Olivetti SNX 140/S - EISA-SCSI-Windows 2000 problem

[1ST1]

Hello, I have some trouble with my Olivetti SNX140/S system regarding SCSI cards and Windows 2000 (SP4). The SNX140/S is a medium size tower PC originally designed as a small office server. So it has Pentium 166 CPU, PCI+EISA bus (3PCI+3EISA slots, one of each shared), 32 MB RAM (expandable to 256 MB), onboard AIC-7850 PCI SCSI controller (I think thats the same as a AHA-2940) and onboard Trident PCI VGA card with 512 kB RAM.

There are three PCI cards installed, a 2 channel VIA USB 2.0 card, an 100 MBit Intel chipset based network card, and a Weitek P9100 based VGA card with 4 MB VRAM, the onboard is disabled. Aditionally I have added a Soundblaster 16 Vibra PNP ISA card (in EISA slot) which is automatically detected and configured by EISA setup and Windows 2000.

To be able to connect external SCSI devices without having trouble with the internal SCSI bus (it has external connector) I grabbed from my boxes some EISA SCSI controllers and added one of them to the only free EISA slot. EISA setup is fine as long as one has the correct CFG file (and I have a large collection of CFG files). I tryed Adaptec 1740 Early revision and a later version of 1740 (they share the same CFG, but one is just displayed as a 1740, the other as a "1740 Early revision" in EISA setup), and I have tryed a AHA 2740 (single channel version). I always use the latest CFG file I have, they are from 1994. They are detected by EISA setup and configured well. As long as I select to enable their BIOS, they also appear while BIOS POST and tell that BIOS is not installed due to no drive connected (that's right). But I disable because their BIOS appears before the onboard AIC-7850 BIOS and I always want the internal harddisk to be the boot device. Enable/disable BIOS does not change anything on my problem.

The problem is that Windows 2000 does not dected any of the tryed EISA SCSI controllers (I have 3x 1740 early revision, 4x 1740, 1x 2740). There is even no unkown device in device manager, just nothing. All other cards are detected and operational.

Later on I will repeat the test with a Olivetti-customized 2740 dual channel and a Tekram DC810 EISA cache controller (AHA 1542 compatible on OS driver level) and maybe a AHA-1540 and 1542C. But I am not shur if that changes anything, but I would prefer to have one of the 1740 or the 2740 single channel in that SNX machine, the DC810 and the 2740 dual channel ist reserved fo another EISA machine (Olivetti LSX-5020)


The SNX booting Win2K SP4


1740 (top) and 1740 Early revision (bottom)


1740 installed


EISA setup with 1740


2740 installed


EISA setup with 2740


Device manager, no EISA SCSI controller detected. No difference, if 1740, 1740-early or 2740 ist installed. What I will try now is to install the latest Windows 2000 ASPI package (v. 4.71), but I don't hink it changes anything as the hostadapters even do not appear in Windows 2000 device manager.

Any idea, any sugestion to get one of them to work?

 

[Shadow Lord]

My quick and dirty guess is a BIOS vs. resource problem. You have two Adaptec controllers in there and I am betting both are set to default to the same resources (IRQ, DMA, BIOS address, etc.). I would check for conflicts there and see what you find.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

The only suggestion I have is use an older version of Windows.

Windows 2000 was the last version of Windows to have any EISA support, and it was pretty minimal at that. EISA was already 12 years old by the time Windows 2000 was released, and it had long been supplanted by PCI in 1993 and PCI-X in 1998.

The reason I suspect that Windows 2000 isn't seeing any EISA cards is because it doesn't have drivers for the EISA bus controller, so it can't see any devices on the EISA bus. I don't remember if Windows 2000 still had the "Add New hardware" control panel and the ability to detect non-PNP hardware, but that's the only way I see it being able to detect the EISA bus controller without having the drivers for it.

The last version of Windows that really had any good support for EISA was Windows 95 or NT 3.51.

 

[Shadow Lord]

The only suggestion I have is use an older version of Windows.

Windows 2000 was the last version of Windows to have any EISA support, and it was pretty minimal at that. EISA was already 12 years old by the time Windows 2000 was released, and it had long been supplanted by PCI in 1993 and PCI-X in 1998.

The reason I suspect that Windows 2000 isn't seeing any EISA cards is because it doesn't have drivers for the EISA bus controller, so it can't see any devices on the EISA bus. I don't remember if Windows 2000 still had the "Add New hardware" control panel and the ability to detect non-PNP hardware, but that's the only way I see it being able to detect the EISA bus controller without having the drivers for it.

The last version of Windows that really had any good support for EISA was Windows 95 or NT 3.51.

NT 4.0 works just fine as well....

