Promise Ultra133TX2 and Maxtor 160GB

[swilc0x]

The problem:
When the promise controller is detecting my drives (4 Maxtor 160GB
DiamondMax Plus 9), one of the drives appears garbled. My promise boot
screen looks like this:

D0 Maxtor 6Y160P0 LBA 152GB Ultra DMA 6
D1 Maxtor 6Y160P0 LBA 152GB Ultra DMA 6
D2 Maxtor 6Y160P0 LBA 152GB Ultra DMA 6
D3 ma|tor$6}160t0$ $ $ $ LBA 187445GB Ultra DMA 5

That's the screen.

Unfortunately, drive 3 (D3) is unusable from within the operating
system. I don't think it's the drive. By swapping out cables and
changing jumper settings on the drives (from cable select so explicit
master and slave configurations) I've managed to 'migrate' the problem
from one drive to another. The problem first appeared on drive zero
(D0). Also, I have two of these Promise Ultra133TX2 cards, swapping
them out does nothing either. I've also tried moving the card to
different PCI slots.

No change.

Here are my specs:
This is intended to be a backup server.
Intel® R440LX Server Board Dual PII 300
128MB RAM
On board video
On board Ethernet
1 FDD
4 Maxtor 160GB DiamondMax Plus drives
No other drives

Any suggestions?

 

[jpsga]

The problem:
When the promise controller is detecting my drives (4 Maxtor 160GB
DiamondMax Plus 9), one of the drives appears garbled. My promise boot
screen looks like this:

D0 Maxtor 6Y160P0 LBA 152GB Ultra DMA 6
D1 Maxtor 6Y160P0 LBA 152GB Ultra DMA 6
D2 Maxtor 6Y160P0 LBA 152GB Ultra DMA 6
D3 ma|tor$6}160t0$ $ $ $ LBA 187445GB Ultra DMA 5

That's the screen.

Unfortunately, drive 3 (D3) is unusable from within the operating
system. I don't think it's the drive. By swapping out cables and
changing jumper settings on the drives (from cable select so explicit
master and slave configurations) I've managed to 'migrate' the problem
from one drive to another. The problem first appeared on drive zero
(D0). Also, I have two of these Promise Ultra133TX2 cards, swapping
them out does nothing either. I've also tried moving the card to
different PCI slots.

No change.

Here are my specs:
This is intended to be a backup server.
Intel® R440LX Server Board Dual PII 300
128MB RAM
On board video
On board Ethernet
1 FDD
4 Maxtor 160GB DiamondMax Plus drives
No other drives

Any suggestions?

You migrated the problem by moving a bad cable?

 

[swilc0x]

I thought about that early on. I tried swapping out cables with no
change.

Let me do that again just to verify.....


ARRGHHHH!!!

Swapping cables fixed it. I isolated a bad cable. Man, I know I tried
that. Must have gotten confused as to which cable was which.
Oh well, bad IDE cable was the problem.

Easy enough.

Thanks