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SCSI Utilities/Tool Kit

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Shadow Lord

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Hello All,

I am trying to setup my own personal SCSI diagnostic/management boot disk and/or CD and wanted to get suggestion of utilities to include. At this point things are pretty threadbare. I have the following included on the disk:

DOS 6.22 (Booot, fdisk, format)
Adaptec EZ-SCSI 5 (for ASPI and drivers) and CD Support.
SpinRite
MHDD

Anybody know of some other good/useful/powerful utilities to include? Anything to easily test a tape drive? Or lists SCSI IDs/LUNs? Anything else
 
krebizfan said:
Corel SCSI covered a lot of devices especially the earlier CDROM and MO drives.
Click to expand...
In what way? I don't need access to the drives per se as much as I need to be able to run diagnostics. SCSI by its nature is supposed to be pretty universal. i.e. I should be able to access any scsi compliant drive through the ASPI layer. I am more interested in utilities that diagnose or provide info on attached devices. Thanks.
 
Sounds like you want utilities that your can run from a system booted into DOS.

If you're also open to running SCSI utilities on a Windows or Linux system, I've found the sg3_utils package to be helpful.

https://sg.danny.cz/sg/sg3_utils.html

There are basic info commands such as sg_inq and sg_readcap plus a whole bunch of other commands, although with all of them there are some assumptions that you know what you are doing.

One command that I have found helpful is the sg_format command with the --resize option, which doesn't do a low level format of the drive, it only changes the number of blocks reported by a Read Capacity command. That is helpful if you want to used a hard drive that is larger in capacity than is supported by an older system. For example, some older systems do not work correctly with drives larger than 1GB, but work fine when a larger drive is soft resized done to or below the 1GB limit.
 
gslick said:
Sounds like you want utilities that your can run from a system booted into DOS.

If you're also open to running SCSI utilities on a Windows or Linux system, I've found the sg3_utils package to be helpful.
Click to expand...
Thanks and yes I am staying on DOS. Basically, I am running these on a 486 w/ an EISA Adaptec SCSI Controller. I have a cable for 68pin and 50pin connections. So when I get a HDD I am connecting, powering up, and go. While there maybe an old enough Linux system that would run on it and Win95 certainly would work it would be much slower and cumbersome. I am not trying to do any major data recovery. The system is setup mostly for 1. Does the HDD power up, 2. is it recognized, 3. can I access it. If one and two are passed then once I am booted using my custom bootdisk I can do some basic checks, test the HDD for bad sectors, format etc. I have found it to be a very good quick and dirty way to go through batches of HDD and see what is a paper weight and what is workable. Do I miss some salvageable drives this way once in a while? Probably but it is fast enough that I actually get through the pile...
 
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Some SCSI controllers used CAM, rather than ASPI. (Future Domain comes to mind), so you'll need at a minimum a CAM-ASPI "wedge" in all of that. Then there are controllers like the WD7000, which I recalll only as being a nightmare.

All of this is presupposing DOS, BTW. NT and Linux have very different low-level access APIs.
 
Chuck,

I am using an Adaptec controller so ASPI all the way. I guess the caveat would be that I would need tools that work with ASPI or need a CAM to ASPI shim. I recall you had previously said you had written a tool but used CAM. Did you ever find it? Thanks.
 
I did a forensics program that used both, but I'm not at liberty to release that.
There were at least a couple of Future Domain controllers (ISA) supplied with a CAM-to-ASPI shim. There appears to be one Here.

If you're using NT->XP, then the picture changes drastically. NT, not wanting to step on Adaptec's toes, went with a SCSI Pass-through Interface (SPTI). That could also be converted to an ASPI32 interface, but details escape me at the moment.

Linux, of course, has their own generic SCSI protocol (devices are /dev/sgXX.
 
Chuck(G) said:
I did a forensics program that used both, but I'm not at liberty to release that.
There were at least a couple of Future Domain controllers (ISA) supplied with a CAM-to-ASPI shim. There appears to be one Here.
Click to expand...

Are you talking about ASPICAM.SYS? Isn't the point of that to have ASPI compliant SW talk to CAM HW? I would think I would need a CAM to ASPI shim (i.e. allowing SW expecting CAM to talk to ASPI)


Chuck(G) said:
If you're using NT->XP, then the picture changes drastically. NT, not wanting to step on Adaptec's toes, went with a SCSI Pass-through Interface (SPTI). That could also be converted to an ASPI32 interface, but details escape me at the moment.

Linux, of course, has their own generic SCSI protocol (devices are /dev/sgXX.
Click to expand...

Again, I a musing pure DOS 6.22 on an Adaptec EISA controller with bog standard Adaptec drivers and ASPI. I am wondering if anyone has recs for SCSI specific tools that work on this recommendation. I understand there are lots of windows and Linux options for tools but I am looking for DOS specific ones. TIA!
 
