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First post, by Vendest

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Thought I would document an odd SCSI controller card made by Hitachi based on Adaptec AIC-6360L controller and AHA-1520 Bios Version 1.4 (1990).
It is a 16-bit ISA card using 4 physical DIP switches for all settings.
I listed the functions that I could figure out. Sharing it here.
2 functions that are not clear to me:
SW3-5 / PRI - It posts a diagnosis error when ON.
SW3-8 / OWS - No idea about this function, no obvious changes when ON or OFF.
SW4 series seems to provide manual settings for DMA Data Request / Data Acknowledgment, not sure how to set those. Received the card with all switches OFF.

During POST, the card always seeks target #0, I only have Ultra wide HDDs available and was not able to get it to work using an adapter testing on a 386 machine.
The AIC-6360L controller is able to support up to 10 MB/s (SCSI-2) but I did not find a switch to adjust the transfer rate.

Hope it helps saving some time if someone ends up using this SCSI controller.

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Reply 1 of 11, by weedeewee

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SW4 looks like DMA acknowledge & request lines.
Both DA & DR need to be set to the same number and the software needs to support dma transfers to get any use out of it.

the 0WS (OSW) could be zero wait state ISA bus operation.

I also guess that DC needs to be set the same as DA & DR.
PRI might be if you have multiple adapters in one computer.

What kind of adapter setup did you use to connect the UW drive? my personal favorite in such case is using a terminated on both sides UW cable, and an 68p to 50p adapter to connect the card.

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Reply 2 of 11, by Horun

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Based on other 6360 isa controllers it will always look for a HD on ID0 if boot is enabled. Have you tried with boot (BOT) disabled to see if it scans the rest of scsi bus ?
"If you are going to use the host adapter without ASPI software, you must set the SCSI IDs of your disk drives to 0 or 1. If you want to boot from a SCSI drive, its
SCSI ID must be 0. If you already have a non-SCSI drive installed on your system, set the SCSI ID of the SCSI disk you want to add to O."

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

Reply 3 of 11, by Vendest

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Thanks for the replies and information.
I have a few adapters and cables available, the SCSI disk drives have 80p connector.
Typically I have tried 2 connection schemes:
- Single 50p cable from the card to the adapter 50p/80p, setting the jumper to ID0 on the adapter.
- Multi 50p cable from the card to the adapter 50p/80p and to a ZIP100 with termination ON
BOT enabled or disabled, host controllers still check for target 0 and no further scanning of the SCSI bus is done.
I was wondering if target 0 = LUN0 instead of SCSI ID0.

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Reply 4 of 11, by weedeewee

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Vendest wrote on 2025-01-02, 14:47:
Thanks for the replies and information. I have a few adapters and cables available, the SCSI disk drives have 80p connector. Ty […]
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Thanks for the replies and information.
I have a few adapters and cables available, the SCSI disk drives have 80p connector.
Typically I have tried 2 connection schemes:
- Single 50p cable from the card to the adapter 50p/80p, setting the jumper to ID0 on the adapter.
- Multi 50p cable from the card to the adapter 50p/80p and to a ZIP100 with termination ON
BOT enabled or disabled, host controllers still check for target 0 and no further scanning of the SCSI bus is done.
I was wondering if target 0 = LUN0 instead of SCSI ID0.

scsi ID selection is binary, so with no jumpers on the adapters you're using the scsi ID is 0
if you set a jumper on ID0 the scsi ID = 1
if you set a jumper on ID1 the scsi ID = 2
if you set a jumper on ID2 the scsi ID = 4
if you set a jumper on ID3 the scsi ID = 8 (this is only valid on a wide scsi bus, ie 68p cable.)

for example scsi ID 7 would be set by jumpering ID0,ID1 & ID2. (Don't set this because, unless it was changed, your SCSI adapter is most often set to scsi ID 7)
Every scsi id can have multiple luns, this is sometimes used on cd changers and other devices.

Getting a SCA (80p) scsi device working on a narrow bus can be hit & mis, especially since those tend to be Wide LVD (Low Voltage Differential) devices and your scsi card is only Narrow SE (Single-Ended)
More information would be required to investigate further.

