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SCSII2SD with ICD host adapter


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Hi all,

 

Does anybody here use a SCSII2SD PCB with an ICD host adapter? I just got one version 5.1 and i get very erratic behavior. The PCB is recognized most of the time when i limit the reported size to 512MB (using TOS 1.04) but then many times formatting "the disk" fails with a write error, few times will complete successfully and once O have been using the "hard drives" for 5 minutes with no issues. Many times when i am lucky and format completed i am reading/writing and then my mega st4 freezes...

 

I have tested the power supply and it's good (plus it has been driving that icd with two real hard drives for years.

 

I have also changed some settings for the SCSI2SD through its utility, but no luck...

 

What am i missing???

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The latest firmware is here:

 

http://www.codesrc.com/files/scsi2sd/latest/firmware/

 

And it is ver 4.8.01. The one running on my SCSII2SD is reported by the utility to be ver 4.8.1 (that came with the card). So i suppose i firmware is not the issue...

 

Do you have a SCSII2SD ver 5.1 running on your setup? I am at the same time exchanging emails with the developer and sending him logs, but he said he doesn't have an atari with an ICD host adapter. So i really would like to know first of all if anyone here has one up and running with their atari...

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The icd host adapter is in its own enclosure with its own power supply. I use the same power supply which produces +5V and +12V DC. I measured the outputs and they were something like +5.1V and 12.8V respectively, plus that power supply was powering real hard drives that worked with no issues.

 

The ver 5.1 of SCSII2SD (which is what i have) has its built in termination which can be softwar enabled or disabled.

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It may be simply that very old design ICD adapter is not compatible with new design SCSI-SD adapter.

I had problems with ICD AdSCSI Plus ST and some other adapter connected via it (Daisy chain) - like UltraSatan.

 

Yep... That is what I am worried might be the case...

 

 

I have a SCSI2SD connected to an ICD ADSCSI and another connected to a SUPRA SCSI. The only driver that seems to work for me is https://www.hddriver.net/en/

I cannot get the ICD drivers to work at all.

 

I do own one of PPERA's drivers, but it is his IDE driver so I never bothered to try it.

 

Ok, interesting. Although I would think the driver would matter more on interfacing the host controller to the mega ST, there is also a good chance it will affect the SCSI2SD and host adapter interface...

So I looked at the website and it seems like I can download a demo driver and see if it works for me... I will try that and get back here to share my experience. Although I don't think I will have the time to do it in the next couple of days...

Edited by larrylaffer
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How long of a SCSI cable are you using? I had issues with my SCSI2SD to the Mega STE internal adapter until I shortened the cable to around 4" (it would show up and read, but when attempting to write, it only worked about 5-10% of the time).

 

I HAVE been successful in getting it to work though, it'll even 'see' a 32gb SDHC card installed, but with the current limitations of TOS I can only address 7168mb total on it.

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Hi all,

 

Does anybody here use a SCSII2SD PCB with an ICD host adapter? I just got one version 5.1 and i get very erratic behavior. The PCB is recognized most of the time when i limit the reported size to 512MB (using TOS 1.04) but then many times formatting "the disk" fails with a write error, few times will complete successfully and once O have been using the "hard drives" for 5 minutes with no issues. Many times when i am lucky and format completed i am reading/writing and then my mega st4 freezes...

 

I have tested the power supply and it's good (plus it has been driving that icd with two real hard drives for years.

 

I have also changed some settings for the SCSI2SD through its utility, but no luck...

 

What am i missing???

 

How is your SCSI2SD mounted? When I put SCSI2SD on my Supra Drive for testing, the SCSI board was touching the metal case and causing erratic issues. After I separated with cardboard everything started working great. Just a thought maybe something electrical

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How is your SCSI2SD mounted? When I put SCSI2SD on my Supra Drive for testing, the SCSI board was touching the metal case and causing erratic issues. After I separated with cardboard everything started working great. Just a thought maybe something electrical

 

After the first attempts to make it work I completely let it hang off the enclosure. Only the data cable and the power cable are connected and the SCSI2SD is hanging in the air and there is absolutely nothing touching the PCB. Yeah, electrical was the first and (relatively) easiest thing ensure: good power supply, good SCSI cable and nothing touching the PCB...

