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Montana Pete wrote:

Hello fellow Adaptec Users

I have 10 computers that have Adaptec SCSI controllers installed. One
uses a 39320 card, but most use 39160 cards. All the SCSI cdrom's are
Plextor UltraPlex units also known as the PX-32CS. I have a boot CD I
have created to run Norton ghost and copy disks, create images, and
restore from images. On the older motherboards I have no problems, and
I can boot from a cdrom just fine, but on the more recent motherboards
I have a variety of problems that I have developed workarounds for,
but it's still a PIA.

I have two P4T-E motherboards.

On the first one if I boot from the CD I get the message "A bootable
disk has been detected. I has been assigned as drive A: and your A:
diskette has been reassigned as drive B:". Not exactly the verbage,
but you all have seen it and know what I am talking about. If I let
the boot process continue normally the system will ignore the CD and
boot from the first hard disk drive. If I put a diskette, any
diskette, in drive A: then the system will boot from the cdrom drive.
My workaround for this system is to keep an old recovery diskette in
the drive and insert it any time I want to boot from the cdrom.

On the second one if I boot from the CD I get the message "A bootable
disk has been detected. I has been assigned as drive A: and your A:
diskette has been reassigned as drive B:" . If I let the boot process
continue normally the system will ignore the CD and boot from the
first hard disk drive. If I put a non-bootable diskette in drive A: I
get the normal "not a system disk. Insert a bootable disk and press
any key". If I put a DOS boot disk in drive A: the system will boot
from it. My workaround for this system is to keep a copy of the
diskette I used to make the bootable image for the ghost CD and insert
that when I want to boot from the cdrom. The diskette loads DOS and
the cdrom drivers, then switches to the CD and loads ghost.

I have two P4C800 motherboards.

The first one works identically to the second P4T-E, so I keep a
diskette with the CD boot image on it in that machine also.
snip

I have the earlier 19160 Adaptec connecting a HDD and 2 CDD drives
on the P4P800. No problemo--I would contact Adaptec support and
also look for an Adaptec bios fix.
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Best Regards,