DigiSCSI Kit/Atto Card does not work with FWB-what's the solution?

[Disco_Doctor]

Here's my situation:

All of my drives have the latest FWB 4.0 drivers on them. MacOS 9.0.4, Quicktime 4.1.2.

I just installed a new DigiSCSI kit (AttoExpress PCI card) on my system and the following behavior occurs:

I connect more than one hard drive to either SCSI chain on the ATTO card, and the computer boots up, happy Mac appears, and then the computer freezes on happy Mac and goes no further.

Now at first I thought this must be a termination or cabling problem as almost all SCSI problems are - but then:

I booted up with all my drives turned off - no problem.

Then I turned the drives on and launched AttoExpress-Tools application - it successfully scans the SCSI busses and displays all the drives in the list.

I turned on the "inhibit driver loading" option in the Express Tools application for all of the drives.

I turned on the Atto extension so that it will load the Atto driver for all the drives after I restart.

Then I restart, and with eight drives connected (four on each chain) I boot up with no problems at all. My startup crashing problem almost certainly must be a software driver problem related to the Atto card - not a SCSI cabling or termination problem.

One other thing: FWB CD-ROM toolkit and the Atto extension are incompatible - so I have to disable CD-ROM toolkit also or I crash with a "bus error" when the desktop appears.

All of this trauma to make this card work - and I thought a dual channel Atto card was going to make my life easier. Silly me.

Digidesign tech support - I'm assuming I don't have to contact Atto about this since I bought the card from you. What is the deal with this SCSI card? What exactly is it compatible with, and what is it incompatible with?

The guys at RSPE (one of your dealers in North Hollywood) had varying bits of conflicting advice about what works and what doesn't - they said don't use FWB drivers, use Apple drivers on your hard drives, and don't use the Atto extension - but I can't use the Apple drivers without reformatting all my drives (including my system drive) so for now that is out of the question.

The only way I've found to make this work is to use the Atto extension and "inhibit" the FWB driver. This is working, but it feels unstable.

I did a test where I recorded 24 tracks simultaneously to four drives while playing back 24 tracks I had already recorded, and I froze up about 10 seconds into the record pass. So, something is still shaky.

Please reply with the most recent list of compatibilites and incompatibilities so I can make this work reliably.

Thanks.



[This message has been edited by Disco_Doctor (edited July 29, 2000).]

[Steve Rosenthal]

Disco,

I connect more than one hard drive to either SCSI chain on the ATTO card, and the
computer boots up, happy Mac appears, and then the computer freezes on happy Mac and
goes no further.

We've seen past problems with FWB where multiple driver instantiations cause no-boot conditions. Just as an experiment, try activating Virtual Memory, then see if your system will boot with the FWB drivers loading. Please post your results.

We haven't seen these kinds of problems with ATTO drivers, since they have a different instantiation method.

I did a test where I recorded 24 tracks simultaneously to four drives while playing back 24 tracks I had already recorded, and I froze up about 10 seconds into the record pass. So, something is still shaky.

Have you been able to repeat this, or is this the only test you've tried? If you've done more tests, please post your results.

The guys at RSPE (one of your dealers in North Hollywood) had varying bits of conflicting advice about what works and what doesn't - they said don't use FWB drivers, use Apple drivers on your hard drives, and don't use the Atto extension - but I can't use the Apple drivers without reformatting all my drives (including my system drive) so for now that is out of the question.

We have long recommended that the system drive (especially if it's an Apple OEM drive) be initialized with the proper version of Apple HD setup for the OS in use. Obviously, out currently supported drive utility for audio drives is ATTO ExpressPro-Tools 2.3.2.
We have no current plans to test FWB Hard Disk Toolkit 4.0.



------------------
--Steve Rosenthal, Digidesign ETS

[Disco_Doctor]

Steve, I will post more results as they come in. In the meantime, could you please tip your hand and tell me what you know works and what doesn't? The RSPE guys made it sound like Digi has very specific recommendations about how to do this - none of which are on the compatibility pages.

As far as using the Apple drivers on my system drive - it is a PowerTower Pro, not an Apple OEM drive, so I'm using FWB. Since when have you "long recommended" that people use the Apple drivers on the system drive? I do not see any such recommendation in the compatibility pages Steve - so where are you recommending this? Please show me. On the contrary, the general knowledge has always been - if you are using FWB, use it for all of your drives.

