This machine ought to have onboard SCSI of some kind which the CD-ROM drive is hooked up to. Looking at the pictures posted on the other thread the SCSI card has a Compaq SMART 2/P or similar RAID controller which the disks are connected to.

You could pull the RAID card and probably hook the disks up to the onboard SCSI if it has a 68pin connector - you'd just have to make sure the CD-ROM drive was set to a SCSI ID that wasn't going to conflict with any drives in the hot-swap bays.

weedeewee wrote on 2022-03-07, 20:02:

Which scsi card do you have in use ?

Compaq Smart Wide SCSI model 194754-001

davidrg wrote on 2022-03-07, 20:13:

This machine ought to have onboard SCSI of some kind which the CD-ROM drive is hooked up to. Looking at the pictures posted on the other thread the SCSI card has a Compaq SMART 2/P or similar RAID controller which the disks are connected to.

You could pull the RAID card and probably hook the disks up to the onboard SCSI if it has a 68pin connector - you'd just have to make sure the CD-ROM drive was set to a SCSI ID that wasn't going to conflict with any drives in the hot-swap bays.

Nope no 68 pin on board and I posted the model number down below. I am wondering if I would be better off trying a different controller. But I am not sure what I am loosing if I switch SCSI controllers.

Winman486 wrote on 2022-03-08, 07:28:

weedeewee wrote on 2022-03-07, 20:02:

Which scsi card do you have in use ?

Compaq Smart Wide SCSI model 194754-001

Yeah, thats a SMART 2/P RAID Controller - the batteries are a bit of a giveaway that its not a regular SCSI card. They will eventually leak too - I've got an older EISA model on my desk that looks like it will need its batteries desoldered soon.

Bit of a pain the onboard SCSI is only 50pin. If you weren't planning on using RAID then you probably wouldn't loose much switching to another SCSI card.

davidrg wrote on 2022-03-08, 08:56:

Winman486 wrote on 2022-03-08, 07:28:

weedeewee wrote on 2022-03-07, 20:02:

Which scsi card do you have in use ?

Compaq Smart Wide SCSI model 194754-001

Yeah, thats a SMART 2/P RAID Controller - the batteries are a bit of a giveaway that its not a regular SCSI card. They will eventually leak too - I've got an older EISA model on my desk that looks like it will need its batteries desoldered soon.

Bit of a pain the onboard SCSI is only 50pin. If you weren't planning on using RAID then you probably wouldn't loose much switching to another SCSI card.

I tried one other SCSI card I had could not seem to get it to detect the drives the system saw it in the BIOS but I never saw its option ROM on boot.

Winman486 wrote on 2022-03-08, 07:41:

Nope no 68 pin on board and I posted the model number down below. I am wondering if I would be better off trying a different controller. But I am not sure what I am loosing if I switch SCSI controllers.

Smart Array 3200 and 4200 are officially supported on the PL5000 and in theory should be faster then the Smart Array 2
I doubt it'll let you use other video cards though

winman486, FYI, the only reason you would need scsi drive detection is to either boot from a scsi drive or use them in plain dos (if the scsi bios supports more than 2 drives in dos)

Thinking about it a bit more, this is a RAID controller. Has it been configured? I don't really recall what these things do when unconfigured but perhaps that's why you're not seeing any drives. Perhaps it doesn't just default to being a dumb SCSI controller but is expecting you to run the RAID Configuration Utility to tell it what to do.

weedeewee wrote on 2022-03-09, 19:01:

winman486, FYI, the only reason you would need scsi drive detection is to either boot from a scsi drive or use them in plain dos (if the scsi bios supports more than 2 drives in dos)

I want raid

weedeewee wrote on 2022-03-07, 20:02:

Which scsi card do you have in use ?

Compaq Smart Array 2

FYI the 9250 BIOS size is 52KB