SCSI Hard Disks

[Nick Halliwell]

Hi all,

I'm having a nightmare here. Last week I bought a new PT|24 system to go in my blue/white G3 (400MHz, 128Mb RAM, 6 giga IDE, OS8.6 etc.) The deal included an Atto PSC SCSI card and Barracuda 9 giga internal SCSI HD. I also already had a Quantum Fireball 3.2 giga internal SCSI HD which I thought I might use as an extra drive.

First problem was the nobody thought to tell me that I'd have to buy a USB floppy drive to authorise the software! So 2 days later I got that...

Next up they'd sent me the wrong SCSI ribbon, SCSI2 rather than SCSI3. So I went out and bought one.

I thought I was there at that point. I booted up and ran the FWB software. It could see both the SCSI HDs and my external Jaz. Great! So I tried to initialise them. No dice. Something called an ESM error or something. So I thought I'd try partitioning and formatting them with Drive Set up and THEN use FWB. I partitioned the Barracuda into 3, formatted it and it mounted OK. So I formatted the Fireball. It mounted too.

So I went to FWB and asked to format the Fireball. It asked to update the driver so I said OK. Then it began to format it. However, with the progress meter at about 20% I got a message at the bottom saying it was finished and then it hung. I left it for about 20 minutes to see if it was still busy. But it was still frozen.

When I reset the machine it refused to boot. It went through that first grey screen OK, then when it got to the bit where the mouse pointer appears it just hung. The problem appears to be the internal SCSI buss. If I disconnect all internal SCSI devices (i.e. the 2 HDs) then the machine boots normally and it can see the external Jaz no problem. But if I connect either or both of the internal HDs it hangs. I even tried connecting a spare SCSI CD-ROM drive I had lying around to see if the drives had both got corrupted or something (unlikely, but you never know!) But if still hung.

As far as I can tell everything is terminated OK and has different IDs. Difficult to tell as the manual for the Barracuda is as clear as mud (it's the PDF from the Net - there was no manual with it at all) and initially it looked to be working.

If anyone out there has ANY ideas at all please could they let me know? This has been an incredibly frustrating weekend!

Thanks

Nick Halliwell
[email protected]

[Humbucker]

Howdy Nick,

For what it's worth... go back to square one and isolate the pieces to most expediently diagnose the problem. Be patient and you'll resolve it.

I'd definitely remove the Jaz and its cable until you've sorted out all your internal SCSI problems. ALSO, do your troubleshooting with all USB devices disconnected, except your original Apple keyboard and Apple mouse, and disconnect any other connected devices your Mac didn't ship with. I'd also disconnect it from your local network if you have one.

Next, I'd run Norton Utilities or TechTool Pro to diagnose your internal Apple boot drive. I'd then update the driver on the boot drive and rebuild the desktop so you know your boot drive isn't contributing to the problems.

Make sure you've installed all the appropriate Apple OS updaters, and that your USB floppy drive software is the very latest, and use Iomega's latest drivers (v 6.0.7?) as well.

For internal hard drives, especially those in addition to the boot drive, the most common problems are SCSI ID conflicts and termination conflicts. And I know how difficult it can be to get reliable, definitive information on this. (In general, _never_ share SCSI-ID numbers, and don't terminate additional internal drives.) I'd install just one of your new internal HD's at a time and sort out those problems, then install the other one alone before looking at both simultaneously.

Be sure you haven't chosen SCSI-ID 0 (your boot drive), SCSI-ID 3 (your internal CD or DVD), SCSI-ID4? (an Apple internal Zip drive if present), or SCSI-ID 7 (your Mac), and that your two new drives don't share the same SCSI-ID. That leaves you with 1, 2, 5, and 6 (Iomega drives usually reside on either 5 or 6 of the external bus). Also, be aware of the various SCSI types and consider what types your drives are, in conjunction with your ATTO card. See the Apple TechInfo document: http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n58204

Make sure you have the latest appropriate drivers for your ATTO SCSI card. For example, ATTO ExpressPCI firmware v 1.5 was just released 4/11/00.

Versiontracker at www.versiontracker.com is a great resource for all the latest Mac related software updaters, and has a search function. And, of course, be certain all your internal SCSI cables are fully seated, with no bent pins anywhere, and fully seated power cables to the drives

For formatting software on your internal hard drives, reformatting a drive with a different software than what the drive originally shipped with _can_ open up potential compatibility problems. Macs seem to like all internal drives formatted with the same software. From my experience (general Mac support) I've found Apple's own Drive Setup (latest appropriate version) to yield the highest compatibility (although it rarely works on non-Apple OEM drives), followed by the vastly underrated Charismac's Anubis ( www.charismac.com ) (which used to ship with all drives from APS, www.apstech.com ), with FWB being the highest maintenance formatting software, even though it offers the most options.

After the internal SCSI issues are all resolved, check the termination on your external Jaz Drive, because you say all works when your new internal drives are offline. You might also try another SCSI ID for the Jaz; and even though it's on the external SCSI bus, try avoiding the same number as any internal devices for now. Also, check your Jaz cable - I don't have a Jaz, but my Zip cable demands one cable end just for the drive, and the other just for the SCSI port! Won't work backwards.

Apple's Tech Info Library document search page is at the URL below, and offers tons of information. http://til.info.apple.com

[Nick Halliwell]

Hi and thanks for the reply.

I've actually managed to sort this out in the end. But the only way I could do it was by getting my friendly local computer shop to loan me an Adaptec 2940UW card on the basis of 'if it works you buy it, if it doesn't you bring it back'. And it did work. The machine booted first time with all the internal SCSI stuff connected. I could format the drives and everything was great.

I found I could actually reproduce the hangs with the Adaptec by returning the FWB extension to the Extensions folder. But even with that removed the Atto wouldn't let the system boot.

So my dealer have agreed to refund me on the Atto and I'll pay for the Adaptec. But I lost a whole weekend on this!

Thanks to everyone who contacted me with suggestions. I won't be totally convinced that everything's sorted until I've been using the system with no problems for a couple of weeks!

Thanks!

Nick

[Grey]

I had similar problems when I firsrt got my G3/300 beige.....
finally relized that the FWB extension needs to load last ....

I use Conflict Catcher to rearrange the load order

good luck



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grey
post supervisor
www.soundwerx.com