Fasttrakk and SCSI cohabitation?

[daveleau]

Hi guys. I am about to get a SCSI card for my system and am also about to put a (modified) Fasttrakk in my system as well. The SCSI will be running an ext Jaz 2GB and possibly later, a cd-rom. The FT will of course be a RAID setup with a stripe between 2 20GB WD hdds.

My question is:
Will there be any confusion in the boot sequence? The Fasttrakk asks to be set to boot to SCSI. Will the BIOS (factory BIOS on an ABIT BF6) see the SCSI card and try to boot from the JAZ everytime? I know this is kindof obscure but I want to see if I need to plan anything before installing these guys.

Thanks for any help
Dave

[Banti]

The scsi card bios might have settings to disable booting privledges. Sorry that I do not have an exact answer. My scsi card was integrated into the mobo.

Banti

[Banti]

I might have a pioneer scsi cdrom available soon.


Banti

[LittleKing]

If you do have troubles, make sure that the fasttrak card is in a lower pci slot (ie FT card in pci 1 while scsi card in pci 2). I don't know if this would help any problems that might arrise, I it won't hurt.

LK

[daveleau]

Thanks guys. Any other ideas or anyone with experience with this...Stan...? http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif I think he is the Fasttrakk guru around here isn't he? http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/wink.gif It is going to be an Adaptec SCSI card but I am not usre which one.

Banti, thanks and drop me a line if you decide to get rid of it. I may be interested but timing is everything. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif
Thanks
Dave

[Bleeding Edge]

The ease to choose between the two, depends upon the motherboard and how well the Bios is written.

On a "not so cooperative system", the positioning of the SCSI card or the RAID card into the PCI slot with the highest priorty (1-5 in desending order) will/should become the bootable card.

I have both the Adaptec and RAID cards in the system and booting between the two isn't a concern. At one time with an older Bios, I had 5 separate controllers in the system. It was a bit difficult for the Bios to find the boot device correctly. However, a subsequent Bios upgrade for the motherboard solved this.

There is no need for the fifth controller anymore (actually only three is being used now), so it's been removed. But it did work with all the controllers in there simultaneously.

[daveleau]

Thank you Bleeding Edge. Hopefully my BF6's BIOS is up to snuff.
Dave

[Stan]

I would agree with BE.
You should be OK with your BF6 (and latest BIOS)

The only problem I had with a FastTrack happened when I installed it on a P2B-LS mobo (Adaptec SCSI U2W).
The drivers would refuse to co-exist.
That was a few months ago and I did not try since then. I am pretty sure this is not a problem anymore thanks to newer drivers.

Stan

[C5John]

Dave

You should be OK.

Most SCSI adapter cards require the device that is to be the boot device to be on SCSI id zero. (some IBM SCSI required id 6). So if you avoid tagging a device as id zero, you should not have conflicts with your Fasttrakk card. All of the ADAPTEC cards that I have worked with required boot device on id Zero. There is sometimes a boot/noboot jumper on the card also.

Good Luck

C5John

[daveleau]

Thanks guys. He said it is the Adaptec card AWE 1505 AE (E?) Here's a link to its specs. http://www.adaptec.com/products/guide/matrix/scsiha.html

I know relatively little about SCSI. I can see that this card is slow but the thing that intrigues me is that it has no BIOS and uses EZ-SCSI Lite. Does this telly ou anything? THanks
Dave