Bootability of Silicon Express nubus cards...

[lobust]

I have some questions and thoughts about this.

Contrary to most of what I have read about them, I have been successful in booting from both SE II and SE IV cards in my Quadras (700 and 800). In both cases there was no magic involved, just followed the instructions in the SEIV user manual and it Just Worked. I have the II in the 700 and the IV in the 800.

I don't know what firmware is on the SE II card, but the SE IV was previously bootable with 1.6.3 that it came with, and was still bootable after updating to 1.6.5 (rc1?) that is commonly available online*.

I think some confusion may have arisen at some point from the fact that neither card is able to find a bootable drive attached to them - it must be selected in the Startup Disk control panel in order to boot from it. This means that neither can be used to cold boot a Mac that has no pram battery, although a restart should presumably work...

This leads me to the first quandary. I have read some speculation that these cards are only bootable on Macs that have SCSI Manager (4.3?) in ROM, i.e. the AV Quadras and x100 PowerMacs onwards. Conventional wisdom dictates the 700 and 800 do not have this.

So, is the requirement to have SCSI Manager in ROM incorrect, or is it actually present in Macs earlier than the AV series?

Note that the SEIV user manual does not state this requirement anywhere that I have seen.

Unfortunately I don't have any II series Macs to try this in, so I don't know if the Quadras have some other secret sauce that allows booting? It seems to me that at least the SEII predates the Quadras? I have read one account in an old thread on here of a member who was able to boot his IIci from a SEIV, so ultimately I am just curious why people generally think these cards are not bootable?

*PSA: the updater starts flashing the firmware as soon as you open it. I opened it assuming it would at least ask me to confirm I wanted to proceed! Thankfully the new firmware does not seem to have changed any behaviour that I can see.

 

[cheesestraws]

I have read some speculation that these cards are only bootable on Macs that have SCSI Manager (4.3?) in ROM, i.e. the AV Quadras and x100 PowerMacs onwards.

I would be very surprised if this were true, because...

Note that the SEIV user manual does not state this requirement anywhere that I have seen.

... the "normal" firmware for the SE IV does not use SCSI Manager 4.3. There's a SCSI Manager 4.3 beta firmware out there that you can use, but the released firmware all does not. So the fact that the earlier SE II would require it feels like it's probably wrong.

 

[ArmorAlley]

I have some questions and thoughts about this.

Contrary to most of what I have read about them, I have been successful in booting from both SE II and SE IV cards in my Quadras (700 and 800). In both cases there was no magic involved, just followed the instructions in the SEIV user manual and it Just Worked. I have the II in the 700 and the IV in the 800.

I don't know what firmware is on the SE II card, but the SE IV was previously bootable with 1.6.3 that it came with, and was still bootable after updating to 1.6.5 (rc1?) that is commonly available online*.

I think some confusion may have arisen at some point from the fact that neither card is able to find a bootable drive attached to them - it must be selected in the Startup Disk control panel in order to boot from it. This means that neither can be used to cold boot a Mac that has no pram battery, although a restart should presumably work...

This leads me to the first quandary. I have read some speculation that these cards are only bootable on Macs that have SCSI Manager (4.3?) in ROM, i.e. the AV Quadras and x100 PowerMacs onwards. Conventional wisdom dictates the 700 and 800 do not have this.

So, is the requirement to have SCSI Manager in ROM incorrect, or is it actually present in Macs earlier than the AV series?

Note that the SEIV user manual does not state this requirement anywhere that I have seen.

Unfortunately I don't have any II series Macs to try this in, so I don't know if the Quadras have some other secret sauce that allows booting? It seems to me that at least the SEII predates the Quadras? I have read one account in an old thread on here of a member who was able to boot his IIci from a SEIV, so ultimately I am just curious why people generally think these cards are not bootable?

*PSA: the updater starts flashing the firmware as soon as you open it. I opened it assuming it would at least ask me to confirm I wanted to proceed! Thankfully the new firmware does not seem to have changed any behaviour that I can see.