 

I still need to try the driver that Fletch mentioned, I just have been extremely busy lately...

 

Also:

 

How long of a SCSI cable are you using? I had issues with my SCSI2SD to the Mega STE internal adapter until I shortened the cable to around 4" (it would show up and read, but when attempting to write, it only worked about 5-10% of the time).

 

I HAVE been successful in getting it to work though, it'll even 'see' a 32gb SDHC card installed, but with the current limitations of TOS I can only address 7168mb total on it.

 

Yep... I can see the SDHC too. I have it limited to 512mb and as I said before sometimes I can go as far as formatting it and writing and reading to/from it. But the longest this joy lasted was 5 mins... Sometimes it fails to format with a Write error, sometimes it just hangs and sometimes the ST just hangs... Another thing I don't think I've mentioned is that when I am collecting logs I *always* cant' get to format recognizing the size. So it seems like the logging introduces some timing issues. Which makes me think that also ParanoidLittleMan is possibly right saying it can be an incompatibility between SCSI2SD and my host adapter... Or I am doing something really stupid... This is always a possibility that I take into account... :grin:

Edited by larrylaffer
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  • 3 months later...

Ok, it took me a while to get back here since the developer and i figured out that the issue was actually the power supply that was powering both the ICD and the scsi2sd. Although i had tested it with a multimeter and the voltages were within the right range, apparently the was ripple or some other noise that was breaking the sd2scsii (the ICD was immune to that noise when it was working with legacy mechanical hard drives).

 

Now that i replaced the faulty power supply with a new one everything works without any issues.

 

Thank you all for your input here!

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  • 9 months later...

Trying to get a SCSI2SD 5.1 running on my Mega STE with built in HD adapter.  Won't see it.  I have a 4GB SD card on it.  Even tried to set the SCSI 0 to 1GB and it still won't see it.  Tried AHDI V6 and HD Driver V7.  What parameters does it need to work?  SCSI 2 enabled or not?  Parity on or off?  I set Termination on since it's the only device.  Haven't tried a shorter SCSI cable, but it won't even see mine right now so I don't think that's it.

 

EDIT:  put it into SLOW mode, SCSI 2 OFF, PARITY OFF and it now sees it.  HDDRIVER is formatting it now.  Wish me luck.

Edited by tjlazer
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I have to say that I like those SCSI2SD devices.  I own 4 of them now and I am happy as a clam.

 

1 is installed in a Mega File 44 with the guts replaced with an AdSCSI.  I get 4 SCSI2SD 1 Gig Drives (8 Partitions for TOS 1.04) and MF44 removeable HD mechanism.

1 is install in a generic case along with a SyQuest 200 drive. Same number of drives as above.

1 will be installed into an 8 bay Tower.  It will have only 3 SCSI2SD 1 Gig Drives, 1 CD ROM, 1 SyQuest 44, 1 SyQuest 88 and 1 SyQuest 200 installed all in the same case.  Why all the Syquests? Glad you asked.  HDDriver is not allowing me to format a lower capacity disk in the 88 or the 200.  It will partition, read and write, but will not format them.

1 is installed in a MF44 with the Atari guts still in it.  I only get 1 1 GIG drive and the SyQuest 44 from it due to Atari's limitation of 1 Hard drive per port and there are only two ports in the regular MF44.  I am probably going to remove this and put it in another case with an AdSCSI.

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ok spend like 5 hours trying to get this damn thing working and it was a pain.  I ended up getting it to work, somewhat.  I could not partition it with AHDI V5 or V6.  Nothing worked.  I have an old version of HDDRIVER V7, that saw the drive and was able to format it and partition it into two 512MB partitions.  But then I hit a brick wall.  Could not get the drives to work or show up.  I was able to see the partitions in HDDRIVER but was not able to install the driver or get the drives to show up in GEM.  Tried HDI and I was able to install the driver to C: and then the drive was able to boot.  But could not see D:  Then I went back and deleted partitions and set them up again in HDDRIVER and repeated it with HDI, and now I can mount C: and D:  Seems to work ok now, but I am getting random intermittent lock ups and errors.  Sometimes the booting is slow, other times faster.  Copied a bunch of PRG games to the HD and they did not load.  Was getting a TOS 35 error.  Then I cold booted and tried to copy some over again and now they load. Weird.  I read that using a shorter SCSI cable helps, going to try that next.

