Hey folks,

I think I have a SCSI related issue, but I don't really know.

The short question:
In Windows (9x or NT/XP), how does one know whether their disk drive
is using SCSI rather than some other interface? Is this purely
hardware? Or do Windows drivers play a role?


The background:
I work at a company that, for quite a while, used an Intel server
board for their products. NT4 was installed on this box solely. No 9x
stuff. HDD is SCSI off of a Symbios adapter.

Well, this week I put WinME on one of these machines. I had a few
issues but was able to resolve them all.

The one that took the longest to resolve, however, was the integrated
SCSI host adapters. WinME detected them, but could not activate them.
One error given was that the IRQ Holder for PCI Steering was not
operating properly.

I disabled IRQ Steering. Windows them reinstalled the ACPI support
and .. boom .. the SCSI Host Adapters are now "working."

(For what it's worth, I wish I understood why PCI Steering isn't
working. Suffice it to say that LSILogic (Symbios) says that there is
a known Win9x issue regarding PCI Steering and some of their "older"
host adapters. They give the instructions for some BIOS-area fixes,
but PhoenixBIOS, which is in this particular PC, is the one LSI
singled out as un-fixable.)

But I kind of expected the disk drive to somehow show up as a SCSI
disk. It's not. So, how do I really know that I'm using the fastest
rate I can on the HDD? Do I need to force Windows to redetect the
SCSI disk now that the adapters are working? Or is it SCSI by virtue
of the fact that the HDD is on a SCSI chain and hardware knows what's
on the SCSI chain vs. the IDE chain.


Any thoughts?

Cheers,

Mike Whalen
The Computer Valet
--

                         PCBUILD's List Owners:
                      Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]>
                       Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]>