• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Multiple "SCSI" adapter boot problem

C

Cong Sat

Weaksauce
Joined
Sep 28, 2002
Messages
105
I picked a Tyan Tiger100 MB (dual slot1) to replace my old CUSL2 as my file and web server. Swapping everything over, I'm finding out that having my Promise Fasttrak Tx2 and Adaptec 29160 can't interoperate more or less on this board.

Depending on how I have the PCI slots scanned - first to last/last to first (akin to moving the cards around); I can have the scsi adapter boot, but then the RAID BIOS doesn't show and I have no access to the array. Or I can have the RAID init but skip over the SCSI and not boot at all. Mind you my boot drive is a scsi drive.

One work around I sorta got is to disable my scsi adapters int13 support. If I do that and have the scsi card init, then init the raid card - of course I can't boot off of scsi, but it either has to boot off of the RAID. So its something about the BIOS and a card sending it a command that it can be bootable and the bios then tries to boot. If the Promise card had some option like that I could do boot this computer.

Anyone have problems like this? I was thinking of swapping the card out and getting a Highpoint, but I may run into similar problems - if it doesn't have a int13 option. Anyone have experience with this? I never did have this problem with the CUSL2.
 
I hit *exactly* this problem (also with a Tyan board!). My solution is going to be to buy a drive that can go on the raid adapter, and go with that. Apparently newer raid cards don't play nice with other adapters.

My case was a bit more extreme - I had 4 storage adapters. Onboard scsi, onboard ide, offboard ide, and offboard sata. The old ide card plays nice, no problems. The new sata card does *not*. It apparently doesn't have the code for "oh yeah, let the other cards' bioses run now". The scsi and the ide don't have a problem with this :(

So basically, the solution is there is no solution. :( I ended up abandoning the offboard ide and finding a sata card which let the bios go. Highpoint 1540.

 
Yup, got the latest BIOS on the 29160. I was thinking that I had to scrap something... just don't know what. I'd really hate to boot off of IDE with either onboard or the RAID.

I have two Quantum Atlas 10kIII's that have been absolutly reliable for 3+ years. I just updated my raid a few month ago from two WD 100 giggers that have been in service for ages to two 300 gig Maxtors. The Maxtors I just had RMA'd a month ago (both a month apart), so I'm kinda wary with those drives to have them used as a boot drive. Mind you I had one them in the SuperSwap chasis and the other mounted inside the case with a fan on it next the the Atlas.

You know what... stupid me.... software raid in Win2k on the onboard controller. Yeah, I know it sucks. I'll run some benchmarks on it to see if its worth it, may be my only solution beside trying another card. I got extra cpu cycle to burn on that...

Scrapping the promise card.
 
If this were Linux you could get a CompactFlash card to boot from, and use that as your /boot volume. Maybe I'll go that route.

OTOH, the Samsung Spinpoints are $50 for 80gb, can't beat it...

 
I have run into this problem before in certain systems that have multiple bootable BIOSes in them. You may be running into an issue where the system just can't allocated enough meory to run all the Boot ROMs.

When the system goes out and scans for all the extension boot ROMs installed, it finds them and runs them. The code in the boot ROM area requests a certain amount of memory space to run its program out of. If the system can't supply this memory, the boot ROM won't run.

Depending on your specific system BIOS architecture, you may be limited to 128KB of memory space for all of your boot ROMs together to run out of. With multiple RAID and SCSI adapters, that may not be enough. Also, this is probably why you're finding a difference in the order that the cards are installed or the PCI bus is scanned. Things will fit differently if attempted in a different order.

I once had a system with two LSI SCSI controllers and an Adaptec SCSI controller. It would only boot all adapters if the LSI controllers loaded first. The reason for this is that the LSI controller requests more memory to run at first, but once it is loaded frees most of it back to the system; the Adaptec controller requests a smaller chunk at first, but doesn't relase any back to the system, so if I had it set up to load the LSI controllers first, everything worked fine.
 
Is it possible to load a different BIOS to onboard scsi controllers? I have an integrated LSI controller, SYM53C1010-66, and when it gets put first in the boot order, no other controllers load. If I set the Highpoint controller first, though, it does its thing and then the LSI runs. This leads me to believe it might be a bios issue. Here's the manual for my motherboard, if it makes a difference. There's a BIOS listed on the LSI download site, but I'm not sure it works with onboard controllers as well as offboard.

The Supermicro sata card also doesn't let anything run after it, so it's sort of a catch-22 in terms of getting both the Supermicro and the LSI running. Supermicro has pointed fingers at Tyan, Marvell, LSI, and me as to why this happens, but not provided any solutions. See if I ever buy their stuff again. :mad:

 
unhappy_mage said:
Is it possible to load a different BIOS to onboard scsi controllers? I have an integrated LSI controller, SYM53C1010-66, and when it gets put first in the boot order, no other controllers load. If I set the Highpoint controller first, though, it does its thing and then the LSI runs. This leads me to believe it might be a bios issue. Here's the manual for my motherboard, if it makes a difference. There's a BIOS listed on the LSI download site, but I'm not sure it works with onboard controllers as well as offboard.
Click to expand...

I guess the best answer here is that 'sometimes' it's possible to load a new BIOS on an onboard controller. In most cases it is possible. Sometimes, however, the system vendor uses the system's flash ROM as the storage area for the onboard SCSI controller boot ROM -- if that is the case, you cannot update the SCSI controller's boot ROM unless you have a full system boot ROM from the system vendor that includes the updated SCSI BIOS. My advice: download the updated BIOS from the LSI site and try to flash it. If you have a system with the SCSI BIOS in the system flash, it won't update, but it also won't break anything.

The Supermicro sata card also doesn't let anything run after it, so it's sort of a catch-22 in terms of getting both the Supermicro and the LSI running. Supermicro has pointed fingers at Tyan, Marvell, LSI, and me as to why this happens, but not provided any solutions. See if I ever buy their stuff again. :mad:
Click to expand...
Well, you can thank the early PC architects for that limitation. As I mentioned earlier, most systems (even many modern ones) are limited to 128KB of expansion ROM space. As you've found, this can be a problem when there are a lot of boot controllers installed. However, you typically only boot from one device, right? So the best solution is to either put the device order in a way that lets you boot from your specified device, or disable the int 13h extensions in the BIOS of things that you don't boot from.
 
I've got a Dell PowerEdge 600SC at work with:
3Ware 7506-8
Intel Pro 1000/Server
Adaptec 39160
Adaptec 2944
Adaptec 2944

in that order and never had an 'Out of ROM space' issue. Guess newer motherboards have more room? The system has a single P4 w/ some kind of SuperMicro board.
 
ambit said:
I've got a Dell PowerEdge 600SC at work with:
3Ware 7506-8
Intel Pro 1000/Server
Adaptec 39160
Adaptec 2944
Adaptec 2944

in that order and never had an 'Out of ROM space' issue. Guess newer motherboards have more room? The system has a single P4 w/ some kind of SuperMicro board.
Click to expand...

Some newer boards are more intelligent about allocating ROM space. They may use PMM (POST Memory Manager) instead of the older method with the smaller limit. It's also likely that even if you have multiple Adaptec 2944 boards in a system, they are all controlled by a single ROM image.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top