>We have no current plans to test FWB Hard Disk Toolkit 4.0.

I see a gaping hole in the information supply here Steve. You guys were still recommending FWB 3.0.2 when OS9 came out, despite the two not being compatible. When did you decide that FWB is no longer approved? When did you decide not to test FWB 4.0? If you are telling people to upgrade to OS9 and Pro Tools 5, shouldn't you tell them that they will have to initialize all their drives with Drive Setup or the Atto utility? I don't see that recommendation or procedure posted anywhere.

>We've seen past problems with FWB where multiple
>driver instantiations cause no-boot conditions.

What other variables were involved? Did you see these no-boot conditions only with OS9 and the Atto card, or always, or what? Please provide more info about this. I haven't had any problem with FWB until installing an Atto card.

Steve, you need to collect ALL current available driver and SCSI card compatibity information and post it somewhere on the Digi site immediately. The compatibility pages are not clear on any of this.

Some results:

The Atto extension still crashes the computer when FWB drivers are on hard drives.

If I turn on the Atto extension while a single drive with an FWB driver is connected to the Atto card (and inhibit driver is unchecked for that drive), I crash during boot on the Atto extension. Steve - I recall a post where you said this was no longer a concern with the latest version of the Atto extension - that is apparently not the case.

If I put the latest MacOS9.0.4 Apple driver (from drive setup) on a drive connected to the Atto card, and turn off the "inhibit" option for that drive so the Apple driver will load, AND I have the Atto extension enabled and "inhibit" checked for other drives so the FWB drivers don't load - the system boots.

Will post the virtual memory test next....

[Steve Rosenthal]

As far as using the Apple drivers on my system drive - it is a PowerTower Pro, not an
Apple OEM drive, so I'm using FWB.

Sure. That's correct.

Since when have you "long recommended" that people use the Apple drivers on the system drive?

Geez, since maybe Pro Tools 4.x -- possibly earlier. I believe it's in the PT Hardware Installation guide, in the hard drive configuration section.

On the contrary, the general knowledge has always been - if you are using FWB, use it for all of your drives.

Not at Digi it hasn't. The accepted rule here has been -- again, since at least 4.x -- use Apple drivers for your system drive (non-OEM system drives such as yours being the exception), and a single disk utility for your audio drives. That is to say, if you're using FWB for your audio drives, use it on all of them -- don't mix and match drivers.

I see a gaping hole in the information supply here Steve. You guys were still recommending FWB 3.0.2 when OS9 came out, despite the two not being compatible. When did you decide that FWB is no longer approved? When did you decide not to test FWB 4.0? If you are telling people to upgrade to OS9 and Pro Tools 5, shouldn't you tell them that they will have to initialize all their drives with Drive Setup or the Atto utility? I don't see that recommendation or procedure posted anywhere.

We switched to ATTO ExpressPro-Tools with the release of PT 5.0.1. It's on the PT 5.0.1 installer, and documentation regarding using ATTO EPT was included either on the installer or in hardcopy in the box, if I'm not mistaken. I will see about getting it posted with the online compatibility documents.

What other variables were involved? Did you see these no-boot conditions only with OS9 and the Atto card, or always, or what? Please provide more info about this. I haven't had any problem with FWB until installing an Atto card.

It's a problem that appears to be related to the size of the memory partition for extensions and drivers. This has been going on since OS 8.6 in some form or another. The more extensions and drivers in the system, the greater the chance the memory partition will get corrupted. Unfortunately, there's no magic combination that will guarantee success or failure. That's why I asked you to try a boot cycle with VM on. It seems to get around this issue. Oh, yeah, this occurred with Adaptec cards as well. It's a driver issue, not a card issue.

I am aware of a past incompatibilty between FWB and ATTO in which FWB's drivers did not properly respond to the ATTO card's inquiry if tagged queuing was supported (or something like that). This happened back around ATTO firmware 1.2 and FWB 2.x. It's certainly possible that there is an incompatibility going on between FWB 4.0 and ATTO. I'll see if ATTO knows anything about it.

If I turn on the Atto extension while a single drive with an FWB driver is connected to the Atto card (and inhibit driver is unchecked for that drive), I crash during boot on the Atto extension. Steve - I recall a post where you said this was no longer a concern with the latest version of the Atto extension - that is apparently not the case.

