SCSI disk timeout using cardbus Adaptec 1480A

[brian hickling]

I have been using an omnibook6000 notebook with an Adaptec Cardbus 1480A (using card wizard due to the lack of a NT cardbus driver). I have had No problems for over a year with three IBM SCSI drives connected (singly). However I just purchased a new 32GB IBM SCSI disk - identical apparently to the three others. The adapter does not find this disk (error 9 timeout). The disk is detected by my adapter on my desktop system so the disk is OK. The cardbus controller still works fine with the other disks. I am using NT4 and have no IRQ problems - the disk is properly terminated and I only use one disk at a time on the adapter so no SCSI id conflict. I have no idea what is the problem?
Why should an identical IBM disk fail to be recognised - it is unformatted as yet so perhaps a different process is used for unformatted disk recognition by the disk administrator and some change I have made to my system (I added IOMEGA USB drivers six months ago - which I have since removed with no effect) prevents an unformatted disk from being seen?? I will try to format the disk with my desktop and try qgqin but I do not think this is the problem. I would guess a change in the IBM disk firmware has led to a timeout on the adaptor.....

[Eugeny Brychkov · Accepted solution]

This card you're using - is it SE? And the disk you're trying to connect - is it LVD? Check with disk manual if it can work in SE mode and if there are any jumpers required to tell disk to work in SE mode
Eugeny

[brian hickling]

My controller apparently can do uw (80 & 160MB/s) so must?? be LVD. As I understand it SE can manage only 40mb/s maximum. The problem disk is a 160mb/s LVD model but has a SE jumper so I will try it. The three other disks appear to not be LVD models so it could be the reason.... My desktop uses a LVD controller so this is perhaps why it sees the disk.

[Eugeny Brychkov]

No, your controller is U-SE, 20MB/s max, see http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/support/techspecs.html?sess=no&language=English+US&prodkey=APA-1480A&cat=%2fProduct%2fAPA-1480A
Eugeny

[Marino Meloni_1]

Brian, as Eugeny state, the disk should be forced in SE mode, you should look at the disk documentation in order to found the jumper,

You can also force the disk to work in SE mode inserting a SE terminator on the SCSI chain.
also, as the bus is a narrow one (8 bits data), you shouls set the scsi id between 0 and 6 or it will not be recognized.

http://adaptec-tic.adaptec.com/cgi-bin/adaptec_tic.cfg/php/enduser/popup_adp.php?p_sid=bq6v3oVg&p_lva=5924&p_li=&p_faqid=1977&p_created=981914234

[brian hickling]

Indeed the 1480A is a U-SE card. I tried setting the disk to SE (jumper 5) and also set termination power(jumper 6) and set the ID to 0. However the controller still sees nothing. I have formatted the disk on my desktop (using a UW320 Adaptec controller) and this did not help either (the portable still cannot see the disk). I have no idea what to try next. Apparently there is a "no utlra" setting on the 1480A but it cannot be set in NT and I do not know if it would help anyway. Since no better controller protables seems to exist I do not see a solution.

[Eugeny Brychkov]

I suspect that Marino is right: disk is LVD and when you set SE jumper it becomes W-SE (wide). Your adapter is Narrow, and if connecting wide drive to NSE controller higher data bits (8-15) are floating. You need to tell drive that it should work as narrow - how - via jumber, via special cable where these high data lines are 'terminated' or use NSE terminator
Eugeny

[brian hickling]

According to Adaptec the 1480A cardbus adapter cannot deal with a wide device unless the device can operate in a narrow mode (SE mode jumper still leaves the drive as wide). Active termination is usually used to connect a narrow device to a wide bus (according to Adaptec) and not the other way around - I do not think this makes much sense since if a narrow device can operate on a wide bus via active termination the reverse should be true. The fact that Adaptec produce a wide to narrow converter with active termination but warn that is not for attaching LVD devices to narrow controllers suggests there is another problem. Since Adaptec do not produce a wide version of the cardbus adapter (and niether does anyone else) it seems that it is impossible to use the new LVD 160&320 wide devices on a portable. My IBM UltraWide disk definitiely has no narrow mode only SE. However my other disks were wide SCSI and worked fine "apparently" because they were not LVD models. More to this than active termination??