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PC-6300 and a Future Domain TMC-850M SCSI Controller, locking up the system

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Compgeke

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Today I got a Future Domain TMC-850M SCSI controller, installed it along with a 380 MB hard drive into my PC-6300 with ROM 1.21 (would have 1.43 but I have blank roms and no burner). The problem seems to be that it keeps locking up the system during POST, with or without a drive connected, termination on or off (on the card). The drive is detected, but after the detection the computer completely locks up as in control-alt-delete doesn't work, can't turn on caps lock or num lock and holding down a key doesn't cause the system to beep at me.

Any ideas here?
 
Did you check the dipswitch settings on the motherboard are set correctly? The M24/PC-6300 has settings for the number of hard drives the machine has, and a setting I guess details whether the controller ROM is onboard or on an expansion card.

I guess it is possible the machine doesn't treat a SCSI hard drive controller in the same way as an MFM controller.

Also, in my M24 and I assume its the same for the PC-6300 the power supply isn't a huge one (63 watt iirc). I assume you have removed your MFM drive and controller though?
 
The SCSI controller has it's own BIOS, I should have mentioned that, therefore the HDD jumper setting wouldn't have made a difference.

As for the MFM drive and controller, this system is a Dual 360KB floppy system, never had a hard drive. I can always hope that a 3.5" SCSI drive uses less power than a 5.25" Half Height drive does.
 
It's stupid question time.

Does the machine boot if you disconnect the hard drive?
Does the machine boot if you disable the card's BIOS?
If you disable the BIOS, will the machine work if you load the installable drivers?
 
If I disconnect the hard drive it hangs after saying "No SCSI device detected, check cabling". I also have no way of disabling the BIOS as there is no jumper setting for that and it doesn't say that there's a key for entering the setup on it. It also never accesses the floppy for boot with the card in. Later today I'm going to try the controller in my 486 to see if it's a defective card or a system issue.
 
Just tried that, went right on through to booting from the floppy. Also put the card (with BIOS) into my Compaq Prolinea 4/33 and it told me there were no devices connected (there weren't any) and continued booting.

I also tried the card in a different slot in the PC-6300, also no-go. I wonder if this has something to do with the old ROM revision of the system...
 
That would be my first guess--that the code in the ROM does something not very nice that doesn't agree with the 6300's BIOS. Are you up to date on the ROM for this thing?
 
I honestly have no idea what the latest Future Domain ROM is, this card has V8.00, but from a google search there's BIOS 8.4 but 8.2 is the best for this (for compatibility).
 
Compgeke said:
I honestly have no idea what the latest Future Domain ROM is, this card has V8.00, but from a google search there's BIOS 8.4 but 8.2 is the best for this (for compatibility).
Click to expand...

A newer ROM version might save the day. Have you tried the card sans the BIOS PROM, but using the DOS-loadable drivers?
 
I, unfortunately, have no way of loading the DOS drivers at the moment until I find myself another blank floppy disk. I'll clean up the disk I'm using now tomorrow and try.
 
With the ROM removed and loading the drivers from DOS I have no freezes, it says it detects one controller and one device, which is what it should be detecting. How I access the drive though from DOS is something I don't yet understand as I have absolutely no documentation, just that running DCAM950.EXE said to add "DEVICE=DCAM950.EXE /MMMM I" to config.sys where MMMM is the memory address and I is the IRQ. After doing this I have a detected controller...just don't know how exactly I can access any SCSI devices.
 
That's what I was afraid of, an issue with the BIOS as I lack an EPROM burner. Tonight I'll download the PowerSCSI tool and see if it's an extracting file like the driver was with support for multiple devices, with any luck it is as there is no way I'm fitting a 576 KB file onto a 360KB floppy.
 
I can say for sure that the TMC-850M with ROM revision 8.2 works just fine in a PC6300 with BIOS 1.43, because I have exactly that setup.

I also have an EPROM programmer... I'd have to dig around and make sure I still have some spare 2764s, but assuming I can find some, I could burn the relevant ROMs for you if you'd like.
 
Alright, I got the ROMs and installed 'em, AT&T PC-6300 BIOS 1.43 and Future Domain TMC-850M BIOS 8.2. The BIOS now successfully detects drives (a lot faster I might add) and goes on to regular booting. I installed AT&T MS-DOS 3.30 onto the drive, however it won't boot from the SCSI drive. Booting from the floppy I can read the drive contents but I can't get the system to boot from the TMC-850M card.

Is there something I'm missing?
 
The drive is on ID0. I tried different addresses and still no go. I also can't get it to boot from my 486. Wiped the drive, made sure the partition was active and did an install of MS-DOS 6.22 from my 486 to test on the 486 and still no-go.
 
OTB says it works on his 6300, so it must be something funny.

When you say, "Doesn't boot", is there any message? Did you use FORMAT /S C: to put a system on the boot partition? Did you try a smaller partition (say 32MB) for booting?
 
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