SCSI 160 controller with 320 drives?

[bigted]

here's my question, I just installed a 64-bit PCI card into my computer (on a 32-bit slot, yes it's compatible), i believe the card is an adaptec 29160 scsi card, I can see it in vista's device manager, however, I cannot see the 2 drives that are attached to it in Vista. i only have one cable, to both drives are on the same channel, and i tried both channels. what am I missing here?

also, should the card's bios show up when the system boots? i thought it should, but it doesn't. I'm going to try this setup in my server2003 setup tonight and see if it works there, but it's weird that i can see the controller in the device manager on vista, but yet, no drives.

Maybe it has something to do with the drives being 320, and the controller being 160? maybe? any help provided is much appreciated.

 

[UICompE02]

U320 drives should work just fine on a U160 controller.

The biggest cause of drives not showing up in a situation like this is lack of proper termination. Make sure there is exactly one terminator on each of the bus (in this case, the controller will take care of termination on that side, the other end of the cable is up to you).

Since you have two drives on one channel, you should make sure that the SCSI ID is set differently on each drive. Typically, they have a set of jumpers near the SCSI connector that allows you to set the ID. This varies by drive, but make sure they are not set up with the same ID. (also, keep in mind that the controller itself is typically assigned to SCSI ID 7)

Also, are you certain you have a good cable? Do you have another one you can test with?

As for the BIOS, it's possible to have a board that does not have a BIOS image on it or loading of the BIOS is disabled. I'm not quite sure how that works on Adaptec boards, but it's something to look into (also, your system may be configured to not load expansion ROMs as well)

 

[bigted]

wow, that's all great information, I thank you, sir.

and now that you mention it, i don't think that either of the drives have jumpers on them. the cable was pulled from a working system, I don't have any more to test with, however. and the cable has three connections, and the last one is terminated, with the other two plugged into the drives.

i'm going to try some jumpers when i get home, and let you know, thanks for taking the time to answer my question.

 

[bigted]

wouldn't you know it, the jumpers worked. i now have two scsi drives that are actually usable... considering getting a 320 raid card now... hmm, FS/T, here i come!

 

[Phoenix '97]

If you're using a regular PCI slot, you'll have a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 133MB/sec, or about 120MB/sec or less in practice. So here, even a U160 card can use up all the bandwitdh of the regular 32/33 PCI bus!