If you have a 68p cable & appropriate terminator & a 50p female to 68p female scsi adapter, for it then you can try the setup suggestion I made in my previous post. in that setup the scsi card should have termination disabled.

Right to repair is fundamental. You own it, you're allowed to fix it.
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
Do not ask Why !
https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/Serial_port

Reply 5 of 11, by Horun

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Good suggestions weedeewee. Also make sure the sca drive has a SE jumper and is jumped, not all do and natively run LVD mode, which will not work in this situation.

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

Reply 6 of 11, by Disruptor

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weedeewee wrote on 2025-01-02, 16:28:

Getting a SCA (80p) scsi device working on a narrow bus can be hit & mis, especially since those tend to be Wide LVD (Low Voltage Differential) devices and your scsi card is only Narrow SE (Single-Ended)
More information would be required to investigate further.

And with those adapters which likely will not transport the DIFFSENSe signal.
Cheap SCA adapters from China

Reply 7 of 11, by Vendest

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Thanks for the information about the jumper settings for the adapters.
I did see that thread before and had installed the botch wire to the 68p connector.

Some progress with the SCSI card:

1. Tried as per your suggestion with a 68p cable but terminated at only one end so I added a zip drive to terminate the other end.
It is very convoluted using 3 adapters and 3 cables.
But... the host controller reported "Target connected, but has a fault"

2. Tried with BlusSCSIv2
Not very sure if I set the SD card properly.
Formatted the SD card to FAT32 and added an image file created with Disk Jockey named HD00_512 512 MB.hda
Same prompt as above "Target connected, but has a fault". Without the image file the target is not found.
I read in the documentation to set Int13 but there is no switch on the host controller to enable this function.
Parity check is disabled.

*I had some issues with the 68p cable before, I will open my WinXP unit to borrow a known working cable.

Thanks

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Reply 8 of 11, by weedeewee

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Vendest wrote on 2025-01-04, 15:33:
Thanks for the information about the jumper settings for the adapters. I did see that thread before and had installed the botch […]
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Thanks for the information about the jumper settings for the adapters.
I did see that thread before and had installed the botch wire to the 68p connector.

Some progress with the SCSI card:

1. Tried as per your suggestion with a 68p cable but terminated at only one end so I added a zip drive to terminate the other end.
It is very convoluted using 3 adapters and 3 cables.
But... the host controller reported "Target connected, but has a fault"

No no no , a zip drive won't work for terminating a 68p cable since a wide scsi cable has 16 bits to terminate, and a narrow scsi device only terminates 8 bits .

Also using multiple cables is likely to cause signal reflections, I'm assuming you're trying to use a cable to go from the scsi card to an adapter which is then connected to the 68p cable which is also a bad move. Such an interconnect cable can be at most 5 to 10 cm, 2 to 4".

Why do your two drives have a label on it saying 8.9GB ? Looking at the photos one should be 147GB, the other 36GB.

WRT the 68p cable, I also recently had a problem with one, where using that specific cable didn't detect any devices. I didn't identify the cause of the defect yet.

You have an internal zip drive and bluescsi , what you can do is set termination on one of those, and connect it with a normal cable to the scsi card, then boot the computer with the correct drivers loaded...

Bluescsi would be easiest I guess after setting up the bluescsi itself.

Right to repair is fundamental. You own it, you're allowed to fix it.
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
Do not ask Why !
https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/Serial_port

Reply 9 of 11, by Vendest

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I think I misunderstood your initial advice to use a 68p cable, the card has a 50p connector and both drives have 80p connectors.
Thanks for pointing out the wide 16 bit vs narrow 8 bit.
One of the drive had another sticker initially applied on top the original sticker stating 8.9GB. True enough when I verified both drives in another system, both shown maximum size of 8.9GB.
The internal zip drive SCSI ID is not scanned by the host controller because it always seeks SCSI ID 0.
I pulled the zip drive from another unit for testing purposes (termination mostly).

Reply 10 of 11, by weedeewee

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I guess your best bet, given you have a bluescsi is to properly configure it and use that.

Right to repair is fundamental. You own it, you're allowed to fix it.
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
Do not ask Why !
https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/Serial_port

Reply 11 of 11, by Horun

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Your adapter most likely has a 8Gb HD limit (per Adaptec on 152x bios v1.4).

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