Adaptec 3940UW drivers needed

[mac2geezer]

Help! Does anyone have Classic OS drivers for an Adaptec 3940UW PCI card? The Adaptec site isn't any help and a google search mostly comes up with Windows drivers, unless I'm willing to join ZDNet and get bombarded with spam as a result. No thanks! We get more than enough trash in the inbox now. I'll trash the card before doing that.

 

[CJ_Miller]

There is probably built-in OS X support for many Adaptec products, and companies are not usually interested in supporting the older systems. Worse still is that more companies have been neglecting their FTP servers, but an FTP which sees such wide use is sure to be mirrored somewhere...

http://195.113.144.229/MIRRORS/ftp.adaptec.com/mac/scsi/

Enjoy!

 

[mac2geezer]

Hey, thanks for the link! I've downloaded what appears to be the proper card Rom update but haven't tried it yet. The 9600/G4 has two 15K RPM drives driven from a 2940 and I wanted to try the dual channel 3940 just for grins, not that the 9600 really needs that. Will post my results.

 

[trag]

Is this an Adaptec 3940UW for PCs or a PowerDomain 3940UW which was intended for Macs?

The version intended for PCs has too small of a Flash chip on board for the Mac firmware. It will appear to update but the card will be unusable. If you want to convert a PC 3940UW to Mac use you really need to replace the Flash chip with a larger capacity (1 Mbit instead of 512Kbit) one.

I wrote an article over on xlr8yourmac.com on the topic. It's quite dated at this time, and I cringe at some of the soldering technique described, but the basics are still true. Its title is about the 2940UW but it is also about the 3940U which is essentially identical to the 3940UW.

 

[avw]

Beside the question, if you need a new Flash chip or not, I´d like to point at the fact that everything is onlyne at Adaptecs page! A little bit tricky to find, but great support. Just go to "obsolete products" at supportpage and scroll down to "SCSI for Macintosh"

http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/support/_eol

Even in other languages, etc. availaible. Adaptec is a good company and I have to regret no single cent they got from me in the early 2ks - especially as they owned Toast

 

[mac2geezer]

It's unclear if this was supposed to be a PB or Mac version of the 3940UW, however I was able to get a driver from the mirror site listed above and flash the card with Rom Version 4.1. When installed in the 9600/G4, with no ribbon cable connected, the 9600 will not boot. It gets to the happy Mac and hangs. However, when installed in the 8600/300 (604ev) it works just fine driving a 15K RPM Seagate and a 10K RPM WD. Go figure.

I've punted back to a 2940W in the 9600 and a 29160N in the 8600. If anyone wants this 3940UW they can have it for $10 shipped in the US.

Anyway, thanks for pointing out that I didn't dig deep enough in the Adaptec site.