Author Topic: Help with connecting a SCSI-1 drive to a modern computer (Read 9333 times)

sonnytiger · « **on:** February 10, 2014, 12:40:23 pm »

I chose to post this here as it is an older equipment related problem and I figured you guys would know more about the issue than some young guys on a computer forum.
Details are in the video, but eh problem is that the computer is just shutting down at seemingly random times. The card and hard drive appear to work, I know this isn't much detail but maybe the video can shed more light on the issue.

Thanks for any help!

fluxcapacitor · « **Reply #1 on:** February 10, 2014, 01:35:06 pm »

What make/model is your motherboard and SCSI card.Do you know if both have latest bios installed .

tridentsx · « **Reply #2 on:** February 10, 2014, 02:08:56 pm »

Whats the wattage of your power supply ?

sonnytiger · « **Reply #3 on:** February 10, 2014, 02:21:04 pm »

I say in the video what the wattage is, 750W, my motherboard is very new, and doesn't use a BIOS.

sonnytiger · « **Reply #4 on:** February 10, 2014, 02:21:37 pm »

The video shows the cards bios as well...

paf · « **Reply #5 on:** February 10, 2014, 03:13:56 pm »

Configuring SCSI drives:

1) The "ends" of the bus must have terminators enabled! In your case, the SCSI card and the Hard Disk.
There should be a jumper on the hard disk for that.

2) Each device must be configured with a different ID.
On "Normal SCSI" IDs are 0-7.

Sorry if you have done that. I have no time for watching the video.

codeboy2k · « **Reply #6 on:** February 10, 2014, 03:37:43 pm »

You definitely need a terminator on both ends of the cable; SCSI wants that.
The card in the PC is the Host Bus Adapter . It should normally stay on ID 7. There is often a built in termination on the HBA, so you only need a terminator on the dangling end of the SCSI bus.

The hard disk will stay off until the HBA sends a command to reset the bus and probe it for devices. That's why you hear it spin up much later after you've turned on the PC. That's pretty normal. Yeah, it sounds like a jet engine.. imagine back in the day when there were rooms full of those, and much bigger too

The PC powering off is likely a voltage problem, the motherboard or the PSU senses high current/low voltage and shuts down. There could be a problem on the board or hard drive that needs repair or toss it...If you can, try to shed some load (i.e. unplug stuff and remove cards you don't need until only the 1 SCSI board and hard disk is powered up. You can even unplug the power on your main hard disk, for a test, since you are in the BIOS and you don't need to boot just yet.

madires · « **Reply #7 on:** February 10, 2014, 03:52:33 pm »

Also take care about TermPower, let the HA provide it. Get the datasheet for the disk and check the jumper settings. If you're lucky the settings are printed on the disk label.

sonnytiger · « **Reply #8 on:** February 10, 2014, 09:18:32 pm »

Quote from: codeboy2k on February 10, 2014, 03:37:43 pm

You definitely need a terminator on both ends of the cable; SCSI wants that.
The card in the PC is the Host Bus Adapter . It should normally stay on ID 7. There is often a built in termination on the HBA, so you only need a terminator on the dangling end of the SCSI bus.

The hard disk will stay off until the HBA sends a command to reset the bus and probe it for devices. That's why you hear it spin up much later after you've turned on the PC. That's pretty normal. Yeah, it sounds like a jet engine.. imagine back in the day when there were rooms full of those, and much bigger too

The PC powering off is likely a voltage problem, the motherboard or the PSU senses high current/low voltage and shuts down. There could be a problem on the board or hard drive that needs repair or toss it...If you can, try to shed some load (i.e. unplug stuff and remove cards you don't need until only the 1 SCSI board and hard disk is powered up. You can even unplug the power on your main hard disk, for a test, since you are in the BIOS and you don't need to boot just yet.

