Troubleshooting SCSI2SD

[ghunter]

I'd like to replace my internal hard drive with a SCSI2SD device.  I have one of these installed in my E4X Turbo and it works very well.  Lower power consumption, less noise, not prone to mechanical failure.

However, I have a problem when I disconnect the internal hard drive and try to boot from the floppy drive.  The screen just stays blank and the unit doesn't boot.  I tried hooking up the SCSI2SD but I get the same problem - blank screen.  I plug the internal drive back in and it boots just fine.

The SCSI2SD is terminated, and is set up for ID's 1-4 with 1GB partitions on each unit.  It has the latest firmware, and works fine in other samplers.

Any ideas on what I can do to make this work?

[midipuppies]

Are you trying to put this in an EIII?

[dr.c]

Your EIII will NEVER work without a hard disk. When I had EIII blank, first thing I did, was to put a known working HD, look at PWRTERM configuration on your disk and do the same on the SCSI2SD.

[ghunter]

Yes, I'm trying to put this into an EIII (rack).

I have the PWRTERM jumper set now which fixed the initial problem, but it's only recognizing one of the four devices on the SCSI2SD.  I'm going to scale it back to 1 device and see if that changes anything.

[ghunter]

For some strange reason my EIII will only recognize the SCSI2SD on device ID 3.  Formatting takes a few seconds, and then verifying freezes after about five minutes.  I can reboot and it sees the device, I can rename the drive, but get a SCSI error trying to save a bank to the drive.

Here are the SCSI2SD settings - do any look obviously wrong for an EIII?

Enable Parity - OFF
Enable SCSI2 Mode - OFF
Enable Unit Attention - OFF
Disable Glitch Filter - OFF
Sector Size - 512 bytes
Sectors - 2097152 (1 GB)

[Wolfram]

Which firmware do you use on the scsi2sd?
Formatting (verifying) dose not freeze, it will take a long time. 1GB 30minutes or more.
Just to limit the problems make a 100MB drive on the scsi2sd card and format it.
The verify Prozess should take 5 or 10 minutes now.

Use Master / Disk utility / Copy Software to copy to OS from the HD to the scsi2sd drive.

[ghunter]

I'm using the old larger board with the latest firmware (4.04 / August 2015), and I'm now using an older SanDisk 2GB SD card.

I just set it up as a 50MB device and it took a little over 10 minutes to verify.  Yesterday with the 1GB device the little spinning clock stopped spinning, but once I get the smaller device size working I'll know to be more patient.

The 50MB device finished verification, and saving an empty bank to it caused the "SCSI Hardware Error!" message.

- Enabling parity allowed the device to mount but there was a SCSI Hardware Error at the start of the format process.
- I enabled SCSI2 Mode and the device wouldn't even mount.
- Turning on device attention doesn't do anything (as expected as this is a feature for hot-swap)
- Disabling the glitch filter did nothing, same result after formatting

Is the sector size correct at 512?

[Wolfram]

Do you use it as internal device or external?
The EIII has different SCSI busses (internal and external) so each buss must be terminated one time.
So if you use it as a internal drive, parallel to the HD, you must remove the resistor array to disable the termination on the scsi2sd.

Try different modes (Hard Disk, Remove able Drive)

BlockSize 512 is right.

[ghunter]

I want to use this as an internal drive to replace the existing hard drive.

If I remove termination then the sampler won't even boot.

I've tried reconfiguring it as a removable device and the device won't boot when I do that either.

[Wolfram]

To build a boot able device do this...
1. remove the two resistor arrays
2. set the SCSI ID of the scsi2sd drive to a different as the internal HD
3. connect both. HD and scsi2sd to the internal bus
4. boot the EIII and format the scsi2sd drive
5. copy the OS from the internal HD to the scsi2sd drive (MASTER / Disk until. / Copy Software)
6. replace the resistors and set the ID of the scsi2sd to the same as the HD
7. remove the HD and boot.

[ghunter]

I've just tried that, same result (formats, but can't write files to disk).  I've also swapped out the older SCSI2SD board for the newer smaller version but it does exactly the same thing.

I've sent an e-mail to Michael at codesrc for his guidance.  At this point it looks like I'll be leaving the old drive in there to boot from and will be using an external SCSI drive for mass storage.

[ghunter]

Update: Michael has told me that a lot of people have had issues with the EIII and the SCSI2SD.  He's working on a firmware update that adjusts the timing and should address this.  I'll be testing an early build of this new version and will post the results as soon as possible.

[Wolfram]

I don't know what you doing wrong. My SCSI2SD works on my EIII.
I boot from it and read / write data.

[nuipb]

Hi ghunter and Wolfram, it seems you succeeded to power your SCSI2SD from the EIII. My SCSI2SD doesn't get enough power if any from the external SCSI connector, I need to add a powered external Syquest drive in the chain between the EIII and the SCSI2SD to get the needed power. Any tip how to get the needed 5V from the EIII SCSI external connector ?

[Wolfram]

Hello nuipb,

the SCSI2SD drive works on may EIII with just a SCSI connection. It takes the 5V from the SCSI bus,
but I don't recommend that!.
If you want to use it external you can use any housing and a 5V power supply. You can get such a power supply for 5€ / $5.
For a internal connection just use the internal Molex plug.