Well, to be accurate, I was never referring to crashing. I was referring to a DAE -9060 error that related to pre 2.3.x ATTO drivers. That's why we recommended not installing the ATTO extension -- which is where RSPE is coming from. The cause of this error was fixed in the 2.3.x version of the driver, at our request.

We've never had a crashing problem with the ATTO extension in our testing, and neither has ATTO (they have Digi gear), so I suspect there may be an extension conflict in your system. Can you try an elimination process to see if this is the case?

Can you also verify the following settings on the ATTO card?

- PCI Burst length
- Synch Transfer Rate

These should be preconfigured, but hey, let's just be sure they're correct.

Here's one other test that would be informative: Can you initialize an external drive with the ATTO drivers and install a system on it? I'd be curious to know if your system has the same problems if you boot from an ATTO drive.

Thanks for the follow up data.



------------------
--Steve Rosenthal, Digidesign ETS

[Psyduck]

Steve,

We have 2 systems
PT MixPlus 5.0.1 (upgraded from 5.0)
Apple G4 450 OS 9.0.2
ATTO Express PCI (firmware 1.4.4, software 2.3.2)
Glyph Trip w/ 2 hot swap bays, AIT tape and Plexor CD-R

>You need to collect ALL current available driver and SCSI card compatibity information and post it somewhere on the Digi site immediately. The compatibility pages are not clear on any of this.
It would be nice if Digi posted the proper settings for ATTO sync transfer rate and burst length.

We went through the same self learning process re: ATTO / FWB.
FWB was doing things like renaming drives.
Phone calls to ATTO, FWB, Digi, and Glyph were necessary.
We removed all traces of FWB, and now use ATTO. Extension off.

You say-
>if you're using FWB for your audio drives, use it on all of them
-- don't mix and match drivers.
OK, so we use ATTO.
However, when a client walks in with their project on a hard drive and it's formatted FWB... what to do?
ATTO asks if you want to add an ATTO driver to the drive.
We say no, go to the extension manager and enable the ATTO extension which allows ATTO to mount a drive that does not have an ATTO driver.

This user group has been the only pipeline of information
It has become a morning ritual to review posts
Please, Digi, try to pick up the ball and take the responsibility of informing your users without them having to wave your dirty laundry around.

[Disco_Doctor]

>However, when a client walks in with their project on a hard drive
>and it's formatted FWB... what to do? ATTO asks if you want to add
>an ATTO driver to the drive.

This is exactly the problem I'm having. Steve - these Atto card problems ARE NOT an extension conflict. I'm running the MacOS base plus OMS and Digi extenstions. To say that the Atto card is compatible when in fact the computer won't even boot up if an FWB drive is attached is nonsense. This is not just on my system either - I've seen similar problems on G4's and 9600's.

Steve, Digi should provide a workaround for this immediately.

If the client has an FWB formatted drive, the only way to get the drive up (that I'm aware of) is to turn on the drive after booting up so you can "see" the drive in the Atto utility application and "select inhibit driver". Then, with the Atto extension installed, you can reboot and get the drive to mount.

A major pain in the ass occurs when you move that same FWB drive to another bay on your Glyph - then the Atto extension doesn't inhibit the driver from loading because it remembers the "inhibit" setting based on SCSI ID. Crash crash crash.

And even when I've got it all up and running, my system has been VERY unstable with the Atto card (with only two drives attached to one of the SCSI chains). No FWB - just Atto extension controlling everything - if I let Pro Tools just sit for 10 minutes - it freezes up. And I'm crashing once every couple of hours - my hard drives busy lights will light up when I hit play and I'm frozen with tapping fingers in Pro Tools.

This is not a termination or cabling problem. This Atto stuff is not working right. Steve, I'm happy to submit info that may help you regarding this, but I would reallly appreciate it if you would reciprocate and post what you know is definitely supposed to work according to your tests.

Thanks

[Steve Rosenthal]

Disco,

I just got off the phone with ATTO specifially about your FWB issue. They told me they've tested with FWB 4.0 with no issues. I specifically asked if there were any known incompatibilities, and they assured me they hadn't encountered any -- particularly of the type you're seeing (no boot). Based on the symptoms I (you) described, they were leaning toward the possibility that one (or more) of the drives has a corrupted driver.

