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Adaptec 2940 SCSI POST message

S

sunjar

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Jul 12, 2022
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I have a Adaptec 2940AU SCSI adapter installed on my computer and it works fine, but since I think every POST it has to show a 'CTRL+A' message to slow down the boot, I pressed Ctrl+A and went in setup menu and turned it off. But now when I want to turn on display this message again, no matter how I press CTRL+A I can't get to the SCSI's setting menu. Even when I installed another 2940UW adapter on my PC again, there was no any POST message either.

Both cards work normally, and the correct information can be displayed in Windows 7 and Ubuntu 20.04. How can I restore the POST 'CTRL+A' prompt again?

My computer mainboard is ASUS Prime B360 plus, it has two 32bit PCI slots.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Try hitting Ctrl-A at the appropriate time anyway. ISTR that the BIOS checks for it, even if the prompt is disabled.
Click to expand...
Yes I've tried pressing Ctrl-A in various ways, holding it down, pressing it continuously, and even pressing it to power on, and it all doesn't work. I am confused.

My keyboard is USB type, I'm wondering if I need a PS/2 keyboard it would be better?
 
Hmmm, I can't say. There's an Adaptec troubleshooting guide that says that the message display is only disabled, the check is still done for Ctrl-A.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Hmmm, I can't say. There's an Adaptec troubleshooting guide that says that the message display is only disabled, the check is still done for Ctrl-A.
Click to expand...
I think so too, even if the screen doesn't show any message, the Ctrl-A hotkey should still be monitored. I remember that I had successfully disabled and re-enabled this prompt on some servers in the past. But I don't know why not now.
 
Did you really just disable the message or the card's BIOS altogether? It sounds like you did the latter. If the BIOS is disabled, Ctrl+A won't work.

I think the 2940 driver disk contains DOS software to enter the BIOS from DOS where you can re-enable it.
 
I looked it up for the AHA-2940. The manual here says:

Display Message During BIOS Initialization
This option determines whether the Press for SCSISelect(tm) Utility! message appears on the users screen during system bootup. The default setting is Enabled. If this option is disabled, you can still invoke the SCSISelect utility by pressing after the host adapter BIOS banner appears.

I was curious about this too.
 
Timo W. said:
Did you really just disable the message or the card's BIOS altogether? It sounds like you did the latter. If the BIOS is disabled, Ctrl+A won't work.

I think the 2940 driver disk contains DOS software to enter the BIOS from DOS where you can re-enable it.
Click to expand...
Disable the BIOS? I can't remember exactly, but if there was that item in the menu, I shouldn't have selected it, I should have just disabled message.

About DOS software, Yes I think the Adaptec website should have someDOS utility can download, that's a good idea, I'll see if I can find this software to get my adapter back to its original state. But strangely, my second 2940UW card doesn't show any message either. Before sending this post, I just plugged in a new 29160 adapter and still no post message. But the adapter also works just fine and has recognized one of my SLR7 tape drives.
 
snuci said:
I looked it up for the AHA-2940. The manual here says:

Display Message During BIOS Initialization
This option determines whether the Press for SCSISelect(tm) Utility! message appears on the users screen during system bootup. The default setting is Enabled. If this option is disabled, you can still invoke the SCSISelect utility by pressing after the host adapter BIOS banner appears.

I was curious about this too.
Click to expand...
Yes, I also read this part in the manual, but I still can't get into this 'SCSISelect utility' again. Because the motherboard of my PC is also a relatively new model (the chipset is Intel B360), maybe it has some differences in hardware structure compared with professional server?
 
Stupid question, but I have to ask. If you install the DOS driver (ASPI8DOS.SYS) in your CONFIG.SYS and boot DOS, does it see the card?
Also, was this card last used in a PC? If it was in a Mac, that's completely different software installed on the card ROM.
 
Last edited:
Chuck(G) said:
Stupid question, but I have to ask. If you install the DOS driver (ASPI8DOS.SYS) in your CONFIG.SYS and boot DOS, does it see the card?
Also, was this card last used in a PC? If it was in a Mac, that's completely different software installed on the card ROM.
Click to expand...
I'm now trying to boot DOS from a USB stick, but haven't found the right tool to do it. I have another PE tool that can enter the simplest DOS interface, but it cannot load the SYS file. I am looking for information to see if there is a way to modify the PE 's configure file.

Regarding the second question, my 2940AU was brand new when I bought it, and I unpacked it myself, so yes, it was running on the PC for the first time.
 
I'll mention that my 2940UW doesn't even have a BIOS Prom populated on board. Doesn't matter, since I never use it for a boot configuration; only for accessing SCSI tapes and optical disks.

I've noticed that the AHA-3940 adapters (Dell branded) seem to be fairly plentiful on that auction site. Good adapters--essentially two 2940s on the same board.
 
I spent about two hours trying various methods, I have successfully booted DOS from USB using Rufus tool, but it is DOS 7.0, not the traditional DOS6.22. So when I followed the DEBUG method on the website that @maxtherabbit gave me, The debug.exe I found on one of my 2000 backup CDROMs contains all the programs under 6.22. But it didn't work, it told me that the DOS version was not compatible. So I searched for a way to boot DOS6.22 from USB flash, there are some methods on the internet, but they are too complicated, so I didn't try it.

Another attempt is when I booted DOS 7 from USB, I ran the driver downloaded from Adaptec website in, I followed the instructions in the driver files to load ASPI8DOS.SYS in config.sys, it loaded successfully, and show:
Host Adapter SCSI ID: 7
PCI Bus Location: 7:1:0

It seems the driver can found my 2940AU, but it didn't find any SCSI devices, including my tape drive and MO drive. In the driver and utility downloaded from Adapter website, I haven't found a program that appears to use to configure SCSI Adapter, I've only found a few tools that appear to format hard drives, these are:

AFDISK.EXE SCSIFMT.EXE SCSIFRMT.EXE

I ran the three software separately and they all told me that no SCSI adapters were found.

There is also an EZ-SCSI tools, which seems to be used to automatically install the driver, and there is an apichk.exe in it to remind me that it can only be used under windows.

After making these attempts and considering @Chuck(G)'s suggestion, I decided to give up, even if the information during SCSI self-test cannot be displayed now, my device still works. Just let it be.

Thanks to everyone above for your help to me.
 
sunjar said:
I haven't found a program that appears to use to configure SCSI Adapter
Click to expand...
It should be called 2940CFG.EXE and is on the "2940 SCSI Select" floppy disk. At least that's how it once was. Maybe Adaptec no longer has all the old stuff online.
 
Timo W. said:
Try this one:

Maybe it does not care about the incorrect model.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the url, I downloaded it and ran it under DOS, it told me that no SCSI adapter was found, I guess it's only for 2906 configuration.

Inspired by you, I searched the Adaptec website and google for 2940cfg.exe keyword, but nothing came up, as you said, maybe Adaptec didn't put some ancient software online. My card may or may not have had a floppy disk at the time of purchase, but it's been too long for me to remember. However, I found the ROM file (a HEX file) of the 2940 on the Adaptec website. I also have an EPROM programmer. Unfortunately, the EPROM does not use an IC socket. It will take some effort to solder it down.
 
Reprogramming the ROM would not help, as nothing has changed there.

The settings you made are stored in a small EEPROM (tiny IC with 2x4 legs). Zapping or invalidating this would restore the default settings. But I have no idea how to do that. The 2940 has no jumper for resetting the EEPROM, afaik.
 
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