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The Adaptec curse or why can't I boot from an SCSI cdrom
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. The second P4C800 is a little more complicated. On that machine I also have a Plextor DVD drive; A SATA PX716SA. I used to be able to boot from the SCSI cdrom drive by using the boot menu. Just hit F8 during the memory test and the pop-up boot menu appears at the end of the BIOS processing and gives me the option to boot from any of the detected devices. If I try that now the system looks in drive A: then it checks out the DVD drive which is empty of course, and finally gives me a little different "no system disk" type of message but the meaning is clear that it can't find the boot image it told me a few seconds ago it just read from the CD. If I put a CD in the DVD drive or a diskette in the A: drive it will attempt to boot from either one. However since I have the SATA drive set to enhanced mode in the BIOS for the benefit of Windows, the system will freeze up during the boot process. Yes, I could go into the BIOS and change the DVD settings to compatible, boot from the DVD drive, go in afterwards and change it back, but it's easier to put a floppy with the CD boot image on it in drive A: just as I did in the 2 previous machines.. Now, what is going on here? All these machines used to be able to boot from the Plextor SCSI drive just fine and all with their current controller cards. I have tried the bootable CD in the older computers and it works fine so it's not the CD. Sure I have made changes to some of the BIOS settings over time, and I have upgraded the BIOS versions and as of now all computers are running the latest version. I have not changed the settings in the BIOS on the controller cards and the computers that work and those that fail have the exact same settings. I have no recollection of any changes around the time these problems started. It just seemed like the problem occurred with one of the P4T-E machines one day, then later on the other, and finally the P4C800's were cursed as well. All this happened over an extended period of time. Anyone have any ideas? Paul, if you read this I would welcome your opinion. |
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