I have tried to shed some load but my power supply is 750W and can support well over 30A on the 12V bus. I would be surprised if it was drawing too much current. The Hard drive only draws 1.75A during start-up. The cable is one with a connecter along the middle as well as on both ends. Are you saying I need a terminator on the one in the middle? I have no jumpers on the hard drive at all and there appears to be not a jumper option to enable a terminator. But I think it has one built in as I believe I saw on during my teardown. With no jumpers the hard drive is configured as device 0 I think.

Did I cover everything?

sonnytiger · « **Reply #9 on:** February 10, 2014, 09:19:48 pm »

Quote from: madires on February 10, 2014, 03:52:33 pm

Also take care about TermPower, let the HA provide it. Get the datasheet for the disk and check the jumper settings. If you're lucky the settings are printed on the disk label.

What is termpower?
The hard drive appears to not have a jumper for that.
http://insight.actapricot.org/insight/common/drives/hard/qxp32150.htm#jumper

sonnytiger · « **Reply #10 on:** February 10, 2014, 11:38:04 pm »

I did find a little 4 pin diagram concerning term power and enable, but it seems to be a part of the SCSI connecter. maybe I should look on the interface card.

GeoffS · « **Reply #11 on:** February 10, 2014, 11:53:06 pm »

The drive should have switches/jumpers for SCSI ID.
You did say SCSI 1 so there may not be any terminator power on the drive but the last drive on the cable must be terminated.
WHat happens if you power the PC up with just the controller card fitted and not the drive? Does it power off, can you access the controller BIOS?

fluxcapacitor · « **Reply #12 on:** February 11, 2014, 12:35:56 am »

Quote from: sonnytiger on February 10, 2014, 02:21:04 pm

I say in the video what the wattage is, 750W, my motherboard is very new, and doesn't use a BIOS.

The motherboard ha a AMI bios,i saw the bios screen in your video.Can you just tell us what model your motherboard is,it should be on the mobo somewhere,usually around the pci/pci-ex slots.I cant quite see the stickers on the scsi card,if you can say what that is as well .

sonnytiger · « **Reply #13 on:** February 11, 2014, 01:20:50 am »

The computer runs fine with the card and no cable, my motherboard is an Asus Crosshair V Formula, I will have to try accessing the BIOS but I think I can.

sonnytiger · « **Reply #14 on:** February 11, 2014, 02:18:46 am »

So i can access the SCSI BIOS but the computer still resets seemingly at random times with the card in but no hard drive. It may be due to it not being supported (I removed the retaining bracket because it fit even worse).

I also found a pin header that appears to match the jumper diagram showing term power and enable. I don't know the orientation of it or if it is even it. Any help is appreciated.
Thanks!

GeoffS · « **Reply #15 on:** February 11, 2014, 02:31:08 am »

I'd fit jumpers to both TRM Enable and TRM Power.
Check the SCSI connector as the SCSI ID setting may be there.

madires · « **Reply #16 on:** February 11, 2014, 01:11:23 pm »

The "option connector" left of the SCSI connector is used for setting the ID and so on. The SCSI bus needs to be terminated (similar to coax cable) to prevent reflections. Most drives got a built-in terminator which can be enabled. There are also termination adapters available. The termination uses resistors between the signal lines and Gnd & Vcc (term. power). Either the drive itself provides TermPower or the HA does. The recommended way is that the HA provides TermPower. To enable the bus termination of the drive put a jumper at "TRM enable". IIRC the HA was set to automatic termination. Please set it to manual (automatic causes problems sometimes). Regarding Adaptec there is one important thing to know, they used a "special" geometry mapping for disks. If you attach a disk formatted with a non-Adaptec HA to an Adaptec HA you won't be able to access the filesystem. Vice versa works fine mostly. The SymbiosLogic HAs were the best IMHO.

BTW: I case you didn't know, SCSI supports hot plugging.

Shock · « **Reply #17 on:** February 11, 2014, 01:14:01 pm »

Often with those cards you need to juggle things like bios settings and interrupts.
First thing is forget about booting into the OS.

Disconnect and remove all other peripherals aside from the video card and keyboard and disable as much of the motherboard bios as possible.
This frees up initial bios memory space so the card can boot fully.

