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Date:	Mon, 9 Feb 2004 11:05:27 PST8
From:	waynec@linkline.com
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: Actiontec modem setup

Content Type: text/plain

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Steven Levine writes:

> at 12:39 AM, waynec@linkline.com said:
>
>>Maybe it's just too late at night: ....what's "HBA"?
>
> Host Bus Adapter.
>
>>Motherboard??? More likely the scsi adapter or cable, wouldn't you think?
>
> Probably. However, I learned long along ago to assume as little as
> possible when troubleshooting. Everything is on the list until it is
> proven not to be the problem.
>
>> The PCI NIC card uses PCI and the same IRQ 11 and continues to work
>>fine. But it just seems too much of a coincidence that this all started
>>happening within a couple of days of replacing an ide cdrom with a scsi
>>cdrw & 2940U adapter, and adding a modem (which hasn't yet worked).
>
> Well, have you pulled both the modem to the cdrom? Does that change the
> error conditions?

I'll be playing with these things today... I took the Actiontec PCI modem
card out yesterday without effect.

I haven't yet pulled the cdrw. The cdrw is connected to a different scsi
adapter: an adaptec 2940U that was added at the same time as the cdrw.

An adaptec 29160lp interfaces the two scsi drives.

>
>>If it's hardware (and I agree it must be hardware or a bad bios setting)
>>I keep coming back to the scsi cable as the common hardware piece that
>>could be failing; possibly the PCI slot or something on the scsi
>>adapter, but the scsi adapter seems to interface to the machine just
>>fine. Right now I am booted under WinXP and the second scsi drive
>>(address 6) is working fine.
>
> How is this? Unless I misunderstood your prior explanations, the NSYNC
> error is occurring when the SCSI BIOS is scanning the drives. Are you
> saying WinXP is insensitive to this error?

No, I'm saying that the scsi adapter has a problem with the first scsi drive
(address 2) and that the second scsi drive (address 4) doesn't always sync
at 160mb, but it usually does connect. I can't boot Warp without that first
scsi drive. WinXP is on an ide drive, so it can boot regardless of the scsi
drive status, it just doesn't show the partitions on the first scsi drive if
it didn't connect at bootup, or loses access to them after awhile if the
drive did connect.

The original problem (started mid-week) was that both drives connected fine
but the first drive started having problems after it'd been running awhile
(ie, an error if I tried to read or write to a partition on that drive).
During this period, for instance... motivated by the errors I'd been
having... I was able to bring up WinXP and use DFSEE to backup the
partitions on that drive before it again began giving errors.

More recently, though, the first drive either isn't connected during the
adaptec 29160LP bios bootup, or it's connected at a low sync rate (40mb),
and the second drive doesn't always sync at a full 160mb (sometimes 80 or
40). Once the second scsi drive connects at bootup, it stays up while the
system is running.

A few times when I was reseating the scsi card and the scsi cable at the
card between bootups, the card wasn't able to connect to either scsi drive.

Just now I removed the scsi cable at the first drive and the 29160lp
connected to the second drive at 160mb.

I would blame the first scsi drive, except for the fact that repeated
reseating of the card and/or the cable at the card kept resulting in
different outcomes during bootup... but I don't know whether those
variations were due to the card, the cable, the drive, a worsening problem
with the drive or some other random problem.

>
>>Low performance settings? I'm lost again. And what would it be evidence
>>of?
>
> Read the MB manual. Every MB BIOS is know has two sets of options, BIOS
> and SETUP. Once of these will be more conservative and can be useful for
> troubleshooting.
>
>>I'll mount a search for the bios manual, seems like I saw it on a cdrom
>>somewhere when I got this machine.
>
> Good idea. :-) You can probably download it from the MB manufacturter's
> web site too.
>
> Regards,
>
> Steven
>

Thanks,
Wayne

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