boot problems

[finger51]

Hey!

I have a 13 gig Ultra ata drive plugged into a Promise Ultra ata/66 card. I am using this drive to boot NT from. Everything runs fine right now but whenever I plug my SCSI card in, my machine just hangs on the bios of the ata/66 card. I want to plug my SCSI card in because I have a LOT of files on a SCSI drive that I used for back up.
I have had them running together before but can't figure out why it won't go now.
I have already tried adjusting the BIOS (award) to boot IDE first then SCSI and vice versa but neither works.
Also, I have tried going into the BIOS to designate heads cylinders LZ etc. but when I do it won't boot- just hangs at the PCI device list. Auto detect does nothing. Seems as far as my BIOS is concerned no drives exist.
Little help? I'm stumped.

[LJE2]

Did you disable the Primary (master and slave) and Secondary (master and slave) IDE devices in the BIOS for your mobo? I believe these have to be disabled before your IDE devices to you Promice card can be enabled.

[This message has been edited by LJE2 (edited 06-29-99).]

[finger51]

Could you explain to me how to do that?
I'm a bit of a newbie.

[LJE2]

I just read your original Post over and it seems that your motherboard is configured correctly (the BIOS on your motherboard should not see any drives, as far as it's concerned there aren't any, you have a BIOS for your Promice card, this is where the IDE hard drive should be recognized).If you are sure that these cards are compatable enter the BIOS for the Promice card and try to configure the IDE drive here (set the perameters for the hard drive and boot sequence, IDE first then SCSI) I am not familiar enough with the Ultra 66 card (I've use the Ultra 33 before but not the newer Ultra 66) to tell you how but the manual that came with the card should tell you, the SCSI hard drive is controlled by the BIOS on the SCSI card, but you do not have to enter anything here, it's all done automatically, the only thing you have to do is set the SCSI ID and the termination, the SCSI ID is set by jumpers on the hard drive as is the termination, if the SCSI hard drive is the only SCSI device on the SCSI bus it must be terminated, if it's not the only device the last device on the SCSI cable needs to be terminated. The SCSI ID for the SCSI controller is probably automatic and the SCSI ID for the hard drive just needs to be different than the SCSI card, usually 0 or 6 is the ID to set the hard drive.

[This message has been edited by LJE2 (edited 06-30-99).]

[finger51]

I've tried "breaking into" the BIOS for the ata66 card but it seems to be locked, I've tried delete, escape, pause and finally ctr-lal-tdel but that (of course)just restarts. I've contacted Promise, and they tell me there "should be" no conflicts with the ata/66 and the SCSI. Plus the fact that I've had them running together before tells me that it should go. The only difference is that I'm now booting from the ata/66 drive.

When they were working together before I was booting from a 2 gig IDE drivethat ran right into the mobo (came with the system). I later added a SCSI card and drive, no problems. Then I got the ata/66 drive and board, plugged them in, again no problems.
Since the ata/66 is the fastest drive I've got (yes its faster than the SCSI in tests I've run). I thought I'd put the OS on the ata/66 (one gig partition) which I have done.
ever since then I can't get the machine to boot when I plug the SCSI card in. I don't even have the drive plugged into it. I've tried it with the drive plugged in too but still nothing.
At this point I think I just want to start over (again, 4th time this month) and install NT to the 2 gig IDE and have all my program files on the 13 gig ata drive. I'm using 3d studio max to make .avi's and I am planning to use the SCSI as a "write-to" drive. Thanks for your input, I think I'm tired of f***'ing with it. I'll check this string to see if you have any other ideas.

[LJE2]

If you remove the SCSI card will it boot to the drive connected to the Promice Ultra 66 card, if it does, but hangs when you put in the SCSI card this could be a recource problem (an IRQ problem with the SCSI card) try swapping the PCI cards around in different slots (I'm assuming both the SCSI card and the Promice card are PCI) but even if the SCSI card is an ISA card and the Promice card is PCI. Try changing the PCI cards to different slots.

[This message has been edited by LJE2 (edited 06-30-99).]

[toms111]

I am not sure but I may have a clue. Is your SCSI card bootable? If so try disabling booting in the scsi card bios. I am not intimately familiar with all of your hardware but I have added scsi cards to several Dell computers which do not have very many user variable bios settings. Interestingly the Dell's don't have a "boot from scsi setting" in the bios but will automatically try to boot from a scsi if present. This can be defeated by turning off the boot feature in the scsi card bios. It may be that your machine, with an add on ide controller is acting the same way.

[This message has been edited by toms111 (edited 07-01-99).]