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Date:	Thu, 11 Sep 2003 23:24:54 PDT7
From:	"J. R. Fox" <jr_fox@pacbell.net >
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: started out well, went downhill fast

Content Type: text/plain

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O.K., so I'm assembling this small form factor system. Followed the
step-by-step
instructions for the hardware, and it all seemed to be going together
pretty well.
I thought this should be within my capabilities by this point, but
maybe that was
a hasty and optimistic assessment . . . .

My first mistake may have been insisting on a SCSI hard drive (because
I wanted
it to be fast). Already mentioned the 29160-fitting caper, but that
got resolved.
To start out, I put in an old 9G SCSI that still has DOS-7, W3, W4,
and NT on it,
though I only had some hope of booting DOS (and that only as a test)
because the
hardware lineup is so different on this system. My thinking here was
that if things
didn't work out, I might still be able to return the large, new SCSI
h/d I bought, if
it had never been unpacked. The old one was a boot h/d, and I'm
pretty sure it was
set as HD-0, though I still need to confirm that. Anyway, I just
could not boot DOS
off this hard drive, no matter what I tried, including trying various
versions of
ASPI8U2.SYS and ASPI8DOS.SYS. (On their website, Adaptec has a
U160DOS
archive that only includes another version of ASPI8U2 and ASPICD,
which
were among the ones I tried.) What's weird is that if I boot DOS off
of a floppy,
*without ANY* of the ASPI files, I can see the DOS C:, even run some
programs
on it. But otherwise, no joy. ASPI8U2 seems to load, but then
everything just
stops. No Command Processor is found. Game Over, RESET time.

I think I have all the correct settings set in the Award Bios, and in
the 29160 Bios.
One thing I noticed right away was that, at boot time, the drive
"signs on" only with
its make and model #, **not** with anything like the _additional_
"ULTRA-2 LVD"
I'm used to seeing flash by on my U2W-based desktop system. A cabling
issue ? I dunno,
'cause it's the Adaptec approved cable they package with the 29160
card.

There is a paragraph in the Adaptec U160 User's Guide pdf, to the
effect that if you move
an existing drive to a new controller, you will need to re - low-level
the drive. But I doubt
that's what's going on here. The U160 is supposed to be backwards
compatible with earlier
Adaptec models.

Not very promising, I thought, but let's try it with a brand new SCSI
drive. I had a
spare 9G, never used, a later model than the other one. Here too, I
forgot to set the SCSI
ID ahead of time, but the on-the-HA utilities pick it up as factory
set at ID-6, so I set it
to that for booting purposes. (I had had some trouble fitting this
drive, and didn't want
to take it out again and put it back in, just to finesse the ID.) I
ran a surface verification
which showed no problems. A floppy boot of DOS, then Partition Magic
to establish
a FAT-16 primary, then formatting, and I dropped a bootable DOS into
the partition. The
results were much the same as with the old drive. No booting DOS from
the hard drive.
Maybe I'm wrong here, but if simple DOS is a No Go, I'm thinking that
no version of Win
or OS/2 is going to be viable on the drive either, under these
circumstances.

One thing I did notice with the new SCSI drive was that it seemed to
do a thermal recal about
every minute or so. I hope this doesn't mean that it just runs too
hot for this small space. There's
no way I can see to get extra cooling in there. I don't even have the
cover on yet, so it's only going
to get hotter.

[ That reminds me: According to the BIOS, I'm getting temp. readings
of System = 46 degrees C.,
CPU = 36 degrees C., PWM (?) = 39 degrees C. This is with a P4 /
2.8. Are these acceptable ?
They are definitely higher than what I see in the full-size desktop,
but that is with a P3 and much
better cooling. ]

I put a cheapo Sony DVD reader in this system, and can't get it online
either. So, no installing anythig
from cd. Maybe MSCDEX is not what you need for this kind of drive,
even though it reads CDs
. . . or else it has been too long since I knew how to set it.

I am almost looking foward to grappling with the various eCS setup
issues, but first things first. Gotta
get the basic hardware side squared away.

All help will be much appreciated.

Jordan

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