Well done sir! (apologies if you are female).
I have mixed results with my SEIVs beut then I then I think some of them might need a recap.

What versions of the system software did you boot your Quadras 700 & 800 up in? What is the lowest one that works?
Did you format, partition & create volumes on the hard drives in question while connected to the ATTO cards?
if so, what software did you use for this process? Lido? Anubis?

 

[lobust]

I would be very surprised if this were true, because...



... the "normal" firmware for the SE IV does not use SCSI Manager 4.3. There's a SCSI Manager 4.3 beta firmware out there that you can use, but the released firmware all does not. So the fact that the earlier SE II would require it feels like it's probably wrong.

Yes, that makes sense to me.

Well done sir! (apologies if you are female).
I have mixed results with my SEIVs beut then I then I think some of them might need a recap.

What versions of the system software did you boot your Quadras 700 & 800 up in? What is the lowest one that works?
Did you format, partition & create volumes on the hard drives in question while connected to the ATTO cards?
if so, what software did you use for this process? Lido? Anubis?

Sir is correct, although as a Scot I don’t tend towards formality!

I also don’t think any congratulations are in order as I didn’t do anything clever to achieve this. Lucky perhaps!

The 700 is running 7.1.1, the 800 is running 8.1.

Note I have only tried the cards in the configurations stated in my OP, I can’t say for sure that the SEII will work under 8.1 for example until I try it.

I did have the SEII running in the 800 with the SCSI2SD but that was a while ago and I can’t remember for sure which system software I was running at the time. I want to say it was 7.6, but don’t quote me on that.

Nothing special or out of the ordinary was done. All disks used were previously used with onboard SCSI and were not reformatted for the SE cards. The partitions in the SCSI2SD were formatted with either Drive Setup or HD SC Setup, I forget which - I don’t recall which system version I installed on them first. The hard drive currently attached to the SEII in the 700 was previously formatted with Silverlining (I got it that way in an external enclosure), but was wiped and repartitioned with HD SC Setup when installing 7.1.1.

Nothing additional was done to them before or after connecting them to the SE cards. The Silicon Express cdev doesn’t even need to be installed…

 

[Bolle]

I have a SEIV in my 7100 and it can indeed cold boot from the drive connected to it even without a PRAM battery. I am pretty certain that I’ve got the 2.x beta firmware on there.
Can’t remember anymore how I did format the drive to make that happen but I think it might have been FWB Harddisk Toolkit (but more because I usually have that at hand - any other formatter would have worked as well I guess)

 

[lobust]

I have a SEIV in my 7100 and it can indeed cold boot from the drive connected to it even without a PRAM battery. I am pretty certain that I’ve got the 2.x beta firmware on there.

I wonder if the ability to cold boot from an unblessed volume is the different behaviour provided by a SM 4.3 host? Or does that come from the beta firmware?

Do you know if the firmware be rolled back on these if updated?

 

[Bolle]

You can force firmware installation through a key combo. The updater will also install a lower version than what’s currently on the card.
In one of the readme files for the updaters it states what’s the exact key combo to do a force install.

 

[lobust]

You can force firmware installation through a key combo. The updater will also install a lower version than what’s currently on the card.
In one of the readme files for the updaters it states what’s the exact key combo to do a force install.

I must have missed that tidbit, thanks!

 

[cheesestraws]

I wonder if the ability to cold boot from an unblessed volume is the different behaviour provided by a SM 4.3 host? Or does that come from the beta firmware?

I think you need both. The point of the beta firmware is to take advantage of SM 4.3; part of the point of SM 4.3 is to be able to have multiple SCSI buses all as first-class. Otherwise, IIRC, both the card and the drive have to be marked in the PRAM, and the card's code manages bootability, rather than the SCSI manager managing bootability.

If the card manages bootability, that means that the boot sequence can't fall back to the card after not finding another boot volume, if that makes sense?

I believe this is how it works though it's been a while since I looked into it.