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Date:	Thu, 12 Feb 2004 17:07:43 PST8
From:	waynec@linkline.com
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: Re: Actiontec modem setup success?--IRQ

Content Type: text/plain

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J. R. Fox writes:

> Wayne wrote:
>
>> Well, I celebrated too soon yesterday. Today I put the covers back on and
>> brought it up under WinXP. Both scsi drives sync'd at 160mb. Used it for 2
>> hours and it worked fine, then rebooted to bring up Warp, but now the
>> address 2 scsi drive is completely absent from the scsi adapter bios
>> display... I'm back to square 1.
>
> This sounds pretty weird to me, but then sometimes there will be something
> (of a hardware nature) that OS/2 critically objects to but Win-32 lets slide --
> or vice versa. My hunch is that Steven was on the right track, re some bad or
> marginal h/w item. One thing I can tell you is not to dismiss the possibility of
> a bad cable or connector. I had a fancy custom SCSI cable, with connectors
> for 3 HDD's, even though I never used more than 2. At some point, one of the
> two HDD's began having sync connection | sync rate problems, but they were
> random and intermittent. Replacing that whole cable (Granite Digital) with
> another of the same type would have been an expensive proposition. But,
> apparently, it wasn't the cable as a whole that was acting up, and definitely
> not the H/D. When I switched to the 3rd., previously unused connector on the
> cable, the problem went away and hasn't returned. (It has been a year or more
> since then.)
>
>> And, I don't have the slightest inkling why my modem is (or at least WAS)
>> irq 3 yesterday, irq 11 and 5 on prior occasions, and irq 16 under WinXP. I
>> keep hoping someone on this forum can clue me in on this stuff.
>
> I would not put any stock at all into what the Win-32 equivalent of Hardware
> Mgr. reports to you. I have seen it showing *every* device as being supported
> by one of two IRQs !! Yeah, I've heard of IRQ sharing, but that has to be
> impossible -- right ? And they have some kind of dynamic assignment at boot-up,
> so you might not see consistent IRQs, anyway.
>
> Jordan

Well, I am still clueless and going downhill. As you may recall, I noticed
this all start happening a few days after I installed a 2940U scsi2 PCI card
with an HP cdrw attached, plus an Actiontec PCI modem.

The initial indications were that the first scsi drive had a hardware error
(ie, unable to access the drive) while booted under WinXP. I noticed during
the adapter bios boots that the first scsi drive often would sync at
something less than 160mb (usually 40mb) and the second scsi drive
occasionally showed that same low sync symptom.

Day before yesterday the first scsi drive (address #2) stopped showing up in
the scsi adapter bios display (and in the bios utility program), despite my
efforts to reseat cables, switch connectors on my 4-drive U160 cable, and
having previously removed the modem and moved the scsi adapters to different
PCI ports. And, the second scsi drive (address #4) still didn't always show
160mb sync, it was frequently less.

So, I removed the power and scsi connectors from the first scsi drive
(address 2). After powering up, the second scsi drive now seemed to be
sync'ing solidly at 160mb through several power up/down sequences, so I put
the modem back in, but left the case cover off to try to remove heat as an
issue. Having backed up the partitions on that first scsi drive, I restored
them to the ide drive where both WinXP and OS/2 reside.

All seemed OK again until last night. I noticed the second scsi drive was
only showing 40mb sync during adapter power-up boots. Then today, while
booted under WinXP I lost access to the second scsi drive, and the WinXP
operating system locked up when I then (as a test check) tried to read a
cdrom on the scsi2 cdrw drive. On power down/up, the second scsi drive
didn't show at all on the scsi adapter bios listing.

I tried a different scsi2 cable on the 2940U (I don't have a second U160
cable to try)... no success, still can't see the remaining scsi drive.

I removed the 2940U completely. No change, the scsi drive still doesn't show
up at all on the 29160 adapter's bootup listing or on it's bios utility
program.

Meanwhile, the PCI NIC card, and the PCI USB smart media reader (which I use
only under WinXP and which doesn't show up under OS/2), continued to work
fine throughout all of this.

Ideas, anybody?????

Wayne

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