More pictures:

The connector on that drive is called "SCA" -- it's meant to be used for hot-swap bays, and carries both data and power, but is otherwise essentially the same as a 68-pin SCSI connector. If this will be the only drive attached to your setup, ID 0 is fine, but you do need to make sure the chain is terminated at the drive end. It does not look like your adapter has a termination jumper, only one to provide active termination power. So you will need a cable with a terminator at the end, and your drive will need to be connected between that and the SCSI card.

Thanks, i made some progress, one drive seems to be recognized (right size etc..), still with same cable / adapter. One show data error in inicialization table and one nothing.

All of these made some sort of jumper in the front, but all are set by same way.. I dunno what jumper means, its for drive ID?

With 500 MB HDD, i could read data from it in the Dos, with this working one, i dont see it, i dunno if disc is right, or just without partion, or need just drive even for DOS, im still working to make Windows 98 working, so i cant test it here, can see only safe mode where i can see controller and install drivers, but no disc - i have only one unsupported device here, i dunno if Win98 SCSI needs no safe mode boot or is problem elsewhere.

I really should do a video about setting up scsi.

are you trying to use the 50-pin and the sca drives on the same cable?

I'd like a diagram for what you are trying to do.

what the others said you need a terminator on the end of a scsi cable chain.

And of course - does the SCSI adapter support drives that large, or are there other limitations?

Manual is here: http://download.adaptec.com/pdfs/user_guides/ … s_reference.pdf

Get yourself a 68pin u160 cable which has terminators built in.

I ran a 39160 in my old Dual Athlon machine back in the day, with some 18gb 15k RPM drives. The fast disks really made a difference. Similar to SSDs these days, computers with normal drives always felt REALLY slow to me as a result!

I made some progress. I with proper boot i can now see HDD between Disks in WIndows 98.. unknown device is probably something else, but i still cant use it.

When i start partition magic 8 (both DOS and Win 98, Dos versio see right hdd size, but its unable to complete operation, i dunno because im using drivers pack windows 98 boot cd where it is bundled) it crashes and fdisk not see SCSI disc (should he is it? Update sorryi forgot that i have now only 1 no SCSI disk, so it probably see it), so i need other way how to partition it, any tips?

My setup is simple:
- Controller - last 50 pin cable connector -> pin 50 cable with 2 connectors (im using last one)-> to adapter 50pin->-adapter hotswap connector>SCSI disk 73 GB Compaq something.

You can see controller is able to see the device, there could be newer firmware for controller, i havent yet time to check it (Update 3.10 seems to be last one).

Speed would be nice, but main SCSI problem is noise, is there some nice silent SCSI disc? Because other for newer systems, where IDE controller are running fine, i would probably use PCI IDE controller and SATA SSD with IDE adapter.. So far i didnt see some Sata SSD to SCSI adapter.

Its up and running, i did it my way as usually, but regardless thanks all for help.

I booted with driverspack Windows 98 cd, besides its boot cd which i has only cd rom drivers which is primary reason why im using it, it has multiple partition tools, like gdisk, which i used, i discovered that some Linux and other primary partitions where here i deleted them.. and created one big fat32 parition with it, but it had probably only slow format options, so i after 1% i rebooted to Windows new disc was now visible and could do proper quick format.

Now i cursios if it would be visible without driver also under MS-DOS 7.1 as 500 MB or not, btw its need driver for DOS for performance as DMA for IDE disk or not?
Now i only need some good Windows 98 utility to change driver letters because i dont like new order of discs, i will go also some performance testing.

So not only Terminator way is possible but also Conan - the barbarian way works.. but ill be back:)

you may have gotten it to "work" without proper termination, but running it that way is not a good idea

an easy fix for you would be to place your old 500MB drive (that almost certainly has the option for internal termination) at the end of the 50-pin cable and place the SCA adapter in the middle of the 50-pin cable

SCA drives never support internal termination

We will see is if it is true, or superstition.
Ok, what should be symptoms of not working terminator?

I actually have second cable type, i guess that strange T thing on the end is proper terminator, but it will use again that cheap eBay adapter to disc, which was primary thing i wanted to avoid.

I rebooted in Dos, drive is visible, regarding of Rayers rawspeed its capable as classic non Ultra DMA disc at 2.3 MB/s.