Writing an ASPI shim for programs expecting CAM can be a bit challenging if said code goes too far outside the capabilities of ASPI. Just paper-wise, the CAM spec is quite a bit thicker than that of ASPI.
Not saying that such shims don't exist, but I don't recall needing one.
 
o.k. so no other recs for a diagnostic and/or informational utility or other useful programs to put on a DOS boot disk, to test SCSI HDDs and get info on attached SCSI devices, under DOS using ASPI on an Adaptec adapter? I am kind of surprised given the widespread use of SCSI in the late 80s to early 2000s that more utilities and software was not written aimed at the tech.
 
You might find Quantum's DLTTOOLS and DSPTOOLS from DLTHDD-S.ZIP on mpoli.fi useful - I don't remember which is which, but I remember one of these would let you look at SCSI mode pages and seemed like a somewhat useful diagnostic tool. Maybe one day I'll learn enough about those mode pages to figure out what the difference is between a SCSI disk that a Mac will recognise and one that it won't :LOL:

I might have some other tools to suggest - I seem to remember some vendor's drivers included a reasonably powerful DOS-based GUI - but I'll need to actually run some tools again to figure out which is which. Hopefully I can do that under QEMU since it emulates some SCSI devices reasonably well, otherwise it'll have to wait until I can get out an appropriate machine.
 
doshea,

Thanks for the info. I will look at them but they may end up in the next iteration of the disk. I need to do some fine tuning on the current disk but when I do I will post it here for anyone else who may be interested or in need.
 
doshea said:
You might find Quantum's DLTTOOLS and DSPTOOLS from DLTHDD-S.ZIP on mpoli.fi useful - I don't remember which is which, but I remember one of these would let you look at SCSI mode pages and seemed like a somewhat useful diagnostic tool. Maybe one day I'll learn enough about those mode pages to figure out what the difference is between a SCSI disk that a Mac will recognise and one that it won't :LOL:
Click to expand...
Acorn Fileservers use a hidden vendor-specific modepage containing the text "(C)ACORN" - I expect Apple may have done similar.

doshea said:
I might have some other tools to suggest - I seem to remember some vendor's drivers included a reasonably powerful DOS-based GUI - but I'll need to actually run some tools again to figure out which is which. Hopefully I can do that under QEMU since it emulates some SCSI devices reasonably well, otherwise it'll have to wait until I can get out an appropriate machine.
Click to expand...
That sounds like Adaptec's SCSISelect, which is in ROM on the 2940 PCI controller. It's used to configure the controller but can also do some basic diagnostics (device identity and format). On later controllers (e.g. 29160) it can also do Domain Validation, which checks transfer rates, wide/narrow, and termination.
 
philpem said:
Acorn Fileservers use a hidden vendor-specific modepage containing the text "(C)ACORN" - I expect Apple may have done similar.
Click to expand...
Interesting, thanks!

philpem said:
That sounds like Adaptec's SCSISelect, which is in ROM on the 2940 PCI controller. It's used to configure the controller but can also do some basic diagnostics (device identity and format). On later controllers (e.g. 29160) it can also do Domain Validation, which checks transfer rates, wide/narrow, and termination.
Click to expand...
It seems like quite a few vendors have that kind of thing in their SCSI BIOS, to the point where I'm disappointed when they don't, but maybe it's just because I've generally only used "modern" SCSI controllers from the 486 and later eras?

doshea said:
You might find Quantum's DLTTOOLS and DSPTOOLS from DLTHDD-S.ZIP on mpoli.fi useful - I don't remember which is which, but I remember one of these would let you look at SCSI mode pages and seemed like a somewhat useful diagnostic tool.
Click to expand...
I've refreshed my memory by playing with them a bit and now I remember that they're kind of similar but DLTTOOLS - as you might expect from the name - is more tape-specific. For example they can both show mode pages, but only DSPTOOLS has an option for the "Rigid Disk Geometry" page (4); in DLTTOOLS you can ask for a specific page by hex number, so you can still see page 4, but it's only as a hex dump instead of decoded.

doshea said:
I might have some other tools to suggest - I seem to remember some vendor's drivers included a reasonably powerful DOS-based GUI - but I'll need to actually run some tools again to figure out which is which. Hopefully I can do that under QEMU since it emulates some SCSI devices reasonably well, otherwise it'll have to wait until I can get out an appropriate machine.
Click to expand...
Symbios Logic's CONFIG.EXE - which I'm pretty sure is from SYMC8DOS.ZIP from http://www5.ncr.com/support/support_drivers_patches.asp?Class=pc_library_53c810 - seems useful, its main purpose seems to be to modify your AUTOEXEC.BAT, CONFIG.SYS or Windows configuration, but it has a "System View" button which lets you pick an adapter, then pick a device on the bus and see some details about it. I'd prefer it to just display a list/table instead of displaying a picture of a ribbon cable where you have to click on the device icon, but it's something.
 
doshea said:
It seems like quite a few vendors have that kind of thing in their SCSI BIOS, to the point where I'm disappointed when they don't, but maybe it's just because I've generally only used "modern" SCSI controllers from the 486 and later eras?
Click to expand...
Quite possibly! I'm the same - the Adaptec PCI card in the cable headend has it, and I find it tricky to do without it. You can't beat the convenience of firing it up from ROM without even needing a bootdisk.

