SCSI Hdd Not Doing Much at all

[Pleiades]

I have a Pentium 100 box that was given to me for the purpose of playing with. Well, I've played with it good and proper!

It came with Windows 94, I put NT 4 on, then formatted the drive ready for RH 6.2. And that's about as far as it seems to want to go. Both RH and NT say there is no HDD present, the W98 boot disk isn't interested, and I'm pulling my hair out.

The box has been apart for examination, but I didn't change any settings, jumpers or what have you. I did add some RAM, from 24MB to 48MB.

Fdisk can't see the drive, the old (96) version of Partition Magic hangs, and there is no C: drive to anything with.

Specs;
Adaptec AHA-1540C SCSi card
Seagate ST1515ON 'Barracuda' HDD 4.5G
Pentium 100
48 MB RAM
No-Name Mobo AMI BIOS

Any ideas?

[nathaniel]

if u have a Cd-rom in there remove the cable and put the HDD in the primary IDE port, possibly switch cables and double check that 1 u have the jumpers correctly and 2 if bios has detected the HDD.if they do just reformat it for win9X and then pop in the lin disk and go from there.

------------------
Peter -- Brian there's a message in my cereal, it says "OOOOOOOOOOOO!
Brian -- its Cherrios.

-Family Guy-

[FoBoT]

Originally posted by nathaniel:
HDD in the primary IDE port,


i think pleaidis said it is a scsi setup

on boot up, are you getting the scsi controller bios screen? watch the screen during boot, if that scsi controller has a bios (which i think it must or you couldn't boot off the scsi hd), you should see a screen with info on the controller and attached drives, it may/should also have a key stroke (like del or ctl-f2, whatever) to get into the scsi controller bios setup. get in their and make sure the drive is recognized/setup on the controller. if so then my guess is you need support for the controller on your boot media, ie the linux/dos/winders boot floppy disk/cdrom might need an extra scsi driver for that controller to be activated at time of boot

since the adaptec controllers are so widely supported, i would be surprised if you have to do extra stuff

anybody else done an install w/scsi hd only?

my $.02 (okay $.04, i sometimes carry on too much)

[FoBoT]

i just checked
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Hardware-HOWTO-9.html#ss9.1

and the 154x (ISA) series is supported (no surprise)

and it has its own bios so its bootable (also no surprise)

hmm...

[This message has been edited by FoBoT (edited 08 January 2001).]

[Pleiades]

Thanks for the replies, guys.

The controller is detected, then the SCSI HDD is detected at boot. In MS-Dross, fdisk says no fixed disks attached. The NT 4 and RH set-ups also says the same thing, so it is a hardware rather than Linux problem.

The strange bit is that it did have a couple of o/s's on it, then after the low level format, nothing will go on.

It would appear that the mobo BIOS is set to look for the SCSI card, as I can't get it to boot to the IDE HDD I plugged in to try. I set it up in the BIOS, but it hangs at boot, wating for the controller. The no-name mobo ensures I can't find any documentation.

I have absolutely no SCSI experience (except for this bad one), so I'm in the dark on this one.

I gave up at 2:30am, back to it tonight.

[fobzz]

Have you tried flashing the BIOS to a new one?

[FoBoT]

Originally posted by Pleiades:
then after the low level format, nothing will go on.


just curious, why the low level format?
http://ssddom01.storage.ibm.com/hddt/knowtree. nsf/dd73cf24acafc3d3862565b000531e65/0e89b60ec9416c7386256756006e33d3?OpenDocument (http://ssddom01.storage.ibm.com/hddt/knowtree.nsf/dd73cf24acafc3d3862565b000531e65/0e89b60ec9416c7386256756006e33d3?OpenDocument)

i think scsi hd's require a different formatting or partitioning program, it has been a while since i had one

adaptec's web site says use ctrl-A to get into the 1540C's bios setup

see if there is a way to check the drive from there

here is the manual for the 1540C

ftp://ftp.adaptec.digisle.net/manuals/installation_guides/aha1540c_ig.pdf

[This message has been edited by FoBoT (edited 08 January 2001).]

[Pleiades]

Originally posted by FoBoT:
[B] just curious, why the low level format?


[B]


Because I'm an idiot http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/frown.gif

Checked out those links, saw that low level formatting is not recommended. Oops.

I think there is a formatting option in the adapter software.

How do I go about flashing the BIOS? This is something I've thought about, try starting from scratch. Do I need mobo info, or is the BIOS version enough. There is nothing on the mobo to suggest where it comes from, and AMI's site says my BIOS does not exist (it is #1110, AMI say 1109 is made by abc corp, 1111 is xyz, no 1110 ). I'm not so fussed about that SCSI drive, it makes a **** load of noise.

[Pleiades]

Used the cintrollers BIOS to format the drive last night. Wasn't allowed to play with it (wifes birthday), but tonight I will give it some debian.

Now I know not to use the low level format unless I need to http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/smile.gif

Thanks for your help, fella's.

[FoBoT]

Originally posted by Pleiades:

Because I'm an idiot http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/frown.gif
How do I go about flashing the BIOS?

don't be too hard on yourself , trial and error are great for learning

i don't see what flashing the mobo bios would do for you

IMHO, low-level formatting and bios flashing are both overused/overated shotgun type fixes

do you have access to any other pc parts? like a ide hd you could throw on there just long enough to make sure it boots etc? do you have access to another pc you could put the scsi controller and drive into to see if they are recognized/work?

oops, i didn't see your last post, musta not hit refresh, good luck http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/smile.gif

[This message has been edited by FoBoT (edited 09 January 2001).]

[rayh]

Careful, gents, with "flashing" a BIOS. Sure it can work, but if ya screw up ... that's a good way ta turn a MoBo into a door_stop !

[FoBoT]

Originally posted by rayh:
Careful, gents, with "flashing" a BIOS.

exactly my point, it shouldn't be done as a "shotgun" fix, ie not really knowing the problem