I tried another combination:

IDE1 master: Quantum 3.1GB
IDE1 slave: CF adapter with 512MB Sandisk or 2GB Sandisk Ultra
IDE2 master: Quantum 5 GB
IDE2 slave: LG 52x CD-ROM

Both Quantums again being detected correctly during boot time by the adapter BIOS, and reachable by FDISK or any other partitioning utility. CDROM again loads and works fine.

CF card again being detected by the adapter BIOS correctly.

But AGAIN, it is not exisiting when it comes to any partitioning utility.

Changed the SCSI card IO adress to 140-15F and rare random system self resets are gone, and controller detects the disk correctly at boot time, but again, not reachable by FDISK, etc...

I hate my builds when they are moodier than even my wife... 😒

Well, at least you can modify/improve your builds. Wife... Only if you upgrade from Wife 1.0 to Wife 2.0

Silly question, but what exactly is the point of having scsi AND ide? The reason you can't see the scsi hard drive is because the two controller bios are conflicting. One or the other needs to be a "stupid" controller. (no bios). PCI fixed this and is no longer an issue. but pre-PnP isa. Anything more than one bios add-on just doesnt work. Put eveything on scsi and forget IDE is my advice.

luckybob wrote:

Silly question, but what exactly is the point of having scsi AND ide? The reason you can't see the scsi hard drive is because the two controller bios are conflicting. One or the other needs to be a "stupid" controller. (no bios). PCI fixed this and is no longer an issue. but pre-PnP isa. Anything more than one bios add-on just doesnt work. Put eveything on scsi and forget IDE is my advice.

There is no special reason. I just like SCSI, and I have many SCSI disks all around all types and sizes. Plus I don't like empty slots and trays... 😊
But my main requirement is IDE, due to CF adapter and CDROM availablity.

The confugration that I tried to achive (for almost all of my builds) is something like this:

IDE1: HDD for OS1
IDE2: HDD for OS2
IDE3: CF card for data transfer
IDE4: CDROM/DVDROM
SCSI: HDD for IDE ghost images, and all the other setup files (OSes, drivers, software, etc.)

By the way, there is no BIOS conflict. I'm able to specify non confilicting memory adresses on both cards. by jumper on the EIDE, and either by switches or thru ICU PNP on SCSI.

Besides, I already tried only EIDE and only SCSI confugrations, and the situation did not improve.

The important thing is CF card. If I somehow can manage to use it, I can easily give up SCSI, if required for that achivement.

I just found a "how to" guide and seen that Adaptec 15xx family of cards are known to do this, with MS DOS machines. And remedy is loading Adaptec ASPI drivers for DOS, and driving HDD by another driver software, then making the partition with AFDISK, an Adaptec partitioning utility. It worked. The drivers are not so small, but I still have enough of upper meemory blocks available, so not much problem et the moment but thigs are still weird. The irritating thing is, SCSI hard disks are not supposed to be driven by software under DOS, all my retro builds (PIII, PMMX, 486) are hybrid machines with both SCSI and IDE, working perfectly well under DOS, even the one with 5 SCSI disks, 3 IDE disks, 1 IDE DVD and 1 SCSI DVD.

For example, any partitioning sofware that I have (Partition Magic, Fdisk, Efdisk, etc.) still cannot see the drive, althoguh it is formatted, drive letter assigned, and working perfectly at the moment.

The other funny thing is, a system spec reporter that I use (Astra) can see the Flash disk with correct info, but still cannot see the SCSI drive...

So, at the moment:

- System detects both IDE disks, CF card, CDROM and SCSI disk correctly and without any hassle at bootup time.
- I can access both IDE disks and CDROM normally and without any additional measure
- By using Adaptec drivers, I can access the SCSI disk normally under DOS just by "F: enter" and do any type of normal oprations on it (copy, delete, md, cd, etc.).
- Even with drivers, only partitioning sofware that can acccess the SCSI is Adaptec's own AFDISK
- Astra detects the CF card which I have no normal access, but acts as there is no SCSI disk although I have normal access to SCSI disk.

fillosaurus wrote:

Well, at least you can modify/improve your builds. Wife... Only if you upgrade from Wife 1.0 to Wife 2.0

"Upgrading Wife" somehow just sounds wrong, don't you think?... 😁

Well, can we consider, going from 49 kgs to 59 kgs in about 20 years, as sort of an upgrade?...🤣

The conflict is with the Int 13h extensions the cards install. I had a similar problem with my EISA 486, a SIIG card and an Adapter EISA SCSI card. Only one or the other could hook Int 13h. Half the option ROM settings would nuke the other card's (usually the SCSI card) option ROM from even running!

NJRoadfan wrote:

The conflict is with the Int 13h extensions the cards install. I had a similar problem with my EISA 486, a SIIG card and an Adapter EISA SCSI card. Only one or the other could hook Int 13h. Half the option ROM settings would nuke the other card's (usually the SCSI card) option ROM from even running!

Actually I given up on SCSI (although I managed to make it work with Adaptec DOS drivers) and my only concern is making the IDE system work.

Still no success with CF card. I just started to think that there is something wrong with my cheap CF adapter. Ordered a different and better looking one.