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- Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.misc
- Path: sparky!uunet!weyrich!orville
- From: orville%weyrich@uunet.uu.net (Orville R. Weyrich)
- Subject: Re: Adaptec AHA-1542B and large SCSI questions
- Message-ID: <1992Dec21.023248.9417@weyrich.UUCP>
- Sender: orville@weyrich.UUCP (Orville R. Weyrich)
- Reply-To: uunet.uu.net!weyrich!orville
- Organization: Weyrich Computer Consulting
- References: <1992Dec12.174722.407@weyrich.UUCP> <1992Dec14.234840.2630@mksol.dseg.ti.com>
- Date: Mon, 21 Dec 92 02:32:48 GMT
- Lines: 82
-
- In article <1992Dec14.234840.2630@mksol.dseg.ti.com> mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539) writes:
- >In <1992Dec12.174722.407@weyrich.UUCP> orville%weyrich@uunet.uu.net (Orville R. Weyrich) writes:
- >
- >>I tried to use the Adaptec BBS and couldn't get through, so maybe the
- >>net can help....
- >
- >>I got an Adaptec AHA-1542B controller and want to use it with OS/2 2.0
- >>and a large SCSI disk.
-
- Specifically, a Maxtor P1-17S 1.5 Gig Panther.
-
- >>My question is this: I have heard that SCSI disks larger than 1 Gb may
- >>not work properly without BIOS upgrades or special drivers. Is this true for
- >>OS/2?
-
- >I don't know if this is a problem for OS/2 or not, but if it is there
- >is no fix for it. The Adaptec PROM upgrade is for DOS ONLY. The
- >drivers for OS/2 make assumptions about the head/platter translation
- >that the Adaptec controller is doing that would break if you updated
- >the PROMs.
-
- Talk about being between a rock and a hard spot!
-
- I have been banging my head against a brick wall for the past two days trying
- to get the Adaptec 1542B and the Maxtor P1-17S to work together.
-
- What I have been trying to do is to set up boot manager for DOS 5.0,
- Xenix, OS/2 2.0, and OS/2 beta. I wanted to keep my two MFM drives as well as
- the new Maxtor SCSI drive. With one MFM drive installed and using the
- FD controller on the MFM WD-clone controller, and with the FD controller on
- the Adaptec SCSI drive disabled, I was able to get the OS/2 FDISK on the
- installation program to partition both the MFM and SCSI drive to use the
- disk manager (putting DOS and Xenix partions on my MFM drive and OS/2
- partitions on the SCSI drive).
-
- The first problem is that I lost 33% of my SCSI drive -- FDISK only sees
- the first 1 Gig of the 1.5 Gig formatted capacity.
-
- Some folks on the net told me that OS/2 would be able to deal with larger
- drives using device drivers built into OS/2. Were they mistaken or do they
- have a trick I don't know about?
-
- That is an annoyance but not a show-stopper. If OS/2 can only handle 1 Gig,
- then I have 3 weeks on my no-questions-asked return allowance on the Maxtor,
- and I can trade it down to a 1 Gig Fujitsu and get back some money.
-
- Much more serious is the next problem that arose: when I tried to continue
- with the install, the HPFS format stage failed as follows: Everything starts
- out prety much as I expect, but the drive light only flickers on periodically.
- As the formatting progresses, the duty-cycle of the light gradually changes
- from mostly off to constantly on, and drive seek noises diminish in frequency
- to nothing. Eight hours later, the drive still hasn't finished formatting a
- 100 M primary partition. This is reminiscent of a problem with the original
- GA that appeared with one of my RLL systems, but was not present in the
- first public beta code and which could be corrected by replacing the
- IBM506.ADD driver. Unfortunately, my attempts to install the beta version
- had the same result. Is this a known problem and is there a new driver that
- I should be using?
-
- If I disable both of my MFM drives, then the install seems to work [I'm
- on disk 4 of the GA version now]. But while this convinces me that the
- problem is not with my SCSI controller or SCSI drive, it is not a satifactory
- situation for several reasons.
-
- First of all, I need a non-SCSI partition to install Xenix on, and I want
- to be able to boot DOS and 3 different versions of OS/2, which I can't do
- with only a single SCSI drive.
-
- Does anyone know how I can get my 1.5 Gig SCSI to co-exist with my two MFM
- drives? BTW -- the MFM drives and controller have been cheerfully running
- the GA version of OS/2 ever since I got my 1.3 upgrade from IBM.
-
- Help gratefully accepted,
-
- orville
-
- -------------------------------------- ******************************
- Orville R. Weyrich, Jr. Weyrich Computer Consulting
- Certified Data Processor POB 5782, Scottsdale, AZ 85261
- Certified Systems Professional Voice: (602) 391-0821
- Internet: orville%weyrich@uunet.uu.net Fax: (602) 661-0660
- -------------------------------------- ******************************
-