I have never been into SCSI and especially for PCI stuff I really fail to see the point considering how easy it is to get an ATA-100 or SATA controller for that bus. For ISA, I can see the appeal, but for PCI, is it really there?

appiah4 wrote:

I have never been into SCSI and especially for PCI stuff I really fail to see the point considering how easy it is to get an ATA-100 or SATA controller for that bus. For ISA, I can see the appeal, but for PCI, is it really there?

Completely agree, but you start getting into vintage servers and want to hang sixteen drives in various RAID configurations off one card with hot spares and these babies will handle that like a champ. When I used to do data center sys admin work years ago I was always amazed the beating the database servers took and the amount of data these RAID cards could handle and distribute was amazing. Edit: Nowadays that is probably chump change compared to modern enterprise solid state storage solutions.

liqmat wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

I have never been into SCSI and especially for PCI stuff I really fail to see the point considering how easy it is to get an ATA-100 or SATA controller for that bus. For ISA, I can see the appeal, but for PCI, is it really there?

Completely agree, but you start getting into vintage servers and want to hang sixteen drives in various RAID configurations off one card with hot spares and these babies will handle that like a champ. When I used to do data center sys admin work years ago I was always amazed the beating the database servers took and the amount of data these RAID cards could handle and distribute was amazing.

I never worked with anything beyond a workstation so yeah, that really makes sense. 😎

null

I've actually had these for a while now but I thought I'd share them anyways hadn't removed some of them from their systems until now.

CT2230 SB16 with ASP and OPL

PAS16 with LMSI interface 😀

ATI Graphics Vantage

and now for probably one of the single most awesome cards in my collection
WD90C33-ZZ VLB GPU and multi I/O all in one card 😀

and as I was checking the switch type for someone else in the other thread to check the part number I ordered some of those for myself too 😀

Didn't some of the AT cases use those for the front power switch? Those look like the ones IBM used for years.

yes, hence why I bought them ^^

I had a few of them already from an electronics scrap box I bought over a decade ago, but those were all old and dirty, these are NOS 😀

bjwil1991 wrote:

Didn't some of the AT cases use those for the front power switch? Those look like the ones IBM used for years.

imi wrote:

yes, hence why I bought them ^^

I had a few of them already from an electronics scrap box I bought over a decade ago, but those were all old and dirty, these are NOS 😀

That's neat.

dan86 wrote:

I picked up a Rage 128 ultra pro 32mb today. Not the best card, but a good all rounder for testing motherboards and what not.
And yes I know its an OEM card that hates stock ATI drivers.

It simply doesn't even work with the ATI driver, you'll need the Dell driver.

SpectriaForce wrote:

dan86 wrote:

I picked up a Rage 128 ultra pro 32mb today. Not the best card, but a good all rounder for testing motherboards and what not.
And yes I know its an OEM card that hates stock ATI drivers.

It simply doesn't even work with the ATI driver, you'll need the Dell driver.

They work. You have to ether manually install the drivers in the device manager or edit the the PCI/VENDOR ID in the inf file if your using the installer.
But that relay dose not matter to me as I'm just using the card to test motherboards. Once I get into the bios and now the board works I'll be swapping the card to whatever I want to use with the system.

liqmat wrote:

Vintage RAID/SCSI cards are one those items in vintage computing that are still fairly cheap to get even new in box. Some models are so impressive looking and complex with their own memory and CPUs. This particular model is visually one of my favorites.

IMG_4788.JPG

If the RAID card functions like its modern equivalents (Dell PERC and etc) make sure that onboard battery (Dallas RTC chip) is replaced, or else you are going to get all sorts of issues with it.

ragefury32 wrote:

liqmat wrote:

Vintage RAID/SCSI cards are one those items in vintage computing that are still fairly cheap to get even new in box. Some models are so impressive looking and complex with their own memory and CPUs. This particular model is visually one of my favorites.

IMG_4788.JPG

If the RAID card functions like its modern equivalents (Dell PERC and etc) make sure that onboard battery (Dallas RTC chip) is replaced, or else you are going to get all sorts of issues with it.

Absolutely and I have a few NOS Mylex RAID controllers with those bulky lithium battery packs that have been sitting for 20 years unused. Luckily they have not leaked since they are shrink wrapped in heavy plastic.

Edit: Went back and looked and correction. Those are shrink wrapped NiCad battery packs on the Mylex RAID controllers.

appiah4 wrote:

I have never been into SCSI and especially for PCI stuff I really fail to see the point considering how easy it is to get an ATA-100 or SATA controller for that bus. For ISA, I can see the appeal, but for PCI, is it really there?

