You only need to set HDD in the system BIOS if your adapter card doesn't have its own (i.e. with ATA or AT ST-506 controllers). Your AHA-2940 has its own BIOS so that is where the drive needs to be recognized. You just say 'none' in the system BIOS.

If the drive is being recognized at POST, the hardware is probably fine and you have a software issue. First thing to do is check partitioning. You don't say which version of DOS you're using, but everything up to 6.22 is limited to FAT16. If the drive has been partitioned with FAT32 - or any non-DOS partition types - DOS won't register it at all. So run FDISK and see if the drive is detected and if so how it's partitioned. If you don't need to keep the data, remove all current partitions and replace with FAT16 partition(s).

Once it's partitioned you'll need to reboot. Then the drive needs formatting. FORMAT does the trick, FORMAT /S if you want to be able to boot off it.

After correct partitioning and formatting, the drive should be ready for use by DOS.

Thanks for your help.

You can see here the BIOS post :

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/sr3lyc5wvw11xef/AA … 0Ra82k7fca?dl=0

But if i launch fdisk, it doesn't detect the hard drive, i have the message "no hard disk installed".

I tried a "fdisk /mbr", but i have the same answer.

You need to set in BIOS which drive to boot from: [IDE] HDD, CDROM, SCSI [HDD], ...

Edit: And make sure that you zero the HDD before putting it into a DOS machine. DOS is so weird that occasionally it refuses to recognize SCSI HDDs if they contain invalid partition/boot block.
Use the Adaptec controller BIOS utility to format the drive.

Thanks retardware for your help.

I formatted the hard drive from Adaptec SCSI Bios as you propose and it worked.

Unfortunatly, the hard drive is not recognized by MSDOS and fdisk function.

>>>>You need to set in BIOS which drive to boot from: [IDE] HDD, CDROM, SCSI [HDD], ...

I can't see this option ! Here is the manual of the BIOS of the motherboard :

http://www.motherboards.org/files/manuals/47/4im_9412.pdf

Any idea ?

Do you have "Boot Sequence" set as "C, A"?
(Default is "A, C", which is not what you want)

Edit: Which MS-DOS version are you using?
Edit 2: Your Adaptec has Bios version 2.2. This is quite obsoleted, iirc. Not sure whether this plays a role in this strange story, though.
Please also tell which graphics card you are using. There are some which tend to cooperate badly with Adaptec controllers.

Retardware

>>>Do you have "Boot Sequence" set as "C, A"?
>>>(Default is "A, C", which is not what you want)

I tried both without result.

>>>Edit: Which MS-DOS version are you using?

I tried with MSDOS 6.22 and Windows 98 boot disk.

>>>Edit 2: Your Adaptec has Bios version 2.2. This is quite obsoleted, iirc. Not sure whether this plays a role in this strange story, though.
>>>Please also tell which graphics card you are using. There are some which tend to cooperate badly with Adaptec controllers.

Tried with a VLB Diamond Stealth 34 and a basic PCI S3 Trio, but the result is the same.

New idea ?

Regards.

retardware
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Posts: 411
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Then I am out of ideas, sorry.
The Adaptec controllers and some VGA combinations are problematic not only for you: VGA cards conflict with Adaptec host adapters - any advice?

Possibly your last resort to check that is to make a DOS boot diskette with ASPI4DOS.SYS and ASPIDISK.SYS. That should recognize SCSI drives even with SCSI BIOS not being integrated well by some bad system BIOS.