Assign an interrupt to the slot if possible IRQ10 and 11 used to be used for scsi cards.
See if the drive detects in the cards bios after you properly terminate it.

You may require researching the cards bios to see if that disk size is supported or update the firmware.

If you get it to detect then make it bootable (which does use a chunk of more bios memory) and install a CD or floppy or something to test out an OS install.
You may need drivers for this however.

The reason you want to test the drive on it's own is it will generally prove what settings you need to get it running stable.
Just jumping in and messing around in the OS can be misleading and adds another layer of complexity.

Once it's running still without the OS drive connected start enabling bios options and keep checking operation.

PaulAm · « **Reply #18 on:** February 11, 2014, 02:18:06 pm »

As has been noted, you need to terminate the scsi bus at both ends. The HA has termination built in. The drive may or may not have it. SCSI-1 drives had 1 to 3 resistor packs that plugged into sockets on the drive. On a used drive they can get lost since you take them out of drives in the middle of the chain. If you have them on your drive, you're good. If they're missing, you'll need to supply an external terminator. Plug the drive into the middle connector of the cable and the terminator into the end.

You might have to cobble up an adapter for the terminator. 50 pin centronics style terminators are easy to find, then you'll need a centronics/50 pin header adapter. You might be able to find a terminator that plugs directtly into the header.

If you don't have the bus terminated properly, don't even try to boot the system.

sonnytiger · « **Reply #19 on:** February 11, 2014, 02:36:17 pm »

I am not trying to boot off of the SCSI drive, it seems like I should try using an older system for doing this and not the one I use all the time. I just want to see if I can access the drive and if there is anything on it. I will try all these things you guys have suggested once I get an older system up and running. As for the option connector beside the SCSI connector, it doesn't seem like there is anything that needs to be set, I think the drive will default to being device 0, if I understand correctly. Again thanks for the help, though a lot of people seem to be not watching the video which answers a lot of questions, and that is kind of annoying but I suppose I can't expect people to take up a few extra moments of their precious time.

sync · « **Reply #20 on:** February 11, 2014, 03:15:51 pm »

Have you cleaned the PCI connector on the main board and the SCSI controller? I saw spontaneous reboots due dirty connectors. I would also try an older PC.

The drive will have ID0 when no SCSI ID jumpers are installed.

Is that the disk from the sgi indigo²? If it survived the tear down then you can try to get the data with a Linux. The Linux kernel must have SGI partition support, EFS and XFS file systems.

SeanB · « **Reply #21 on:** February 11, 2014, 07:16:19 pm »

Jumper both as it is the only drive. Use the bios of the card to do basic drive testing, it will be able to do a basic sanity check of the drive like power it up and ask it to do a self test. To enable the drive you need to set the bios of the card to enable the drive and boot it on power up. In Windows you need to install the ATAPI drivers from Adaptec and then it will recognise the drive.

fluxcapacitor · « **Reply #22 on:** February 11, 2014, 09:40:02 pm »

Try putting a jumper on/across pin 13-14 spin delay ,and also try pin 1-2 (ID 0)

http://insight.actapricot.org/insight/common/drives/hard/qxp32150.htm#jumper

edavid · « **Reply #23 on:** February 11, 2014, 09:50:26 pm »

Quote from: sonnytiger on February 11, 2014, 02:36:17 pm

Again thanks for the help, though a lot of people seem to be not watching the video which answers a lot of questions, and that is kind of annoying but I suppose I can't expect people to take up a few extra moments of their precious time.

What's annoying is that you think your time is more valuable than that of the people trying to help you... why should anyone watch your stupid video? Just write down the information.

sonnytiger · « **Reply #24 on:** February 12, 2014, 12:38:31 am »

You're taking your time anyway by asking and waiting for a reply and just replying in the first place. What's a few extra minutes.


EEVblog Main Site	EEVblog on Youtube	EEVblog on Twitter	EEVblog on Facebook	EEVblog on Odysee

Author Topic: Help with connecting a SCSI-1 drive to a modern computer (Read 9333 times)

Share me