They asked if you had tried the following:

- Reinstalling the FWB driver on all of the drives?
- Reinitializing the drives with FWB?
- Reinitializing the drives with ATTO EPT 2.3.2?

If you've already tried these things, please post your results. If not, please try them and let me know what happens.

Thanks,



------------------
--Steve Rosenthal, Digidesign ETS

[Disco_Doctor]

Steve - thanks for looking into this. I have a couple of very important questions before I proceed with your recommendations:

If one of the hard drive drivers is corrupt, will the "update driver" command solve the problem, or must I initialize the drives? Put another way - will "update driver" guarantee a "clean install" of the driver, or must I initialize to guarantee a good driver install?

Another question: I have "inhibit driver" (in the Atto utility) turned on for ALL of my audio drives on the Atto card, and the Atto extension is turned on. If I understand this configuration correctly - the drivers on the hard drives aren't being loaded into system memory during startup because they are being "inhibited" by the Atto card - and the Atto extension is "driving" the hard drives. If this is the case, then how could a corrupt drive on one of the hard drives be causing the problem, when the Atto card is preventing the driver from being loaded into memory in the first place?

I will initialize all my drives if necessary and I will post the results, but please let me know if I _must_ initialize (as opposed to just doing a driver update) as it will probably take me the better part of a day to do this.

Thanks



[This message has been edited by Disco_Doctor (edited August 02, 2000).]

[Steve Rosenthal]

Steve - thanks for looking into this.

No problem. Just interested in making things work.

I have a couple of very important questions before I proceed with your recommendations:

If one of the hard drive drivers is corrupt, will the "update driver" command solve the problem, or must I initialize the drives? Put another way - will "update driver" guarantee a "clean install" of the driver, or must I initialize to guarantee a good driver install?

Usually, the update driver function can be done without reinitializing. Just to be clear, this only applies when we're talking about updating apple to apples (same driver utility), not apples to oranges (different utilities).

Personally, I'm in favor of reinitialization, but I'm thinking in terms of trying to save a little time in the process, not because initialization takes a long time, but because restoring backed-up data can. But if you've got the time, reinitialize. Either way, make sure everything critical is backed-up.

Another question: I have "inhibit driver" (in the Atto utility) turned on for ALL of my audio drives on the Atto card, and the Atto extension is turned on. If I understand this configuration correctly - the drivers on the hard drives aren't being loaded into system memory during startup because they are being
"inhibited" by the Atto card - and the Atto extension is "driving" the hard drives. If this is the case, then how could a corrupt drive on one of the hard drives be causing the problem, when the Atto card is preventing the driver from being loaded into memory in the first place?

You've got it right. I'm just trying to separate the issues -- boot/no-boot; hanging -- and take them one at a time.

I will initialize all my drives if necessary and I will post the results, but please let me know if I _must_ initialize (as opposed to just doing a driver update) as it will probably take me the better part of a day to do this.

Try just installing the driver first. This will at least tell us if the corrupt FWB driver theory is on target as the cause of the no-boot. Just make sure everything is backed up before hand. That way, if it does come down to reinitializing, you'll be safe.

I'm still thinking through the hanging issue. Can you verify your Synch Rate settings on the ATTO card?

Plus, if you can, give me a reality check on your SCSI cables by inspecting them for bent pins (if you haven't already). I've had similar symptoms to those you describe and in a couple of cases it came down to bent pins.

We'll figure this out.



------------------
--Steve Rosenthal, Digidesign ETS

[abbyin3d]

I've gotta concur that the Atto has been nothing but problems. I have been through three Cheetahs so far, and several different problems are emerging. 1) Apple prompts me with a warning that there's a problem with the drive. 2)I try to de-fragment and Norton tells me that it can't optimize, and I need to run Disk Doctor. I run Disk Doctor and no problems show up. 3) Apple prompts me with the warning again. 4) I started getting DAE -36 errors. 5) I reformatted one of the problematic drives and now it hangs the machine. I don't even get to the happy Mac. 6) One thing that seems to help with the brand new drive is setting the Atto Synch Rate to Digi's recommended setting of 20(10). Aside from that, I just keep waiting for the next major disaster to occur in the middle of an important session. I really do think the Atto situation needs to be stabilized.

My setup is G4/400 with 256 MB RAM, OS 9.04, I had one Cheetah on each channel of the Atto, now I just have one 18-gig on one channel. I'm using PT Mix with 5.01.