In article ,
p.kassies.DeleteThis@rubicongroup.biz (pkassies) wrote:
> Hello everybody,
>
> I've just bought an Asus A7N8X-E mobo. I've installed an adaptec SCSI
> CDROM drive with the SCSI card. I've installed WinXP on a simple IDE
> drive. I boot from this disk. Everything works fine.
>
> I now attach one SCSI disk to the scsi chain and my system won't boot.
> I've tried everything: install latest bios on the mobo, changed boot
> settings in bios. Nothing seems to work.
>
> Any people who have simular experiences?
> Any people with a pointer into the right direction?
>
> Peter
Have you entered the BIOS and reconfigured the boot order ? The
boot order tends to move around, based on whether changes have
been made to the complement of disks connected to the computer.
Have you tried disabling SATA RAID ? There is a jumper called
SATA_EN1 that controls whether the Silicon Image chip is seen
by the BIOS or not. The reason this might help, is sometimes
more than one loadable controller BIOS won't load, due to
their consumption of low memory. Both the SATA chip (via a
BIOS stored in the flash chip) and the SCSI controller (via
an EEPROM on the adaptec board) has a BIOS that is supposed to
load at boot time. It could be that the two BIOS are consuming
too much memory, in which case maybe only one will work. Disabling
SATA_EN1 will cause the SATA BIOS to exit, so it won't consume
any memory.
Once SATA_EN1 is set to disabled, enter the BIOS on the next
POST, and reconfigure the boot order. It is possible, if you
put an OS installer CD in the SCSI CDROM drive, that it will
be able to boot up.
Other than that, SCSI needs proper cabling and termination.
SCSI cables need to be terminated on both ends. The controller
usually has some automated routine for terminating its
end of the cable, leaving the user to place a terminator after
the last drive on the cable. Some drives have their own build
in termination, and they can figure out whether they are the
last drive on the chain or not. Older drives will be dumber
than that, requiring the user to connect a terminator. An
active terminator regulates the voltage fed to the terminator,
and those usually have a glowing led on them, whereas the passive
terminators don't. Mixing different width (wide and narrow)
drives on the cable (68 or 50 pin) can be extremely difficult,
if you have adapter devices that don't handle the termination
issues properly. There is a lot of voodoo in SCSI, like max
and min cable lengths, cable types, and cabling can be quite
expensive. You'll need to study up on these limits, in order
to come up with a good cabling scheme.
Sites like this emphasize buying things you don't need. People
buying SCSI equipment are considered to have deep pockets, so
this kind of thing is quite common. (An active terminator has
a single LED, and when it is glowing, you know you have term
power coming from somewhere.)
<a rel="nofollow" style='text-decoration: none;' href="http://www.granitedigital.com/support/smdiagnosingproblems.htm" target="_blank">http://www.granitedigital.com/support/smdiagnosingproblems.htm</a>
This site is a bit better.
<a rel="nofollow" style='text-decoration: none;' href="http://www.computercablesource.com/scsiterminationfaq.aspx" target="_blank">http://www.computercablesource.com/scsiterminationfaq.aspx</a>
HTH,
Paul
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