Adaptec A2940U S1 with P4PE

  • Thread starter Thread starter Andrey Tarasevich
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A

Andrey Tarasevich

Hello

I'm trying to use Adaptec A2940U S1 SCSI controller (Compaq OEM) with my
P4PE motherboard. There is nothing connected to the card at this time.
The system freezes at initialization stage immediately after displaying
the SCSI card's startup banner. Does anyone have any idea about what
could be going wrong? Has anyone had any success with using this Compaq
OEM card with P4PE? Maybe I should change something in BIOS?
 
Andrey said:
Hello

I'm trying to use Adaptec A2940U S1 SCSI controller (Compaq OEM) with my
P4PE motherboard. There is nothing connected to the card at this time.
The system freezes at initialization stage immediately after displaying
the SCSI card's startup banner. Does anyone have any idea about what
could be going wrong? Has anyone had any success with using this Compaq
OEM card with P4PE? Maybe I should change something in BIOS?
Click to expand...

Go to the Adaptec website and look for the manual or instruction set for
the 2940 SCSI host adapter card. It might need to be re-configured, if it
had been previously set up to boot a SCSI HD. To access the card's bios,
the normal Adaptec key combination is Ctrl+A, right after the initial POST
screen.
 
Ghostrider said:
Go to the Adaptec website and look for the manual or instruction set for
the 2940 SCSI host adapter card. It might need to be re-configured, if it
had been previously set up to boot a SCSI HD. To access the card's bios,
the normal Adaptec key combination is Ctrl+A, right after the initial POST
screen.
...
Click to expand...

I've been there already. According to the information available from
their web site, the card is supposed to display a message asking the
user to press Ctrl-A in order to access the setup program. This is
supposed to happen right after the initial banner. This doesn't happen
in my case. The machine freezes up right after the banner. No message
prompting me to press Ctrl-A is displayed.

Anyway, I tried pressing Ctrl-A at different points of the
initialization process. It has no effect whatsoever. Looks like the card
hangs up well before it has a chance to respond to any keystrokes.
 
Perhaps try a different PCI slot?
Joe
I've been there already. According to the information available from
their web site, the card is supposed to display a message asking the
user to press Ctrl-A in order to access the setup program. This is
supposed to happen right after the initial banner. This doesn't happen
in my case. The machine freezes up right after the banner. No message
prompting me to press Ctrl-A is displayed.

Anyway, I tried pressing Ctrl-A at different points of the
initialization process. It has no effect whatsoever. Looks like the card
hangs up well before it has a chance to respond to any keystrokes.
Click to expand...
 
Hello

I'm trying to use Adaptec A2940U S1 SCSI controller (Compaq OEM) with my
P4PE motherboard. There is nothing connected to the card at this time.
The system freezes at initialization stage immediately after displaying
the SCSI card's startup banner. Does anyone have any idea about what
could be going wrong? Has anyone had any success with using this Compaq
OEM card with P4PE? Maybe I should change something in BIOS?
Click to expand...

Try going into the Bios Advance/PCI Confiuration Menu and set
"Onboard ATA Device First" to [Yes]. Your system may be trying to boot
from the controller card first.
Stephen Spark
 
Stephen said:
...
I'm trying to use Adaptec A2940U S1 SCSI controller (Compaq OEM) with my
P4PE motherboard. There is nothing connected to the card at this time.
The system freezes at initialization stage immediately after displaying
the SCSI card's startup banner. Does anyone have any idea about what
could be going wrong? Has anyone had any success with using this Compaq
OEM card with P4PE? Maybe I should change something in BIOS?
Click to expand...

Try going into the Bios Advance/PCI Confiuration Menu and set
"Onboard ATA Device First" to [Yes]. Your system may be trying to boot
from the controller card first.
...
Click to expand...

I don't see such option in my BIOS settings. I just installed version
1005, wich is the latest for P4PE, if I'm not mistaken.
 