I did also some Win98 benchmarking, i have long time problem with Win98 HDD benchmarking some of them showing nonsenses (ATTO benchmark for example), i was pointed to Roadkill as something better.
There is SCSI drive capped to 6 MB/s i dunno what should be real speed, but my guest is et least 30 MB/s, but i tested my Sata SSD on IDE adapter and it is able to give me, also only 6.5 MB, so maybe both of these adapter such, or i need some VIA drivers, or its problem of vanilla Win98SE. I now that CPU (K6-2+ 500 MHz - 5x 100 - 512 MB RAM)is very slow, but i hope that can cap by such way disc traffic, i never bench marked such slimers machines in the past and dont really remember numbers from contemporary reviews.

SCSI:

SATA:

I wonder that 50 pin controller connector should provide same speed as there 2 other? Is there some difference? I doing this stuff now only on third monitor, during something else, so i didnt have yet time to read the manual.

ruthan wrote:

We will is if it is true, or superstition.

It's part of the spec, so expect loads of "fun" with data integrity errors and more hard to diagnose problems.

ruthan wrote:

We will is if it is true, or superstition.
Ok, what should be symptoms of not working terminator?

No, it's physics. High-speed digital signals have fast transitions between 0 and 1 logic levels. If there's no terminating load at the end of the cable to absorb that energy, these transitions are reflected BACK to the transmitting end, merging with whatever signal level is being transmitted a;long the wire at that point. At the very least, it blurs the transitions between 0/1 and causes ringing. At worst, it causes the receiver to detect a logic level different from what it SHOULD have. In general, random signal levels on your digital bus is considered A Bad Thing.

But hey, these days, science and facts are merely opinions by elitists. So, you do you.

How you can be sure that for example that adapter not behave also as terminator? So far i dont have data integrity problems, i played couple of games from that disk.

I tried that second cable with proper terminator, which is by the way annoying because terminator is after next 30 cm of cable, maybe is by the specs, but still its annoying.. but i have to use other adapter for it, setup it the same as working adapter but drive is not found during start sequence it only took much longer, i dunno if is problem with adapter or cable.. so for now i will use old setup, i dont have any important data on it.

ruthan wrote:

How you can be sure that for example that adapter not behave also as terminator? So far i dont have data integrity problems, i played couple of games from that disk.

Some adapters have build-in terminators, but that usually only applies to the end of the bus on the adapter's side (where "the bus" refers to the entire chain of devices). So if you don't plug anything into one of the ports on the adapter, the adapter will terminate that part by itself. That does not mean the other side does not need any termination.

But hey, if you think you know better than both the manufacturers and experienced users, have your way. Just don't come whining when things go wrong. Of course, your next paragraph does seem to imply you have problems, but since you obviously don't want help... 😒

This wouldn't be first time when people where doing unnecessary steps, lots of tutorials are full of them. So far, not every hint here was based on true.

I have problem with 1 adapter, but so far nobody shared here knowledge about them, so far only someone whining here that im not obey enough experienced users 🙁

Its really strange that is working, that there is not any proper design SCSI feature to disable setup which supposed to be so dangerous, i would except something like at least no terminal warning or no terminal no fun message.

SCA drives have always needed a terminator at the end of the chain.

You are already reporting some issues without a terminator and you only have 2 drives hooked up.

The terminator requirement is not just some dumb trick to get you to spend more money on cabling... it is there for signal integrity.

Either switch the order of the drives IF the 50-pin drive has a built-in terminator or use a terminated cable or a plug-in terminator.

The funny thing about digital is it tends to work until it doesn't. There's "margin" baked in, of course, because it's NEVER a good idea to run right up to the edge of stability. But that margin assumes you're not doing something dumb, like operating a high speed digital bus without termination.

You don't need an antenna to pick up radio signals either. The difference is, on analog FM radio, you can HEAR how terrible the signal is. In a SCSI chain, marginal signals work right up until they don't anymore. I don't know whose idea of fun that is, but it isn't mine.

ruthan wrote:

This wouldn't be first time when people where doing unnecessary steps, lots of tutorials are full of them. So far, not every hint here was based on true.

I have problem with 1 adapter, but so far nobody shared here knowledge about them, so far only someone whining here that im not obey enough experienced users 🙁

Oh, people tried to help you, but you are too stubborn to take their advise seriously. And then you put away their experiences as nonsense with exactly zero proof except that your currently have a somewhat working setup - a setup where the problems could easily be resolved by following the well-meant advise people have been giving you.

But well, seeing your reactions it probably is better to let this thread die...