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From: det@hawkmoon.MN.ORG (Derek E. Terveer)
Newsgroups: comp.periphs.scsi
Subject: 1542A & WrenIII
Message-ID: <1991May25.230247.542@hawkmoon.MN.ORG>
Date: 25 May 91 23:02:47 GMT
Article-I.D.: hawkmoon.1991May25.230247.542
Organization: Home System (One of the Eternal Champions); Eagan, MN, 55123-2507, USA
Lines: 59

I have finally gotten a motherboard that is acceptable to the 1542A bus-
mastering test and am currently running with a WrenIV as the boot disk.
I have a WrenIII that I would like to also hook up but the adaptec board
does not seem to be able to see enough of it to verify the drive.

Configuration:

	Esix 5.3.2-D
	NoName 386-33 motherboard
	aha-1542A
	Wren IV (94171-376MB)	ID=0
	Wren III (94161-156MB)	ID=1

The Wren IV runs beautifully.  If however, I replace the wren IV with
the wren III and change nothing else i can use the 1542A's on board
utilities to probe and format the drive successfully (or at least that
is what it claims) but attempting to verify the drive immediately
returns an "ERROR 520".  I don't know what a 520 error is and the aha
manual doesn't explain it.  I can fdisk the drive in dos but i can't
format it -- dos thinks that the media is bad.  If I attempt to install
Esix on it (no other drive in the system) it reports that "HA 0 has no
TC's".  I take this to mean that hardware (disk) adapter zero has no
drives hooked up to it, meaning that esix can't see the drive.  Indeed,
later on the hard disk partitioning step fails in the fdisk command
(can't open /dev/rdsk/0s0).  And yes, the drive is terminated to the
best of my knowledge.  I say "best" here because the manual for the
drive is incorrect, none of the jumpers are where they are supposed to
be, and i can't physically see any terminators or terminator sockets.
(Cdc will not officially acknowledge that my drive exists) I believe
that the terminators are inside the drive somewhere, out of reach.

The drive behaves as if it is terminated because I can successfully use
it with an st-01 card running unix.  Since it was (mere hours ago)
running successfully with unix and the st-01 driver and i was using it
for well over a year with nary a glitch (with the same st-01 driver) i
have to assume that the drive media is ok.  It must be something to do
with the command set or something like that.  I have eliminated cabling
problems because i used the exact same cable as for the WrenIV (which is
what i'm running on now).  Is the 1542A incompatible with the WrenIII?
Will getting a 1542B fix the problem or will i have to sell the drive
and get a different drive?

In any event, I have cabled it a number of different ways; by itself and
in conjunction with the WrenIV, assuming that it is terminated (at the
end of the chain with the WrenIV terminators removed) and assuming that
it is not terminated (in the middle of the chain with the WrenIV
terminators installed) to no avail.

Has anyone else gotten this combination to work?  Do i have a bastardized
disk from cdc (since cdc claims that my disk doesn't exist) that simply
won't work and i'm SOL?

Any help would be appreciated,

derek
-- 
Derek "Tigger" Terveer	det@hawkmoon.MN.ORG -- U of MN Women's Lax
I am the way and the truth and the light, I know all the answers; don't need
your advice.  -- "I am the way and the truth and the light" -- The Legendary Pink Dots