SOYO mobo with NCR SCSI driver \ VOGONS

SOYO mobo with NCR SCSI driver

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First post, by Thirsty

Posted on 2020-08-19, 04:04

Thirsty Offline

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Hi all, I'm having difficulty understanding my mobo and scsi setup.

I have a SOYO 4SAW2 mobo and in the manual it says :Built-in NCR 810 PCI SCSI Driver. I have an Iwill SIDE-2930C scsi controller card (PCI) with a SCSI CDROM connected but when I install it in the PC and turn it on I don't see any messages at POST identifying the card. Once the PC starts the CDROM is not available.

Now I'm not sure if I have to install drivers to get the card to be recognised? I thought these cards had their own BIOS and would display something on screen after the main BIOS messages - is that right? If so the card isn't being detected at all. I've tried it in different PCI slots but it never seems to be detected. There is nothing related to SCSI in the BIOS settings to fiddle with. I've got all the PCI related stuff in the BIOS set to auto.

Any help would be appreciated.

Reply 1 of 3, by darry

Posted on 2020-08-19, 04:19

darry Offline

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1) By NCR 810 PCI SCSI Driver they probably mean NCR 810 PCI SCSI BIOS . This would allow booting from an NCR 810 card that does not have it's own BIOS . This will do nothing for your Iwill card .
2) Unless your Iwill SIDE-2930C has it own BIOS on the card (I have only found photos of this card without a BIOS chip), you will not be able to boot from it and no message will be displayed at boot . This will not prevent the card from working once the PC is booted .
3) If you want to use a CD-ROM drive connected to your SCSI card under DOS, you will need an ASPI driver for your SCSI card, an ASPI CD driver (such as aspicd.sys) and then the usual MSCDEXE.EXE (DOS CD-ROM extensions that are required for all CD-ROM drives under DOS) .
4) If you want to use a CD-ROM drive connected to your SCSI card under Windows, you will need an appropriate Windows driver for your SCSI card .

Reply 2 of 3, by Thirsty

Posted on 2020-08-19, 23:40

Thirsty Offline

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Thankyou for the response. I think I understand more now about how all this works. I found a driver that works in DOS and now have access to the CD but haven't tried Windows 3.1 as yet. I'll be putting Win95 on this PC at some stage dual booting to DOS 6.22 so am hoping Win95 might already have drivers for this card. That's a battle for another day though 😀

Reply 3 of 3, by Horun

Posted on 2020-08-20, 00:59

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Added to Darry's info: Yes some Iwill 2930 had BIOS but many did not. Is based on Advansys AIC31xx series and not compatible with the NCR 810 BIOS. The NCR 810 BIOS was included in many mid 1990's motherboard BIOS, many venders also had a non-bios 810 PCI SCSI card that you could use like a Adaptec 2940 with those motherboards. The Asus SC-200 being one of the most popular (it worked with nearly every motherboard that it's BIOS included the NCR 810 BIOS).
Any SCSI card that does not have BIOS support cannot be used to boot from HD or Cdrom. Just rambling 😀

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

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