P4SCT is incompatible with my hardware. Should I get a refund?

[kilowatt]

I just bought a P4SCT motherboard. The P4SCT will boot from SCSI, but
does not show up in the bios. This causes a major problem. Because
the bios does not recognize my SCSI, I can't set it to the first boot
device. When I boot, I always get a message that CD is not found. I
can then press enter and it will boot from the SCSI.

Then, to make matters worse, I also have SATA drives. When I plug the
SATA into the mobo, the bios sees it as the boot drive and will hang
when I try to boot.

Tech Support says that my AHA2940 has an old bios and is not
compatible with the P4SCT.

If I can't use my SCSI and my SATA is it my fault? I don't think so.

The drives coexisted fine in the previous motherboard.

 

[Conor]

I just bought a P4SCT motherboard. The P4SCT will boot from SCSI, but
does not show up in the bios. This causes a major problem. Because
the bios does not recognize my SCSI, I can't set it to the first boot
device. When I boot, I always get a message that CD is not found. I
can then press enter and it will boot from the SCSI.

Then, to make matters worse, I also have SATA drives. When I plug the
SATA into the mobo, the bios sees it as the boot drive and will hang
when I try to boot.

Tech Support says that my AHA2940 has an old bios and is not
compatible with the P4SCT.

If I can't use my SCSI and my SATA is it my fault?

Yes. It is up to the buyer to ensure what they buy works with what they
have.

 

[Paul]

I just bought a P4SCT motherboard. The P4SCT will boot from SCSI, but
does not show up in the bios. This causes a major problem. Because
the bios does not recognize my SCSI, I can't set it to the first boot
device. When I boot, I always get a message that CD is not found. I
can then press enter and it will boot from the SCSI.

Then, to make matters worse, I also have SATA drives. When I plug the
SATA into the mobo, the bios sees it as the boot drive and will hang
when I try to boot.

Tech Support says that my AHA2940 has an old bios and is not
compatible with the P4SCT.

If I can't use my SCSI and my SATA is it my fault? I don't think so.

The drives coexisted fine in the previous motherboard.

Have you looked for a BIOS update ? That card has been around for a
while, so there could be many different versions of it. One web page
I found, mentioned a date of 1994! Try to get the exact model number
and see what is available. If Adaptec doesn't list the file on their
current web site, you can always use the services of web.archive.org
to try and track down the file. The web page I was looking at, almost
was suggesting the BIOS on the card, was EPROM based and needed an
external programmer. It is much better, if the firmware is stored
in an EEPROM, that supports on-line upgrade of the firmware.

I guess the aspect of the SCSI BIOS that needs improvement, is the
registering of INT 0x13 services. Someone else who answered your questions,
suggested that a SCSI card should present the hard drive, in the hard
drive list.

Another possibility, is to look for another SCSI card. Cards with
2940 in the name, are selling for $40 in the listing here. Maybe one
of these has later firmware and is more compatible. Did Supermicro
Tech Support offer a list of tested cards ? Some motherboard companies
have test reports, where they keep track of what cards they've tested
in the lab. Asus used to do that (eons ago), but doesn't make the
current test reports publicly available for download. And besides,
they might not do that much testing anymore anyway Being a
server company, Supermicro should be doing more testing than
normal.

http://castle.pricewatch.com/s/search.asp?s=aha2940

Paul

 

[Terry]

Have you looked for a BIOS update ? That card has been around for a
while, so there could be many different versions of it. One web page
I found, mentioned a date of 1994! Try to get the exact model number
and see what is available. If Adaptec doesn't list the file on their
current web site, you can always use the services of web.archive.org
to try and track down the file. The web page I was looking at, almost
was suggesting the BIOS on the card, was EPROM based and needed an
external programmer. It is much better, if the firmware is stored
in an EEPROM, that supports on-line upgrade of the firmware.

I guess the aspect of the SCSI BIOS that needs improvement, is the
registering of INT 0x13 services. Someone else who answered your questions,
suggested that a SCSI card should present the hard drive, in the hard
drive list.

Another possibility, is to look for another SCSI card. Cards with
2940 in the name, are selling for $40 in the listing here. Maybe one
of these has later firmware and is more compatible. Did Supermicro
Tech Support offer a list of tested cards ? Some motherboard companies
have test reports, where they keep track of what cards they've tested
in the lab. Asus used to do that (eons ago), but doesn't make the
current test reports publicly available for download. And besides,
they might not do that much testing anymore anyway Being a
server company, Supermicro should be doing more testing than
normal.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions.

I guess I no longer have SCSI.

I paid an ungodly amount of cash for the SCSI card I have. The card
is a SCSI wide card. The drive it controls also cost an ungodly
amount.

I found the card today for 10$
The drive is only an 18G drive but it is a 15k RPM drive and it is a
wide drive. It was smoking fast. It goes for 99$ today.

I just ordered 500G SATA drive for 114 bucks.

 

[lisa swallowz]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions.

I guess I no longer have SCSI.

I paid an ungodly amount of cash for the SCSI card I have. The card
is a SCSI wide card. The drive it controls also cost an ungodly
amount.

I found the card today for 10$
The drive is only an 18G drive but it is a 15k RPM drive and it is a
wide drive. It was smoking fast. It goes for 99$ today.

I just ordered 500G SATA drive for 114 bucks.

You can also get 10,000 rpm sata drives or you can use raid0 with sata and
stripe 2 7200 rpm drives to get 14,400rpm equivalent. Plus sata is much
faster than scsi if it is set up correctly.

 

[Terry]

You can also get 10,000 rpm sata drives or you can use raid0 with sata and
stripe 2 7200 rpm drives to get 14,400rpm equivalent. Plus sata is much
faster than scsi if it is set up correctly

When you say ....set up correctly, is that more than just formating
the drives and use Raid0? I have 2 WD 1600 drives that are 7200RPM.
I plan convert them to RAID when I get another drive large enough to
store the data for the format.

Since I can't boot from my SCSI, I was thinking about putting it back
in the machine. It is only 18G but it is a SCSI wide drive. I would
like to find out how they compare.

Interesting nickname BTW.

Thanks for your time.