[svlug] Booting SCSI - no MBR

[Rafael Skodlar]

On Mon, 2 Nov 1998, Walter Reed wrote:

> At 10:52 PM 11/1/98 , Rafael Skodlar wrote:
..............
> 
> That is exactly the drive. At only $350, it wasn't a bad deal. The manual 
> that comes with the drive shows all the different versions of that drive.
> The SCA version has not jumpers at all, so you are forced to have external
> termination. If this is NOT the last drive in the chain, you are OK and 
> theoretically it should work just great. Unfortunately for me, this is the
> only SCSI drive in the system.

This is the only wide SCSI drive on my system too. The other drives
(CDROM, Syquest and Fujitsu) are on SCSI-II cable which also connects
directly to the motherboard. 

> 
> Why would an SCA-68 Pin adapter board NOT include termination capability?
> Seems silly.

I thought that the drive automagicaly terminates the line when you jumper 
the terminator power. Some drives do that.

I'll check my drive later tonight to see how it's setup.

> 
> As for external termination, I haven't been able to find a female 68 pin model
> that would dangle off my internal cable. I'm sure someone makes them.

Make sure that the SCSI interface has a termination turned on if you don't
have an external devices connected. If the SCSI IF is in the middle, then
disable termination. Adpatec IF is smart enough to terminate bus properly
in most cases but some times you need to do that manualy. 

> 
> FYI, I was dealing with small partitions -  two 2G parts, a 128M swap, and the 
> rest as unpartitioned free space. Also, from Quantums web site, the Atlas II is
> considered a "previous generation" which in my mind means that they will
> probably
> discontinue it soon. I guess I'd rather buy something a little more recent even
> though there will be a price penalty.

The paperwork the drive comes with says 5 year warranty. I'm happy with
that. If it fails I'll get a newer drive anyway :-)  I'll be buying a new
drive in 3 years probably. 500MB I was so proud of just 4 years ago won't
do much more than swap very soon.

> 
> While I was playing with this drive, I noticed that the Adaptec BIOS had an
> option
> to turn on or off translation for large drives. With this on, the drive 
> reported something like 1197 cyls, and off was something around 8200 cyls.
> Other than the boot partition needing to be under the 1024 cyl limit, is
> there any
> reason to use or not to use this translation (other than the obvious fact that
> I have to re-partition the drive if I change the setting...)
> 

I always try to use the real numbers for HDD parameters and not screwy
PeeCee "translation" bogus numbers.

Fake numbers are for fake OS only.

> --
> Walter Reed
> Engineering Director
> InterTrade Systems Corp.
> 

   Rafael Skodlar



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