The Adaptec curse or why can't I boot from an SCSI cdrom

Hello fellow Adaptec Users

I have 10 computers that have Adaptec SCSI controllers installed. One
uses a 39320 card, but most use 39160 cards. All the SCSI cdrom's are
Plextor UltraPlex units also known as the PX-32CS. I have a boot CD I
have created to run Norton ghost and copy disks, create images, and
restore from images. On the older motherboards I have no problems, and
I can boot from a cdrom just fine, but on the more recent motherboards
I have a variety of problems that I have developed workarounds for,
but it's still a PIA.

I have two P4T-E motherboards.

On the first one if I boot from the CD I get the message "A bootable
disk has been detected. I has been assigned as drive A: and your A:
diskette has been reassigned as drive B:". Not exactly the verbage,
but you all have seen it and know what I am talking about. If I let
the boot process continue normally the system will ignore the CD and
boot from the first hard disk drive. If I put a diskette, any
diskette, in drive A: then the system will boot from the cdrom drive.
My workaround for this system is to keep an old recovery diskette in
the drive and insert it any time I want to boot from the cdrom.

On the second one if I boot from the CD I get the message "A bootable
disk has been detected. I has been assigned as drive A: and your A:
diskette has been reassigned as drive B:" . If I let the boot process
continue normally the system will ignore the CD and boot from the
first hard disk drive. If I put a non-bootable diskette in drive A: I
get the normal "not a system disk. Insert a bootable disk and press
any key". If I put a DOS boot disk in drive A: the system will boot
from it. My workaround for this system is to keep a copy of the
diskette I used to make the bootable image for the ghost CD and insert
that when I want to boot from the cdrom. The diskette loads DOS and
the cdrom drivers, then switches to the CD and loads ghost.

I have two P4C800 motherboards.

The first one works identically to the second P4T-E, so I keep a
diskette with the CD boot image on it in that machine also.

The second P4C800 is a little more complicated. On that machine I also
have a Plextor DVD drive; A SATA PX716SA. I used to be able to boot
from the SCSI cdrom drive by using the boot menu. Just hit F8 during
the memory test and the pop-up boot menu appears at the end of the
BIOS processing and gives me the option to boot from any of the
detected devices. If I try that now the system looks in drive A: then
it checks out the DVD drive which is empty of course, and finally
gives me a little different "no system disk" type of message but the
meaning is clear that it can't find the boot image it told me a few
seconds ago it just read from the CD. If I put a CD in the DVD drive
or a diskette in the A: drive it will attempt to boot from either one.
However since I have the SATA drive set to enhanced mode in the BIOS
for the benefit of Windows, the system will freeze up during the boot
process. Yes, I could go into the BIOS and change the DVD settings to
compatible, boot from the DVD drive, go in afterwards and change it
back, but it's easier to put a floppy with the CD boot image on it in
drive A: just as I did in the 2 previous machines..

Now, what is going on here? All these machines used to be able to boot
from the Plextor SCSI drive just fine and all with their current
controller cards. I have tried the bootable CD in the older computers
and it works fine so it's not the CD. Sure I have made changes to some
of the BIOS settings over time, and I have upgraded the BIOS versions
and as of now all computers are running the latest version. I have not
changed the settings in the BIOS on the controller cards and the
computers that work and those that fail have the exact same settings.
I have no recollection of any changes around the time these problems
started. It just seemed like the problem occurred with one of the
P4T-E machines one day, then later on the other, and finally the
P4C800's were cursed as well. All this happened over an extended
period of time.

Anyone have any ideas? Paul, if you read this I would welcome your
opinion.

 

Maybe it is an Adaptec issue. Now that I think about it,
I was never able to successfully boot a Windows installation
cdrom from an Plextor SCSI CD drive/Adaptec 391XX or 2940
combination in new P4C800 motherboards. For this reason, I
install from an ATAPI-IDE CD drive and then re-configure
for SCSI afterwards. Don't have time to fiddle with Ctrl-A
and setting in the Adaptec bios settings.

 

A few general comments:

-- Non-hard disk SCSI components (including CDROMs)
are going the way of the dinosaur, and system manufacturers
are becoming more and more reticent to fix these kinds of
boot problems in their system bioses (and that IS where
most of these problems reside). Really the best long-term
solution is to move to IDE CDROMs.

-- Make sure your Adaptec controllers have the latest bios.

-- Taking one machine as a test case, try different PCI slots
for the SCSI controller and see if it makes any difference.

 

Well, I'm no "IT guy", and the solution you would use
for one computer, won't scale well for 10 or 100 computers.
As your post above indicates, it is a lot of work to record
the foibles of each machine type individually.

The motherboard boot order has been problematic since the
introduction of AMI BIOS. I don't recollect the same kinds
of issues with boot order for Award, but then again, I
haven't been doing this stuff for that long.

The AMI BIOS just doesn't seem to have a "strategy" when it
comes to booting. If a piece of hardware goes missing since
the last boot, the boot order will change, in unpredictable
ways.

In terms of the messages you are getting, I expect some of
them are coming from the SCSI BIOS. The one about the
substitution for the floppy, for example. Again, I have no
detailed knowledge of how INT 0x13 services work, how the
various BIOS modules register their services at boot time -
it would seem that the SCSI BIOS is doing floppy emulation
some how, and moving the real floppy out of the way.