Edited by tjlazer
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@tjlazer 

I see you have set the device in slow mode, I am not sure what that does. When I set my v5.0b up I changed very little from the defaults.  I changed the drive to 1 gig, renamed what the devices calls itself and away I went with no problems at all.  Of course I used external adapters on all three of mine and not the internal one on my MSTE.

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15 hours ago, tjlazer said:

ok spend like 5 hours trying to get this damn thing working and it was a pain.  I ended up getting it to work, somewhat.  I could not partition it with AHDI V5 or V6.  Nothing worked.  I have an old version of HDDRIVER V7, that saw the drive and was able to format it and partition it into two 512MB partitions.  But then I hit a brick wall.  Could not get the drives to work or show up.  I was able to see the partitions in HDDRIVER but was not able to install the driver or get the drives to show up in GEM.  Tried HDI and I was able to install the driver to C: and then the drive was able to boot.  But could not see ? Then I went back and deleted partitions and set them up again in HDDRIVER and repeated it with HDI, and now I can mount C: and ? Seems to work ok now, but I am getting random intermittent lock ups and errors.  Sometimes the booting is slow, other times faster.  Copied a bunch of PRG games to the HD and they did not load.  Was getting a TOS 35 error.  Then I cold booted and tried to copy some over again and now they load. Weird.  I read that using a shorter SCSI cable helps, going to try that next.

Honestly, all this seems identical to the issues I had: the SCSI2SD would sometimes get formatted successfully, sometimes I could write files, sometimes I could read, but many times I couldn't. From my experience when trying to put together older and newer technology, newer technology is more picky with power supplies and with our 30+ year old PSUs ripple and other noise can escape into the +5V rails. All these issues magically solved for me as soon as I changed my power supply...

 

There is always the option to get in touch with the developer of the board. He has been very helpful and he will guide you on how to get logs from the SCSI2SD.

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@ijor

 

Yes.  I have a Full Height SCSI case with a SyQuest 200 Drive and a v5.0b SCSI2SD unit also installed with all 4 SCSI Units enabled (4 drives).  I have used this setup interchangeably between MY TT/Falcon with straight SCSI and all my other STs with the ACSI port and a Link2.

I have also used one with an AdSCSI adapter and one with a Mega File 44 on the second port that those units have. They all work great.  I have a couple of Supra interfaces I want to try at some point, but I have read elsewhere that it works there too.

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2 hours ago, SoulBuster said:

Yes.  I have a Full Height SCSI case with a SyQuest 200 Drive and a v5.0b SCSI2SD unit also installed with all 4 SCSI Units enabled (4 drives).  I have used this setup interchangeably between MY TT/Falcon with straight SCSI and all my other STs with the ACSI port and a Link2.

 

Interesting, thanks. But the point is if the SCSI2SD itself was providing termination power, and then powering the Link, or the SyQuest? Did you try with the SCSI2SD alone?

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2 hours ago, SoulBuster said:

No.  I do not need a setup where it is the only device.  I do have one that I have not mounted anywhere yet.  I can give that a try and see what happens.  I imagine it will work just fine as the SCSI2SD has its own terminating resistors.

 

If you can do that test it would be great. Thanks. Although it might be possible to perform the same test with your regular setup as long as you disable termination power on the SyQuest.

 

Yes, the SCSI2SD does have termination power. The question is if it's enough to power the Link. One thing is to power just the bus, other is to power the whole Link device. Remember that contrary to older ICD host adapters, the Link and Link2 are powered directly from the SCSI bus. So the SCSI2SD would need to power the Link2.

 

I suspect that it should work just fine as long as the SCSI2SD is powered with the molex/floppy power connector. It might not if powered through USB. But this is not much more than just a guess.

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@ijor

 

I do not pretend to know anything about it, but wouldn't the power come from the computer end, instead of the drive end?  I would have thought the computer would hand power over to the Link2.

I have both versions of the Link2.  The clear case and the opaque case.  I'll try both tonight.

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