So turns out I can read from, write to, and even execute binaries on the drive handled by ASPIDISK.SYS just fine... but anytime a directory command is issued or DISKTEST.EXE is attempted to run on the ASPIDISK.SYS managed drive, system hangs for a solid minute before displaying "general failure reading from drive e"

Only on drives using extended translation, ASPIDISK will manage <1GB drives without issue

Well I guess this was a case of RTFM - here's a quote from the documentation accompanying the BIOS upgrade files:

"Drives handled by the BIOS will use extended translation
provided they are over 1 Gigabyte in formatted capacity.
Drives with less than 1 Gigabyte of formatted
capacity will use standard translation regardless of
whether extended translation is enabled. Drives handled
by the disk driver ASPIDISK.SYS will continue to use
standard translation and not be capable of DOS partitions
over 1 Gigabyte."

Pretty damn lame, guess it's time to start looking for 3rd party ASPI storage drivers

Hello!
I'm a still confused, can anyone help with the case if I want to hook a hard drive and a cd-rom with one cable, should I load ASPIDISK or ASPICD?

I just wanted to report back about the true cause of the issues with large drives vs Adaptec drivers.

After narrowing everything down, I determined that the ASPIDISK.SYS is not the problem at all. In fact I can use the exact same version of ASPIDISK.SYS on a machine with a different Adaptec controller (using ASPI2DOS.SYS) and it handles the large drives with extended translation just fine.

The real problem is a bug in ASPI4DOS v3.35 (1997). I have a AHA-1542B with two drives connected, a 2GB and a 74GB (with a 2GB FAT16 partition for DOS access). The 3.20 BIOS is installed and enabled. If I simply boot into DOS using the BIOS and do NOT load any SCSI drivers, both drives work. If I load ASPI4DOS.SYS in my CONFIG.SYS (just the ASPI manager, nothing else, no disk, no CD) then the DIR command to my larger drive will fail as described above, but access to the 2GB drive will continue to work as normal, even though both drives use extended translation. So from that I can assume the bug in the ASPI4DOS manager driver is specific to large HDDs, though I cannot determine an exact size threshold.

It's possible this bug is fixed in the final version of ASPI4DOS, but we will never know since apparently no one can get it to work with a 1542B.

Xeen wrote on 2020-02-14, 06:49:

Hello!
I'm a still confused, can anyone help with the case if I want to hook a hard drive and a cd-rom with one cable, should I load ASPIDISK or ASPICD?

if you have the SCSI BIOS enabled (i.e. you're booting off the SCSI HDD) then you only need to load ASPICD, not ASPIDISK

maxtherabbit wrote on 2020-03-16, 14:02:

Xeen wrote on 2020-02-14, 06:49:

Hello!
I'm a still confused, can anyone help with the case if I want to hook a hard drive and a cd-rom with one cable, should I load ASPIDISK or ASPICD?

if you have the SCSI BIOS enabled (i.e. you're booting off the SCSI HDD) then you only need to load ASPICD, not ASPIDISK

Thanks for the answer, in other words if I have a card without SCSI BIOS then I still need ASPIDISK. Right?

Xeen wrote on 2020-03-16, 14:16:

maxtherabbit wrote on 2020-03-16, 14:02:

Xeen wrote on 2020-02-14, 06:49:

Hello!
I'm a still confused, can anyone help with the case if I want to hook a hard drive and a cd-rom with one cable, should I load ASPIDISK or ASPICD?

if you have the SCSI BIOS enabled (i.e. you're booting off the SCSI HDD) then you only need to load ASPICD, not ASPIDISK

Thanks for the answer, in other words if I have a card without SCSI BIOS then I still need ASPIDISK. Right?

Correct. Without a SCSI BIOS, you need to load 3 drivers to support both a CD and HDD on the SCSI bus:
1) the ASPI manager (ASPIxDOS.SYS)
2) ASPICD.SYS
3) ASPIDISK.SYS