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need help getting scsi CD drive running in a 286

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First post, by soviet conscript

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I've been trying to add a CD drive to my 286, a job that I thought would be simple but its turning out to be a hassle

specs
harris 20mhz 286 w/ 287 copro
DOS 5.0
4MB RAM
SB 2.0
ATI VGAwonder+

it seems no matter what I try when my system goes to load up the SCSI cd driver my system locks up. prior to this I had no CD drive and a IDE hard drive run off a IDE/multi i/0 card I replaced the hard drive with a SCSI drive and added a AHA-1540cp scsi card. It detects my new scsi hdd drive fine and if the SCSI drivers for the CD are disabled it loads up DOS just fine and also detects the attached CD drive. If however I enable the SCSI drivers they system locks up on boot. I tried a few different CD drives to no effect.

at one point I got frustrated and decided i'll just go with a IDE CD drive so I hooked an IDE drive up to the multi I/O card but my auto install program for my IDE drivers would lock up the system, so I added them manually and I just get a "file missing or corrupt GSSDROM.sys" error.

I've added plenty of SCSI and IDE drives to 386 and 486 and up systems and this is the first time I've had these issues. is it 286 related? any ideas? maybe i'm not seeing something?

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Reply 1 of 6, by dr.zeissler

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Same here. My "Schneider Tower-AT 286/10" with Adaptec 1542 also freezes while loading the SCSI-Drivers.
I added a network-card and transfer the Data over my NAS (DS231j)

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 4 of 6, by soviet conscript

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I really wanted to use SCSI, only went with IDE because it seemed like my only option. This is my first time using VIDE drivers. GSCDROM never failed me in the past until now.

Reply 5 of 6, by Anonymous Coward

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It's possible that your 286 motherboard or chipset just can't do busmastering properly. The 154x cards all do bus mastering, and it cant' be disabled. Maybe the 1522 would be more suitable. I use an AHA-1542C in my original AT 5170 and did not have problems like yours (unless I installed upgrade CPUs with internal cache).

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 6 of 6, by idspispopd

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I thought ISA bus mastering is somewhat non-standard anyway? I think there was a thread here about that...
Another possibility would be that the drivers uses some opcodes that are not available on 286. (Similar to newer 3d cards not working on 486 systems because of Pentium instructions used in the driver.)

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