Stephen said:
...
I'm trying to use Adaptec A2940U S1 SCSI controller (Compaq OEM) with my
P4PE motherboard. There is nothing connected to the card at this time.
The system freezes at initialization stage immediately after displaying
the SCSI card's startup banner. Does anyone have any idea about what
could be going wrong? Has anyone had any success with using this Compaq
OEM card with P4PE? Maybe I should change something in BIOS?
Click to expand...

Try going into the Bios Advance/PCI Confiuration Menu and set
"Onboard ATA Device First" to [Yes]. Your system may be trying to boot
from the controller card first.
...
Click to expand...

I don't see such option in my BIOS settings. I just installed version
1005, which is the latest for P4PE, if I'm not mistaken.
 
Andrey said:
...
I'm trying to use Adaptec A2940U S1 SCSI controller (Compaq OEM) with my
P4PE motherboard. There is nothing connected to the card at this time.
The system freezes at initialization stage immediately after displaying
the SCSI card's startup banner. Does anyone have any idea about what
could be going wrong? Has anyone had any success with using this Compaq
OEM card with P4PE? Maybe I should change something in BIOS?
...
Click to expand...

Looks like the problem was caused by improper termination. Today I
finally purchased the correct SCSI cable and connected a device (Canon
film scanner) to the card. The system no longer hangs (even when the
scanner is turned off) and now I have access to the SCSI setup utility.
Initially the card was complaining about not being able to find a SCSI
device to boot from, but this problem was solved by fiddling with the
card's settings. It still makes a noticeable delay in the initialization
sequence, but it is not a big deal.

BTW, is that true that I still have to reboot the machine every time I
turn on the device in order to allow the card to detect it? I haven't
been watching the progress in SCSI area lately and have no idea whether
modern external SCSI devices are supposed to be hot-swappable.
 
Andrey Tarasevich said:
Looks like the problem was caused by improper termination. Today I
finally purchased the correct SCSI cable and connected a device (Canon
film scanner) to the card. The system no longer hangs (even when the
scanner is turned off) and now I have access to the SCSI setup utility.
Initially the card was complaining about not being able to find a SCSI
device to boot from, but this problem was solved by fiddling with the
card's settings. It still makes a noticeable delay in the initialization
sequence, but it is not a big deal.

BTW, is that true that I still have to reboot the machine every time I
turn on the device in order to allow the card to detect it? I haven't
been watching the progress in SCSI area lately and have no idea whether
modern external SCSI devices are supposed to be hot-swappable.
Click to expand...

It depends on the OS, device and controller driver. If you're running
a recent version of Windows (2K or XP) you should be able to go
into Device Manager after powering on your SCSI device, right-click
and "Scan for hardware changes". For SCSI hard drives you can
also "Rescan disks" in Disk Management.

Some SCSI peripherals will not initialize properly unless you reboot,
but most will.

RickW
 
You should be able to switch on the sacnner after power up and WinXP
(or other) can be forced to "rescan" or detect new hardware from
device mgr. new hardware.

However, in such a situation (I assume you have no other scsi
devices?, make sure the adaptec card is set to the correct termination
(not auto), it's likely if set to auto, then at powerup the card will
not terminate properly, and maybe you'll have issues when you poweron
and init the scanner?

Good luck.
 
seeker said:
You should be able to switch on the sacnner after power up and WinXP
(or other) can be forced to "rescan" or detect new hardware from
device mgr. new hardware.

However, in such a situation (I assume you have no other scsi
devices?, make sure the adaptec card is set to the correct termination
(not auto), it's likely if set to auto, then at powerup the card will
not terminate properly, and maybe you'll have issues when you poweron
and init the scanner?
...
Click to expand...

Actually, I have it set to "Auto" and I'm still able to rescan and
detect the scanner. (BTW, why not "Auto"? Why shouldn't it terminate
properly?). Unfortunately, the rescan command in XP is only available
for accounts with administrator rights.
 
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