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PT Pro/SCSI2SD v6 Escapades - Part II

LaPorta

Well-known member
About a year ago, I gave up on using a SCSI2SD v6 (Rev. F) in my PT Pro. I had all sorts of data corruption issues, format issues, etc. Just didn't work. At the time, some said that there was an issue with the latest firmware revision. So, I shelved it and instead used an Sonnet IDE PCI Card with CF adapter. This has worked OK for some time, but has always been plagued by random seek slowdown issues, etc. Still looking for something to just....work.

Now, I have revisited the v6. I updated to the most recent firmware. Obliterated my SD card. Set up the SCSI2SD as a 4-SCSI device unit (IDs 0, 1, 2, and 4) (ID 3 is a Jaz Drive on another bus, I didn't use it to just prevent conflicts). The PT Pro has one external SCSI board connector, and an internal, SCSI-II connector. I have the v6 as the only device on the SCSI-II connector. I enabled the SCSI-2 option in the SCSI2SD Util. Termination was enabled. Parity enabled. The four SCSI IDs are broken up into two-2GB drives, one 500 MB drive, and the last bit as I think as 15 GB (it is a 32 GB SD card). I formatted each of these "drives" on my iMac G4 using Disk Utility via USB connection through the SCSI2SD. The first three are just single partition drives, then the latter 15 GB chunk I partitioned into three partitions, and left about 200 MB free space. I attached the SCSI2SD to the PT Pro, start the machine. Works fine, all partitions show up as they should. When I try to copy files to any of the partitions, they copy for a while, then the machine just freezes mid-copy. No matter what drive/partition, it does the same. Tried under OS 9, 8.6, and System 7.5. Same thing. Tried with extensions off. Same thing. No matter what I copy, it freezes.

I haven't a clue what would cause it to "sort of" work. Someone else with more knowledge of this than me, please bail me out here!
 
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LaPorta

Well-known member
So, I tried various different things: new SD card, using only one SCSI device instead of four. All extra options off. Always fails to fnish copying and freezes. I just don't get it...
 

trag

Well-known member
A long shot, but have you tried a different SCSI cable. I've been having problems while testing converted Acard SCSI-IDE bridges that seem to point at the SCSI cables.

Also, I'm beginning to wonder if it's time to get some kind of contact cleaner. De-oxit?

There was a thread where the poster had issues with his external SCSI on a Q800 (IIRC) and ultimately, spraying contact cleaner on the external SCSI connector fixed it.

Deoxit Fixed SCSI Problems
 
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LaPorta

Well-known member
Ok, so the cable made no difference. I have a feeling that I have some sort of weird gremlin now, because I tried a 5.2 that I have in there as well. Every time it gets to around 200 MB or so copied, the freeze occurs again. So, both the v6 and v5.2 freeze with copies. Does the PT Pro just not like these things or something?
 

trag

Well-known member
Another long shot, but have you tested you memory with like RAMometer? Back in the late 90s the SuperMacs LEMList found that most failures are within 15 iterations, but some failures take as much as 1500. There must be some kind of changing test pattern that RAMometer uses or something, otherwise number of iterations shouldn't make a different.

And, one needs to put the DIMM(s) under test as the meat in a "sandwich" configuration to be certain the entire DIMM is getting tested.
 

jessenator

Well-known member
This all has the whiff of the same sort of IDE controller issues I was having my non-pro PowerTower...

I tried multiple controllers and would have this same disk activity issue. Don't have a Sonnet, but I've tried an SIL3112, with and without a bridge, a Mac ROM IDE/66 controller and both eventually would behave like this.

Have you tried running MacBench or Norton disk tests by chance? For MB4, I wonder if you get a freeze there, too, and at which test hungry in the suite it stalls on.

In the end I went back to the v5.1 SCSI2SD I had (don't have a 6), and it's been mostly smooth sailing.
 

LaPorta

Well-known member
Ok, let me shed some light on this. Jessenator was more right in a way than he thought.

So, the issue was the CF card I was copying from. I have a Sonnet ATA133, and the reason I was trying to use the v6 was because of the CF slowdown issues. So, instead of the CF adapted, I tried an ATA to SD card adapter I have just bought. That thing works just fine, no issue, but had the same freeze as the SCSI2SD when I tried to copy things. So, instead, I used my Mac Mini to load the SD and CF cards, copied everything from one to the other, and now the SD adapter works fine with no slowdown. I guess I will use the v6 in something else now (like the PM 8100 I have)...
 

jessenator

Well-known member
I'm actually impressed you actually were able to get a CF card to boot at all, now I'm thinking about it...

I couldn't get my IDE-CF adapter to do anything other than not boot when it was plugged in: CF - adapter - IDE / SATA bridge - controller
 

LaPorta

Well-known member
Well perhaps it was because of a difference: There was no "bridge": my controller PCI card is just a straight ATA card, so it was CF - adapter-controller.
 
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