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SCSI drive not recognized

S

sm8000

Gawd
Joined
Aug 5, 2004
Messages
525
I have an IBM 36Z15 drive connected to an LSIU160 card, but the card does not list it in its devices. Also, during boot, the scan takes almost a minute, sitting on the first ID for a good while before scanning the others.

The drive is an 80-pin SCA drive, I'm using an 80-to-68 pin adapter with only a jumper on ID0. This used to work, many months ago before I took it offline. Any idea why it's not showing up now?
 
I would try another 80 to 68 pin adapter. Then see if the card sees the drive.
 
I do have another adapter, and in fact I do have another drive. I'll try both of those either tonight, tomorrow night, or the weekend. The adapter on there now does not have a TRM jumper.
 
What ID number is your LSI card set to?

If both the drive and the card are ID0 it is not going to work. I believe LSI's default to 7 but I am not positive on that.
 
The card is definitely at ID7, and the adapter jumpered to ID0. Somebody somewhere else suggested removing that jumper altogether. I also have another adapter and another drive I can try tonight/tomorrow night/this weekend.

Termination? What termination? It's an SCA drive. It is at least at the end of the cable.
 
Have you reloaded the O/S since the original time? did you load the scsi drivers from lsi's site?
 
http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/if/scsi/cablesTermination.html

Terminators must be at the very ends of the bus, after all of the actual devices on the chain. This includes any devices that may be powered off or temporarily disconnected. Therefore, there are always exactly two terminators per bus or bus segment. Many devices contain internal terminators that can be used if the device is at one of the ends of the SCSI bus. However, differential drives typically do not include the ability to terminate the bus, so newer LVD applications require explicit terminator hardware. Sometimes terminators are built in to the end of the SCSI cable. In addition, systems using the Single Connector Attachment system have a different termination arrangement because the connection system is different. SCA drives do not have termination on them.
Click to expand...

Check your termination.
 
slowbiznatch said:
Check your termination.
Click to expand...
Yep, that'd be my guess as to what the problem is. As for why it may have worked before -- sometimes you get lucky in certain cabling environments or with certain devices and you can get away without terminating both ends of the bus (the adapter is most likely set to terminate its end of the bus automatically). However, even if it does run in this manner, I wouldn't trust my data to a setup without terminators on both ends of the bus.

Also, if you have a jumper on the ID0 pin of the hard drive, it is probably running as ID1. There are typically 3 ID jumpers on a narrow SCSI device or 4 on a wide SCSI devie for selecting the device ID. You arrange the jumpers to the binary representation of the ID you'd like to set the drive at. So ID0 would be selected by putting no jumpers on the ID pins.
 
Hey slowbiznatch, read the last sentence of your quote.

The proper LSI drivers and ASPI layer are installed.

Bear in mind that this is NOT an OS drive, at least not yet. I only want to get it recognized in Windows or DOS so I can partition and format it. I'm going to try removing that ID jumper on the adapter tonight.
 
sm8000 said:
Hey slowbiznatch, read the last sentence of your quote.
Click to expand...
So that means the drive does not have termination capability built in and you will need to place a terminator at the end of your SCSI cable for proper, reliable operation.
 
Sounds like it, but I'll need to get a terminator. In my thread on this at Storagereview forums, somebody linked to the drive's datapage and showed me this drive isn't the self-terminating kind. I wonder how the hell I had this thing working last year though, for several months. Kind of odd it wouldn't show up in the card or any OS this time.
 
JasonLee said:
was it termination?
Click to expand...


It is a set of resistors that go at the end of cable and prevent the signals from bouncing back and being sensed twice.
 
UICompE02 said:
So that means the drive does not have termination capability built in and you will need to place a terminator at the end of your SCSI cable for proper, reliable operation.
Click to expand...

Someone said something similar over st Storagereview, and showed me a cable with two connectors at the far end. The last for the terminator, and second last for a drive. Thing is, though, my cable doesn't have that pair of connectors at the end. Just one, regularly spaced with the others. If you have a drive on the end of this cable, how do you terminate?
 
just use the second to last header for your drive and add the terminator to the last one. the physical spacing doesn't matter.
 
BigBadBiologist said:
just use the second to last header for your drive and add the terminator to the last one. the physical spacing doesn't matter.
Click to expand...
Yes, just keep in mind that the terminator should be the last thing on the cable and as close as possible to the end. Other devices can be located anywhere on the cable.
 
Picked up a terminator this evening at Micro Center. Going out tonight, will try it tomorrow.
 
Okay, a terminator fixed it, the drive is partitioned, formatted, and ready to go. I'm surprised it didn't work initially this time around like it did last year.

Anyhow, next problem. I also have an LSI 20860, with a Plextor UltraPlex 40max and a Pioneer DVD-U05 connected to it. Originally I had the Pioneer at the end, ID'd as 0, with termination on, and the Plextor next with ID 1.

My problem then was that after installing the U160 card, it adopts the 20860 as a second, legacy-speed channel, and scans its IDs. The scan on the Pioneer's ID would time out (couldn't change default of 10 seconds) and the drive would not be identifed in the card's BIOS list of devices.

I switched the drives around so the Plextor is ID 0, with termination, at the end, and the Pioneer is ID 1, no termination. Now the card's BIOS lists them as IDs 2 and 4, respectively, and the boot scan times out on the Plextor's ID. How can I fix this?
 
Okay, I did have them at 2 and 4 after all. Wasn't thinking straight due to a hangover :p

Anyhow I've been going at it today with no luck. Shuffled ID numbers, termination only on the end drive, but the ID scan still times out and one of the drives (the Pioneer) isn't even detected, in the card or Windows.
 
I was sort of confused by your new problem (too many numbers for a sunday morning :) ), but just make sure that the lowest number SCSI ID is at the end of the chain and count upwards from there.
 
Yep, always been doing that. Okay, disregard that bit about the Pioneer. Power connector was loose. Man, I'm having a rough go at this :p

Anyhow, it seems like neither of these drives wants to be on the end. Whichever is will have its ID scan time out. Somebody elsewhere suggested that perhaps having the jumper cap OFF the termination pins is what enables termination; guess I'll try that next.
 
Well, the Plextor and Pioneer manuals say that the jumper must be on for termination to be enabled. I've got the Plextor at 2 and the Pioneer at 3, with the Plextor at the end of the chain and termination enabled, and the ID scan still times out. I have to go for now, I'll come back to this later.
 
BigBadBiologist said:
but just make sure that the lowest number SCSI ID is at the end of the chain and count upwards from there.
Click to expand...

Hmm, that shouldnt really be required unless there are some really screwy controllers out there. You can generally put any ID anywhere on the bus. Only the termination is limited to the ends of the bus.
 
Not sure. Can't find a manual for it on LSI's site. I'll have to take it out and look at it at some point.
 
Thanks, I was wondering where to find that. I'll pick up a 50-pin terminator from work tomorrow just for grins and giggles to see what that does.
 
I managed to snag a short, 2-drive capable cable from work today. I had to put each drive down a bay and the card in the topmost slot, but the boot process speeds through without pause. I guess it would have to be this cable then. By the way, what's the maximum length for a 50-pin flat ribbon internal SCSI cable? The one I had been trying with is a total of 45 inches, with four drive connectors each seven inches apart, and two feet to the adapter end.
 
Turns out this cable was out of spec all right. Apparently Ultra (20MB) SCSI recommends consecutive devices have 20cm of cable in between; this cable had 'em at just under 18.
 
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