ATA/66 Controller causing freeze at boot

[Shaneo1234]

I recently purchased the Sonnet ATA/66 Tempo card because I have the rev 1 G3 that does not support slave drives. When my machine boots, the card works fine, however, it freezes on start up all too often. I'll reboot my machine and I get a grey screen with a cursor, then it just sits there. This is definitely related to the Sonnet card or the hard drive because it didn't do it before I installed the card and it also fixed the problem when I removed the card. So, I get the grey screen with cursor and it freezes. No happy Mac. I've had to reboot it up to seven times before I get the happy Mac. All of my PCI card slots are full. I have the Digi001 card, an Adaptec SCSI 2 card, and the Sonnet. The Sonnet is running 2 40GB Maxtor drives set as masters as they're the only drives on each controller that were set up with Drive Setup 1.7.3. Anyone have any suggestions or know of any reasons why this is occuring? It gets very annoying. Other than that, the card works fine. Please Help.

[DaveNinja]

Could the position of the PCI cards be a problem? I thought i remembered someone saying the placement of the 001 card with respect to the other cards could be a problem.
You might want to switch which cards are in which slots. Its a free, easy thing to try.

daveninja.com

ps. I have a sonnet tempo ata/66 but i do not yet have a digi001, so i am interested in this problem. Ive heard lots of people say that tempo works fine with the 001.

[Shaneo1234]

Thanks for the help. These are all interesting suggestions. I tried swapping my SCSI and Tempo cards and it made it worse. Good suggestion for removing the SCSI card, haven't tried that one yet. I did however, try booting cards with no drives attached and it worked fine every time. Also this morning, I tried searching for any updates on Sonnet's page and found an update that I will try tonight. I really really hope it works... Thank you very much for your help, these are all great suggestions.

[msunj]

Im using the same card with a BW white G3 not sure if its Rev 1, and the Sonnet card has worked perfectly. I also have an Adaptec SCSI card installed with no problems. It should work, good luck.

[thehitch]

I just set-up a friends B & W G3 with an 001 and a Sonnet ATA66 card with no problems. The computer looks at the drives (ATA's) as SCSI volumes when connected through the Sonnet card - could this be causing a conflict with your actual SCSI volumes? Have you tryed removing the SCSI card (leaving the Sonnet & ATA's in) and booting up?

Oh yes - one more thing - the Sonnet cards are notorious for firmware updates - I guess they tend to sit on the shelf for a while and you can never really tell how old the one you got is - so you may want to check their website for an update or known conflict. Hope some of that helps

[This message has been edited by thehitch (edited May 30, 2001).]

[Shaneo1234]

So, I found a Tempo firmware upgrade on their website and installed it. So far, so good! My computer has booted consistently the last 10 times or so. It seems to have fixed the problem. If I can go for 3 or more days without it freezing at startup, I'll declare victory. Thanks to all of you for the help!

[Shaneo1234]

ARRRGGGHHHH... This problem is frustrating in the worst way! I tried the Tempo ATA/66 Firmware update. It worked booting my computer 15-20 times in a row. Then all of a sudden, it started doing the same thing again - freeze at startup on the gray screen with the cursor. This is an incredibly difficult problem to troubleshoot as it is sporadic! When it had the problem again, it froze 4 times in a row before finally booting correctly! I have yet to remove my SCSI 2 card to try this out. Perhaps it's one of my ATA cables? Or the way I formatted the drive? The firmware update says it fixed HD mounting problems for Hard Disk Toolkit 4.0. I have 3.0... Not sure if it matters... But this kind of problem is extremely troublesome! Any additional suggestions are appreciated. I'm about to scream at Sonnet!

[DaveNinja]

You might want to look at http://www.xlr8yourmac.com I think they have people talking about using the Tempo with the Rev 1 B&W G3s. They may mention problems/solutions in the IDE section.

thefoureyes.com

[Shaneo1234]

Thanks Ninja, will do... I sent off a very descriptive email to Sonnet. I'll keep this board posted on what happens with them.

[Shaneo1234]

Sonnet emailed me back pretty quickly. They say that the Tempo ATA66 card since it recognizes IDE drives as SCSI, sometimes has conflicts with Adaptec SCSI cards. They asked me for the specific model number and told me there are workarounds. So hopefully, I'll be able to get my machine running normally sometime in the near future... I'll post the results.