Sorry but that's BS. Many of these cheapo adapters (as well as crappy USB2 cards) are based in the VIA SATA controller, which is for PCI v2.3 and need MSI/MSIX style interrupts. These will not work well or stable in anything older than that. Silicon Image and Promise SATA stuff doesn't come without their own caveats, and these will not work in the oldest 5v PCI boards. Then you have the IDE/SATA adapters, but many of these are based in SunPlus/JMicron chips, which aren't totally compatible with older versions of IDE BUS. Them can work sometimes at slower PIO like speeds, or right not even recognizing you devices and freeze your board at Boot/Device detection phase time. The only adapter chips which work more or less reliably in older versions of the bus are Marvell chip based and these aren't easy or cheap to get.

I'm not saying is easy to get SCSI to work in older PCI platforms, but saying getting SATA to work in old gear is easy or more convenient... Sorry, but that's a big lie.

liqmat wrote:

ragefury32 wrote:

liqmat wrote:

Vintage RAID/SCSI cards are one those items in vintage computing that are still fairly cheap to get even new in box. Some models are so impressive looking and complex with their own memory and CPUs. This particular model is visually one of my favorites.

IMG_4788.JPG

If the RAID card functions like its modern equivalents (Dell PERC and etc) make sure that onboard battery (Dallas RTC chip) is replaced, or else you are going to get all sorts of issues with it.

Absolutely and I have a few NOS Mylex RAID controllers with those bulky lithium battery packs that have been sitting for 20 years unused. Luckily they have not leaked since they are shrink wrapped in heavy plastic.

should my adaptec card have a battery? i can't seem to locate any headers for it on the card and no mention in manual.

wirerogue wrote:

should my adaptec card have a battery? i can't seem to locate any headers for it on the card and no mention in manual.

Unfortunately all my gear is in storage right now while I take care of a family matter in another state, but IIRC those do not come with a battery since they are geared for smaller servers and not mission critical enterprise level systems. The battery will just allow the cache memory on the card to hold data what the server thinks is already on disk in case of a power outage. That way no data loss occurs during a power event when the server is in the middle of high disk activity such as database environments.

liqmat wrote:

wirerogue wrote:

should my adaptec card have a battery? i can't seem to locate any headers for it on the card and no mention in manual.

Unfortunately all my gear is in storage right now while I take care of a family matter in another state, but IIRC those do not come with a battery since they are geared for smaller servers and not mission critical enterprise level systems. The battery will just allow the cache memory on the card to hold data what the server thinks is already on disk in case of a power outage. That way no data loss occurs during a power event when the server is in the middle of high disk activity such as database environments.

thanks. obviously nothing mission critical going on here so no big deal. all just for fun. would have been nice though.
should be doing some tasting later today. we'll see how it goes.

imi wrote:

and as I was checking the switch type for someone else in the other thread to check the part number I ordered some of those for myself too 😀

hardware34_08.jpg

You sir are fcking awesome! You have no idea how long I have been looking for those! Thank you!

wirerogue wrote:

should my adaptec card have a battery? i can't seem to locate any headers for it on the card and no mention in manual.

The Dallas Real Time Clock chip on the card - that's the battery. It's supposed to hold your RAID cache in case you have a catastrophic loss of power, but in the PERC5s and 6s having the battery go ga-ga on you typically triggers alerts or (worse) errors - in modern SSD equipped machines those pesky batteries are replaced by supercaps. It's one of the first things you check for when you get a secondhand RAID card...is the battery good? Is the onboard RAM modules good? That practice wa beaten into my head when I was a data center youngun', and what I beat into the heads of the guys that I manage - saw way too many issues from the past to let the issue breeze by.

Bought a Dell Latitude C600 - the one with the ESS Maestro 3i and the ATi Rage Mobility 128 graphics.
Bonus: It's a Mobility M4 with 16MB of embedded DRAM.

Downside: the vendor shipped the machine with 2 batteries and NO optical drive. Had to use a Y-Cable and my USB2-to-Cardbus adapter along with the Liteon DVD burner to install stuff, and since it's USB based, I can't test the DOS/mscdex based stuff yet, but the C-bay DVD/CDRW combo drive will arrive next week, along with an mSATA SSD for the machine.

The Mobility M4 runs quite well in 16 bit mode (spanking the Thinkpad T21 by about 40% in most apps), but inexplicably poor in 32 bit mode (The SavageIX/8 in the Thinkpad is surprisingly performant in 32 Bit mode). Here it is running NHL99.

Going to do a full review comparing it with the T21 (also 850MHz) and my Pismo G4/555MHz. And yes, there will be audio samples off DOS mode. Look out for it later this week.