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From: chaim@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Dr. Chaim  Dworkin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Z-386 barfs at SCSI hard drive
Message-ID: <29582@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: 14 Sep 90 21:25:03 GMT
Sender: news@netnews.upenn.edu
Reply-To: chaim@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Dr. Chaim  Dworkin)
Organization: University of Pennsylvania
Lines: 35

This has been frustrating me for over 2 months now.....

I am using a Zenith 386 with a 72 Mb MFM hard drive.  Two months ago I
obtained a Micropolis 160 Mb SCSI drive with a Always Technology SCSI
adapter card.  When I installed the drive and booted the computer, it
didn't work.  Zenith has a CMOS setup which is called by Ctrl-Alt-Cr
key sequence and when I booted my computer it gave me the setup screen.

Soooo.... I checked the various things which could conflict.  The installation
directions said not to tell the setup that there is another hard drive 
because the SCSI adapter card has its own BIOS which takes over for it.
The Zenith MFM drive uses IRQ14 and the SCSI uses IRQ15.  I tried IRQ16
also.  My diagnostic program told me that IRQ15 and 16 are not being used
so no conflict.  Then I used DEBUG to look at where the BIOS goes in RAM.  
The SCSI card uses memory location C800:0 and I found that location free so
there is no conflict there.  The card's jumpers can be set so other memory
locations are used and I tried that anyway but no success.  Then I switched 
off the SCSI adapter BIOS, booted the machine with the card installed,
switched on the adapter BIOS and dumped C800 and found the SCSI adapter
BIOS there.  But I could not address that drive.

This is driving me crazy.  When the SCSI card is installed and functioning
the Zenith will not boot; it goes directly into the setup mode.  I also
cannot boot from a floppy from setup mode.

Anyone have any ideas?  What can I do short of tossing it?  (The Zenith)

BTW, I took the SCSI card and drive home, put it in my home-made 286
clone, formatted it, and used it with absolutely no problems.  Only
in the Zenith does the card give me any problems.  Grrrrr......

Chaim Dworkin                    Internet: chaim@eniac.seas.upenn.edu

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Chaim Dworkin                             (chaim@eniac.seas.upenn.edu)