If I pretend for a moment, to be the "IT guy", I guess I would
ask the question as to what common denominator will work on
all computers. I think the answer is an IDE based CDROM drive.
I get some damn fine drives at my local computer store for
about $30 and haven't had problems with them. If the budget
allows, I think I would equip all the machines with an
ordinary old-fashioned CD drive.

I'm a little surprised at your SATA DVD results, and that
you actually needed to switch to "Compatible" mode. The
purpose of "Compatible" is to make SATA devices appear like
IDE devices, so that an older OS is unaware that a new hardware
type is present. I guess I did not expect, when running
"Enhanced", that there would be a difference in the way that
boot operation would work with the SATA DVD. Live and learn.

Since motherboard BIOS, at a minimum, will be tested to boot
from a floppy, IDE CDROM, IDE hard drive, all of which are
connected to the Southbridge, that is where I would want to
install devices that "just have to work". For less demanding
"data only" purposes, I would let the users have their SCSI
chains, USB jump drives, whizzy this and that, Promise RAID
arrays, but leave a vanilla CD for the "IT guy".

In a bigger company, there would be some kind of network
based deployment - just set it up during the day, then at
night, deployment scripts fix all the machines. Without
automation, administering machines rapidly gets out of hand.
(I've administered about a dozen Unix machines in a
departmental setting, and that is where I learned that
scalable approaches are a must - and that I wasn't cut out
to be the "IT guy" I was just the local "go-to" guy
with zero budget.)

HTH,
Paul

 

This is all very disappointing, because you've determined that more
recent Asus BIOSes simply don't support Adaptec's SCSI BIOS the way they
used to - as evidenced by your systems booting from HDD or floppy after
the Adaptec BIOS already pushed them aside.

Unfortunately Rick is probably correct - Asus will have little interest
in fixing the problem, which relegates you to using workarounds or IDE
CDROMS - which have never had full el-torito support.

P2B

 

snip

I have the earlier 19160 Adaptec connecting a HDD and 2 CDD drives
on the P4P800. No problemo--I would contact Adaptec support and
also look for an Adaptec bios fix.

 

Pete, Paul and guys :

I have been using Adaptec SCSI on ASUS boards for "ever". About 6
months ago, much trouble started. My board is the P4C800E-Deluxe. My
card is the Adaptec 29160N. The problem .. if I insert a CD into my
Plextor SCSI internal CD reader all hell breaks loose. My HD slows
down, files get corrupted, I crash periodically. Most of the problems
can be eliminated by disabling auto-play. In any event, I finally
gave up, dumped my Plextor SCSI CD and replaced it with a Lite-On IDE
CD reader. I am still using my Maxtor 36 Gig SCSI 10K III drives and
they are performing as they should.

This was NOT the case when I first set the unit up. It happened
about 6 months ago. I have no idea if it is related to XP-SP2 or the
AMI BIOS (1017) that I am using but I feel certain that one of these
is the culprit. (BTW .. I hate the AMI BIOS !!!!!)

Norm

 

Thanks Paul, and everyone else who responded.

I have the latest BIOS on all the Adaptec cards and they still give
the same messages (regarding the reassignment of the floppy to drive
B that they always did; it just doesn't work. After reading all the
responses and thinking about what has happened, I feel that the most
likely candidate for blame is the ASUS bios. When I update the BIOS I
usually take a Ghost image copy first, but if the update works I don't
usually attempt another Ghost image, and therefore another boot from
the CD, for quite a while. Since they all worked once, and I have had
no major hardware changes since then, the BIOS is most likely the
culprit.

While I could go out and buy a box full of IDE cdrom's I think that
cure would be worse than the disease. I will continue to use my
work-around's and if ASUS comes out with another update for the P4C800
I will put it on and see if that helps. I don't expect an update for
the P4T-E any time soon if at all so I guess I am stuck there. Anyhow,
it's not terrible, I just don't like it when things don't work
properly - even if I do have a way to get around it.

 

I've had an issue with the Asus A7N8X deluxe bios with scsi devices in the
past.

If I flash the motherboard bios to have the latest Silicon Image Sata bios
installed it will not boot correctly, i.e. it will not see sata / scsi hdd's
or scsi / ide cdrom drives as boot devices and just hangs. Changing the
boot order or the sata / scsi bios order makes no difference, only disabling
the sata bios allows me to boot the machine. Flash the bios back to the
older version and no problems at all, installing the new sata bios into the
old motherboard bios also hangs the machine leading me to believe some
change in the sata bios has caused a problem. I reported this to Silicon
Image - no response, I reported it to Adaptec - no response. If its old
hardware then forget Adaptec they just don't care about bios problems if its
older than 6 months and Silicon Image don't even register the 3112a sata
interface as one of their products anymore.

Steve

 

Which Adaptec controller are you using? Which bios version?

 

I should really remember to keep an eye on threads and reply slightly
quicker.

I'm using a scsi controller 19160 with v3.10 bios. The sata controller is
currently on bios 4.2.27

The MB is currently on 1007.

Like I said, any updates to the sata bios 4.2.50 or 4.2.47 causes the
problem.