adaptec 1540b & ide

[carpman]

Hi, i have installed a 1540b scsi adapter, when i boot system it recognises the ide cd rom, the 1540 recognised scsi drive and sets it a c:\. the problem is that i cannot boot from the cd rom (install OS), i have tried putting an ide drive as master also setting cr rom as master but no joy. If i boot with win98 start up disk the cd rom is found but i use a linux boot disk the cd rom is not. Is there a way to get the ide cd rom working, booting from would be nice, and working with 1540b.


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Thanks for help

[BigBlue66]

Hi,

Check your BIOS settings. Watch for a message that tells you which key to hit when booting up to get into the BIOS setup. What you're looking for would probably be in Advanced CMOS Settings. Look for the Boot Up Sequence. Use the space bar, or the PgUp or PgDn keys to toggle between choices.

If your system is fairly new, you should have an option to boot from a CD-ROM. Of course, make sure the CD-ROM is the first choice listed in the string of options. I think that the CD-ROM will have to be left as Master also.

Try that and see if it helps. If not, post back.

Cheers,

Big Blue 66


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He who laughs last, thinks slowest. hehehehe, Huh?!

[carpman]

Thanks for reply, i am familier with PC setup but not with scsi so yes i have set boot from CD Rom in bios plus any other obvious ones, what i am looking for is anything scsi i may have misses

Originally posted by BigBlue66:
Hi,

Check your BIOS settings. Watch for a message that tells you which key to hit when booting up to get into the BIOS setup. What you're looking for would probably be in Advanced CMOS Settings. Look for the Boot Up Sequence. Use the space bar, or the PgUp or PgDn keys to toggle between choices.

If your system is fairly new, you should have an option to boot from a CD-ROM. Of course, make sure the CD-ROM is the first choice listed in the string of options. I think that the CD-ROM will have to be left as Master also.

Try that and see if it helps. If not, post back.

Cheers,

Big Blue 66






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Thanks for help

[bassman]

Hey Carpman, talked to you this morning on this. I did not have the time to diagnose further.
First let me go over this again and make sure I understand everything you have set up.
>IDE Harddrive set as primary master
>IDE CD drive set as either primary slave or secondary master.
>SCSI adapter for more HD's
CD drive is set as first boot device and reads cd's fine but not a bootable disk at bootup.
Got a couple more questions for you and I am sure we can get this going for you.
What disk are you trying to boot from? Are the above statements accurate? What are your system specs? Did you find info on scsi adapter? Is scsi recognized in bios and can you change drive designation?
From your post here, it's starting to get a little confusing. Clearafication will help alot.

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They say to eat before you go to the grocery store so you don't buy so much. That doesn't work at the liquor store does it!

[carpman]

ok, start again. I am familier with PC setup, i repair and build many systems but i have no experience with scsi stuff.

I have a Adaptec 1540b isa scsi card to this i have connected a 2Gb IBM scsi hard drive which is set as ID Bit 0. I have ide cd rom set as IDE1 slave and a 11gb Maxtor ide hard drive set as IDE1 master.

The bios allows for boot from: A, C, CD ROM, SCSI plus others.

when i boot i get the normal bios messages then the 1540b bios loads and recognises the scsi drive but only as 1gb (card came from system with 1gb drive)and assigns it a drive letter.

I initially tried to boot to the cd rom without the ide drive, this would not work. I put the ide drive in and it booted from the cd rom ok.

I want to install Linux but the problem is with the scsi card, if i boot with a linux boot disk the card is recognised but not the scsi drive, if i boot from the cd rom the card is not recognised. If i boot win95 the scsi card is not recognised with pnp, when added as new hardware it is still not recognised and comes up with error in control panel/system however the drive is recognised by partitionmagic6 (in win98 & dos) as 1gb.


The problem appears to be with the adaptec 1540b scsi card, it was working ok in the system it came from with 1gb drive, the cards bios is obviously set for a 1gb drive, i have found out that to enter the scsi cards bios you need to do 'ctrl A' when the scsi bios is seen on bootup, i have doen this but nothing happens. I downloaded the manaul from the adaptec site and set all the jumper to default, the system only has 1 other card a PCI video card so default should work, i have set the cards IRQ and DMA in bios to legacy ISA too.

This is driving me nuts, how come PQmagic see scsi drive both in windows and dos but windows does not? I am going to add kernel instruction at boot to force recognition of card in linux cd rom boot, but i still have problem that my 2gb drive is only seen as 1gb, i need to get into scsi cards bios but can't anyone know how this can be done? tied 'crtl A'

many thanks


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Thanks for help