The
>partition was made, but every time I tried to set my virtual memory,
>windows would report the drive as being 0 MB.
>
>I also tried to set the jumpers on the drives to spin up from the host
>to take some strain off the power supply, 235W, marginal I know.
>
>My questions are,
>
>1. The Seagate have a jumper for Term. Power, if they aren't
>terminated, do I leave this jumper on? There are three choices for
>settings. I can find no explanation for their function. They are Term.
>Power from drive (default), Term. Power to SCSI bus, Term. Power from
>SCSI bus (position A), and Term. Power to SCSI bus and Drive.
>2. Should I use the motor start from host option?
>3. Is Dos unable to run at the fast transfer rate? Or is there some
>other possible problem?
>4. Should I install the drives one at a time and re-jumper as I go to
>try to get things to work?
Curious about the people moderating your
messages? Visit our staff web site:
http://nospin.com/pc/staff.html
|
