Help me get my Ultra-3 SCSI drive booting?

#1 Thu, 22 Nov 2012 - 00:39 68kMLA

So after some fumbling around, I finally got my 15K RPM Fujitsu drive formatted. I used FWB HDT version 4. So now it's formatted... but I can't boot from it. Startup Disk sees it just fine.

I'm using an ATTO PCIExpress SCSI card. I was using a PCI FWB Jackhammer card, but I think it's just too darn old. It would cause the screen to temporarily freeze whenever the HDD was accessed.

In any event, it works fine as a secondary drive, but I want to boot from it.

#2 Thu, 22 Nov 2012 - 00:49 68kMLA

Awe, nuts. After some Googling it looks like my ATTO card isn't bootable. I need a newer firmware.

Anyone have the 1.6.4U updater? ATTO of course doesn't have it anymore, and it's disappeared from Google.

#3 Thu, 22 Nov 2012 - 00:57 68kMLA

10 years ago, ATTO tech support would emaill you updaters for outdated products, even after they were removed from the website. They might still be that nice; give it a shot.

#4 Thu, 22 Nov 2012 - 01:03 68kMLA

I supposed I could email them.

Some additional Googling leads me to believe the booting issue is only with OS X, not OS 9. Still not sure. I'm going to try an old fashion 50 pin Apple ROM drive and see if I can boot from that. If not, then I'll know it's the card.

#5 Thu, 22 Nov 2012 - 01:46 68kMLA

Wouldn't even boot from a 50-pin Apple ROM SCSI HDD, so now I'm pretty darn sure it's my SCSI card. Another user pointed me to an INITO Miles2 U2W SCSI card. Supposed to be one of the better and more compatible cards. I'll give it a go.

#6 Thu, 22 Nov 2012 - 02:04 68kMLA

Just out of curiosity, not that it matters much, but what computer is the card in?

#7 Thu, 22 Nov 2012 - 04:16 68kMLA

QuickSilver G4.

#8 Thu, 22 Nov 2012 - 04:19 68kMLA

if you can find an adaptec scsi card that may work better? it had a 50 pin header on the board. my sawtooth came with it but I never attempted boot, only to mount a drive. Uniserver has it now so he may chime in.

#9 Thu, 22 Nov 2012 - 05:09 68kMLA

I have one, but I wanted to take advantage of the additional speed of the drive. I'm gonna wait on the SCSI card.

#10 Tue, 27 Nov 2012 - 00:55 68kMLA

After turning off Synchronous transfer mode, it's working great now with a initio Miles U2W SCSI card. It did the freezing like on the Jackhammer card, but that was with Synchronous transfer mode on. It seems to work just fine in asynchronous mode. My SCSI Hammer card doesn't seem to be able to toggle sync, so it would alway freeze up when trying to read/write to the drive. This Miles card appears to work perfectly.

I'm now booted off a 15k RPM whisper quiet Ultra 3 HDD.

On top of that, I managed to find a compatible power adapter for my GDock, so now I have serial ports, parallel ports, additional USB ports, and a zip 250 drive.