Quantum Atlas 10k Ultra160 drive disappears

[sstaylor]

So I'm installing a 9gb Quantum Atlas 10k Ultra160 scsi drive with a 68 pin interface into my PowerMac 8500.  I have a 68 to 50 pin adapter to hook it up.  So I get it all together, boot up 7.6.1, launch Lido and there it is.  I partition it into several 2gb or less partitions (I'm planning on installing some of these into some older macs too).  It formats fine, and I run some tests, which also go fine.  But then I shut down, and upon restarting, none of those partitions are there, Lido no longer even sees the drive, nor do several other formatters (hdsc patched, anubis, a couple of others).  No sign that it's even on the scsi bus.

What happened?

I have several of these drives, and the same thing has happened on two of them.  I don't dare fool around and possibly kill any more of them.  Any ideas?

 

[sstaylor]

Ok, so more information (sorry).

The drive was set to scsi id 1, with the original internal hard drive at id 0 and the cd drive at id 3.

It is jumpered to force narrow ("no-wide"), and also jumpered to force single-ended (though in reading through the documentation for this drive, it should automatically set to SE if the drive determines it's needed).

The drive does not have termination, but shouldn't need it as it's in the middle of the chain.

I also tried booting from 8.6 and it still wasn't seen by any of the formatting tools.

And yes, the drive is spinning.

 

[sstaylor]

In working with these drives I have found some updates:

Cheap chinese/ebay 68 to 50 pin adapter just didn't work for me.  Adapters purchased elsewhere worked ok.  Which is a shame, because the cheap adapter was well, cheap, and it had a better design so it fit inside a mac better.

At first format, the drive would show up with the SCSI ID selected by the jumper on the drive.  The adapter has no jumpers.  Once formatted (with Lido, haven't tried others just yet) the jumper setting didn't matter, it always shows as ID 0.  Once I had unplugged the original mac drive, the new one showed up again.  Now I have it set up with the original drive as ID 2 and this new drive as ID 0. Very very strange behavior indeed.  Drive is still usable, but there's less flexibility than I had hoped.

The drive is fast and much quieter than the original drive, and I haven't seen them get particularly hot.  I got a dozen of them for something like $3 each shipped, so despite the troubles I'm happy.  Even considering the cost of the adapter these were some really cheap replacement drives.

 

[olePigeon]

If you have a dozen of them, RAID them for even faster speed.

 

[sstaylor]

Yeah, that would be fast; too fast for my 8500 or really any of my other classic systems.  But I can't seem to get distinct scsi id numbers on them, so that could be a problem.

Anyway, one is headed for the SE/30, one for the IIci, others will go elsewhere.  Nice to have a stock of fast and large scsi drives for my vintage machines.