 

[1ST1]

My quick and dirty guess is a BIOS vs. resource problem. You have two Adaptec controllers in there and I am betting both are set to default to the same resources (IRQ, DMA, BIOS address, etc.). I would check for conflicts there and see what you find.

Impossible with EISA. EISA has ressource management, and it can share IRQ (between EISA and PCI cards, not with ISA). When I check in EISA setup, all cards have proper settings, and I can see the same resoources in W2K device manager for the detected cards. The ressources used by the EISA card exclusively are free.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

Impossible with EISA. EISA has ressource management, and it can share IRQ (between EISA and PCI cards, not with ISA). When I check in EISA setup, all cards have proper settings, and I can see the same resoources in W2K device manager for the detected cards. The ressources used by the EISA card exclusively are free.

EISA is an extension of ISA, you cannot share IRQs between cards, ESPECIALLY disk controllers.

 

[krebizfan]

EISA is an extension of ISA, you cannot share IRQs between cards, ESPECIALLY disk controllers.

No, EISA can share IRQs between cards if all cards are set to level triggering. The cards could instead be set to edge triggering just like ISA cards and just like ISA cards incapable of sharing an IRQ. One of the weirder aspects of EISA.

PCI and EISA cards could in theory share an IRQ but it basically never works and all the recommendations were not to do it.

I think Adaptec configuration could make the EISA card have the BIOS load but defer to the onboard controller for booting. Been a long time since I looked over Adaptec's setup routine on an EISA controller though.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

When there are strings attached to EISA being able to share IRQs, it's best just to treat it like bog standard ISA where it's not possible.

Sharing IRQs between EISA and PCI is just begging for trouble.

 

[njroadfan]

Windows 2000 simply doesn't have drivers for the AIC-777x EISA Adaptec cards (or its VLBus cousin the 2840VL). The NT4 drivers will work (arrow.sys), but you have to install NT4 along with the Adaptec driver and then upgrade the install to Windows 2000. What exactly is the issue with the onboad PCI SCSI controller? I have waged battles with a board with a built-in AIC-7880 (wide version), 90% of the time its understanding the bus layout and termination.

 

[Shadow Lord]

Windows 2000 simply doesn't have drivers for the AIC-777x EISA Adaptec cards (or its VLBus cousin the 2840VL). The NT4 drivers will work (arrow.sys), but you have to install NT4 along with the Adaptec driver and then upgrade the install to Windows 2000. What exactly is the issue with the onboad PCI SCSI controller? I have waged battles with a board with a built-in AIC-7880 (wide version), 90% of the time its understanding the bus layout and termination.

Based on OP the issue is not drivers. The cards is not even being seen to be marked as "unknown" in device manager.

 

[njroadfan]

EISA cards definitely work on Windows 2000 as my EISA-VL 486 will detect and load drivers for my 3com 10/100 Ethernet EISA card. Unlike Microchannel, Microsoft fully supported PnP style enumeration for EISA cards in Windows 9x and 2000.

 

[1ST1]

I have successfully installed a 3com 3c579 EISA network card in Windows 2000. I also tryed a Cogent E/Master III EISA card, but for that I also only have NT drivers, so no chance with that in 2000.

I prefered to have an EISA SCSI controller in that machine, but it seems not to be possible. So for now I have installed an Adaptec AHA-1540CF, after configuring it well in it's BIOS, adding the CFG file to EISA Setup and finally adding it manually to Win 2K it just works fine. It's maybe not that fast as the 1740 (both support 10 MB/s on SCSI, but for 1540 the ISA should be a bottle neck), but better than nothing.

 

[Shadow Lord]

I have successfully installed a 3com 3c579 EISA network card in Windows 2000. I also tryed a Cogent E/Master III EISA card, but for that I also only have NT drivers, so no chance with that in 2000.

I prefered to have an EISA SCSI controller in that machine, but it seems not to be possible. So for now I have installed an Adaptec AHA-1540CF, after configuring it well in it's BIOS, adding the CFG file to EISA Setup and finally adding it manually to Win 2K it just works fine. It's maybe not that fast as the 1740 (both support 10 MB/s on SCSI, but for 1540 the ISA should be a bottle neck), but better than nothing.

Any reason you are not using the 2740/2W? That is the fastest Adaptec card you can get for an EISA system. It supports wide speeds up to 20MB/s. I have one in the Step Megacube and it works flawlessly. The 3C597 is a good card solid card. One of the fastest based on what I have read in old PC Mag articles.

 

[1ST1]

I dont have a 2740W, but one 2740 single and one 2740T (Olivetti version) dual channel card (both SCSI-2 50 pin), but no drivers for 2000. I will use them in my two LSX 5020. There I also will use my two EISA network cards. That might be my next project after finishing the SNX.