BP6 and AHA-2940UW problem

Lord Hans · Post by **Lord Hans** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 11:15 am

When I put Adaptec AHA-2940 UW Dual/NE PCI scsii card ino any slot of bp6 it freezes after detecting IDE drives during POST, tried all slots, diferent settings in BIOS, nothing works.
Upgraded BIOS to version RV with no HPT, still the same.
Any ideas?

BTW adaptec card works fine on other board.

purrkur · Post by **purrkur** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 1:56 pm

We got a few around here running SCSI drives in their BP6's. Don't know where they are atm and I don't know what adapters the are running. I am however surprised to see that the 2940 isn't working.

Anyways, could it be an IRQ issue? Have you tried disabling IDE's alltogether, as well as serial/parallel ports that are not being used?

Is your BP6 working reliably without the SCSI adapter?

Lord Hans · Post by **Lord Hans** » Sat Jan 28, 2006 12:40 pm

Well, no, it's got capacitors problem, I'll change them asap, but I don't think it should be an issue (it runs linux on iIDE no problem).
And yes, I disabled serials, parallel and second IDE.

One more thing, this 2940 is OEM version from Dell computer and doesn't have BIOS, maybe bp6 is looking for this non-existing bios?

purrkur · Post by **purrkur** » Sat Jan 28, 2006 2:11 pm

Lord Hans wrote:One more thing, this 2940 is OEM version from Dell computer and doesn't have BIOS, maybe bp6 is looking for this non-existing bios?

No, the BP6 doesn't know if the adapter has a BIOS or not (not all SCSI adapters do). I do have a AHA-2940 UW myself that came from a Gateway machine. Maybe I should dig it out, blow the dust off of it and try it out? Difference is that mine has a BIOS.

I'll let you know how it turns out once I got time to try it out.

Lord Hans · Post by **Lord Hans** » Sat Jan 28, 2006 6:31 pm

OK, thx.
Now I tried everything, even disconnected IDE drive and disabled all I could, still doesn't work.
It makes other interesting thing, when I have my ethernet card in second slot (counting from AGP) and 2940 in third, system won't even power up like it was dead.
I'm just starting to hate this adaptec card, I wouldn't hate bp6, would I?

purrkur · Post by **purrkur** » Sun Jan 29, 2006 4:40 pm

OK, I've done it. I took my Gateway based Adaptec 2940UW and placed it in the second PCI slot below the AGP slot. My BP6 boots up just fine. Just to let you know, I have nothing attached to the SCSI card at all. I just put it in, booted and checked if the machine runs. It runs just fine. I even checked (in Linux) how the OS sees it with "lspci -vv":

Code: Select all

0000:00:0d.0 SCSI storage controller: Adaptec AHA-2940U/UW/D / AIC-7881U (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Adaptec AHA-2940UW SCSI Host Adapter
        Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
        Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
        Latency: 32 (2000ns min, 2000ns max), Cache Line Size: 0x08 (32 bytes)
        Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 17
        Region 0: I/O ports at c800 [size=256]
        Region 1: Memory at df001000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
        Expansion ROM at 10030000 [disabled] [size=64K]
        Capabilities: <available only to root>

So there you have it.

While going through my stuff I found another Adaptec AHA-2940 (just the regular flavour, not a UW) that I had forgotten I had. I replaced the UW one with the regular flavour one just for shits 'n giggles and the machine booted up just fine as well. here is the lspci output:

Code: Select all

0000:00:0d.0 SCSI storage controller: Adaptec AHA-2940/2940W / AIC-7871
        Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
        Status: Cap- 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
        Latency: 32 (2000ns min, 2000ns max), Cache Line Size: 0x08 (32 bytes)
        Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 17
        Region 0: I/O ports at c800 [size=256]
        Region 1: Memory at df001000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
        Expansion ROM at 10030000 [disabled] [size=32K]

So what could your problem be? It is hard to say. Could it be a SCSI termination issue? Have you tried removing cables from your SCSI adapter just to see what happens?

Do you have enough power from your PS to drive all af your add-ons?

I should add that I am using the RV BIOS with HPT and I did not load any modules for the adapters because my kernel doesn't have support for them (I made a special kernel for my BP6 with only the stuff that I knew I was going to run on it and that didn't include SCSI). But I doubt that makes any difference. You are experiencing a freeze when the BP6 detects the SCSI at boot which is before you ever get to your OS.

Good luck.

Lord Hans · Post by **Lord Hans** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 8:27 pm

Thank you, I guess my version of controller is faulty or has a compatibility issue, I'll buy sthg else from e-bay.

Lord Hans · Post by **Lord Hans** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 5:55 pm

Bought Qlogic 1040.
It works fine.

kuun · Post by **kuun** » Thu Feb 09, 2006 10:48 pm

you have a bad controller card..

i had 2 AHA-2940 UW's i've used in my bp6..

both work perfectly fine..

i think i stil lgot one of them old 2940's in it right now but im not positive.. it's been months since any of my machines have seen electricity..

i had an old ISA controller that i tried to use once.. it was doing the same.. but it'd freeze in the HPT66 screen..