My AVA-2906 PCI doesn't have it (no boot ROM), and my AHA-1540B ISA card has a boot ROM but doesn't seem to have SCSISelect. Could be that it needs a ROM/Microcode update but I've never seen the ROM files available for download. The last I've seen for the AHA-1540B is AT/SCSI v3.20 in http://annex.retroarchive.org/cdrom/chst-strio-95/DIR34/154XBCOD.ZIP, which doesn't include SCSISelect in ROM.

I've dumped the ROMs from my card (I know it's off topic from the thread, but I may as well as we're talking about it...) -- these are v3.10 BIOS and A005 microcode.
I also included 154XBCOD.ZIP for completeness - that's BIOS v3.20 (with >1GB support) and A014 microcode.

It seems like SCSISelect was available on disk for the 1540B card: http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=1961&menustate=0 -- so I'd put this on any SCSI testing disk I was creating for a machine with an Adaptec card.


The AHA-1542C has SCSISelect in ROM, but sadly I doubt the 'C' ROMs will work on a 'B' card: the onboard processor is different (the 'B' uses an Intel 8085, the 'C' uses a Zilog Z80) for a start. The 'B' also has passive termination, whereas the 'C' has discrete active termination, and the AHA-1542CF has Dallas DS2107AS active terminator ICs.


In terms of other cards I have a Tekram 880 VLB cached SCSI card. It has something like SCSISelect in ROM, but not quite as polished. It works, though.

doshea said:
Symbios Logic's CONFIG.EXE - which I'm pretty sure is from SYMC8DOS.ZIP from http://www5.ncr.com/support/support_drivers_patches.asp?Class=pc_library_53c810 - seems useful, its main purpose seems to be to modify your AUTOEXEC.BAT, CONFIG.SYS or Windows configuration, but it has a "System View" button which lets you pick an adapter, then pick a device on the bus and see some details about it. I'd prefer it to just display a list/table instead of displaying a picture of a ribbon cable where you have to click on the device icon, but it's something.
Click to expand...
Is there anything similar included with CorelSCSI or EZ-SCSI? I've yet to try them. Truth be told, I don't really know what they bring to the table!

Beyond that, my usual method is a Knoppix live CD - 'lsscsi' will give a brief device list, and 'smartctl -a' gives identification information for drives even if they don't support SMART.
 

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CorelSCSI includes an application SCSITools that will test various SCSI devices and media. It might not meet all your needs but disks for it are very common.

I just couldn't find the manual to verify that before.
 
doshea said:
Symbios Logic's CONFIG.EXE - which I'm pretty sure is from SYMC8DOS.ZIP from http://www5.ncr.com/support/support_drivers_patches.asp?Class=pc_library_53c810 - seems useful, its main purpose seems to be to modify your AUTOEXEC.BAT, CONFIG.SYS or Windows configuration, but it has a "System View" button which lets you pick an adapter, then pick a device on the bus and see some details about it. I'd prefer it to just display a list/table instead of displaying a picture of a ribbon cable where you have to click on the device icon, but it's something.
Click to expand...
Thanks. I had already checked out the LSI tools and except for their LLF program all the other tools either require a LSI controller to the LSI ASPI driver loaded (i.e. wouldn't work with the Adaptec ASPI driver).
 
philpem said:
My AVA-2906 PCI doesn't have it (no boot ROM), and my AHA-1540B ISA card has a boot ROM but doesn't seem to have SCSISelect. Could be that it needs a ROM/Microcode update but I've never seen the ROM files available for download. The last I've seen for the AHA-1540B is AT/SCSI v3.20 in http://annex.retroarchive.org/cdrom/chst-strio-95/DIR34/154XBCOD.ZIP, which doesn't include SCSISelect in ROM.
Click to expand...
Have you tried Adaptec's own site? Believe it or not the support pages are still up after multiple take overs. I am not sure if they have a BIOS for the 1540B. I will also check my own personal archive and see if I can find anything.

philpem said:
It seems like SCSISelect was available on disk for the 1540B card: http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=1961&menustate=0 -- so I'd put this on any SCSI testing disk I was creating for a machine with an Adaptec card.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the tip. I will take a look at it and see what it brings to the table. My concern is if it is from that era it won't have any idea about wide and ultra-wide drives, SCSI ID's greater then 7, etc.
 
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