IBM PC Systems
Drives hosted on a BlueSCSI (v1 or v2) work with IBM Compatible PCs also. Since PCs are a bit more flexible, and can be setup in multiple configurations, there are a few items to check and configure for the best possible experience.
| Section |
|---|
| SCSI Card Types |
| Bootable SCSI Configuration/Requirements |
| SCSI Card IRQ and DMA Settings |
| Drive Letters |
| Hard Drive Partition Info |
| CDROM Drives |
| Removable Drives |
| Pre-made Images |
Discounting the card slot type, PC Compatible cards come in 2 basic types:
- Cards with a BIOS
- Cards without a BIOS
Notable Example Cards: Adaptec 2930CU, Adaptec 1522, Adaptec 1542c
SCSI cards with a BIOS will present their own setup/configuration prompt during the initial boot before DOS/Windows begins to load. These cards are typically bootable and allow a PC to use a BlueSCSI-hosted hard drive as the main operating system drive.
Depending on your computer's BIOS and options, you may need to either change the boot order to either "A, SCSI" or "SCSI, A". Some older BIOS options may only have "C, A" or "A, C" as options. In such systems, do not use or have an IDE hard drive connected.
Notable Example Cards: Adaptec 2910, Adaptec 1505, Adaptec 2906
SCSI cards without a BIOS tend to be less expensive or were included with other devices like flatbed/single sheet/handheld scanners, older CD burners, CD changers, table drives, etc.
These cards are not usable to boot from without a boot loader like GRUB, Lilo, NT Boot Loader, System Commander, etc. but they are great for storage volumes and mounting/hosting CDROM drives.
If you intend to load your OS and boot from a drive presented by a BlueSCSI device (v1 or v2), there are a couple of things you need to make sure are enabled.
- Be sure your SCSI card has a BIOS chip with INT13 support enabled/turned on. Remember, No BIOS = No Boot.
- If the motherboard's BIOS has SCSI in the "Boot Order" option, set this to SCSI, not C, D, etc. The drive letters refer to IDE hard drives and will force the BIOS to choose IDE hard drives over SCSI
- If the motherboard's BIOS does not have SCSI as an option in the Boot Order: Disable/Remove ALL IDE hard drives. The SCSI card's BIOS cannot take over INT13 control for SCSI hard drives otherwise.
This is not a fully comprehensive guide but will work for the vast majority of 386 and higher machines. For 8086/8088 or 286 machines, they're simpler and will just boot from the available hard drive controller (provided you do not ALSO have an IDE/MFM controller installed)
- Make sure the SCSI card's BIOS/configuration has "Enable INT 13" set as on. This ensures the card's BIOS is placed in the proper memory block for DOS/Windows (even NT, 2000, and XP) can boot after the BIOS hands off to the operating system. If the card's bios setup does not list INT13 support or an option, it may not be bootable without a Boot Manager.
- BlueSCSI does not support Wide or Ultra Wide modes, so these should be disabled on your SCSI card for the ID(s) of the drives hosted on your BlueSCSI
If you've worked with PCs before, then you're aware that each card needs its own unique IRQ and DMA settings to avoid conflicts. For reference, these IRQ and DMA options are generally available and safest to set the jumpers (ISA/VLB) or card configuration BIOS/utility (EISA/PCI) for the card to use:
| IRQ List | DMA List |
|---|---|
| 5, 9, 10, 11 | 2, 3 |
NOTE: The following table of IRQs should never be used, as they're typically used for the following:
| IRQ Number | Used by |
|---|---|
| 3 | COM/Serial Ports 2 & 4 |
| 4 | COM/Serial Ports 1 & 3 |
| 7 | Parallel Port (Especially ECP and EPP modes) |
| 12 | PS/2 Mouse port |
| 14 | Primary IDE Channel |
| 15 | Secondary IDE Channel |
SCSI cards cannot share IRQs with these devices. Of course, if the device in the list is not present or disabled, then that IRQ will be safe to use, but these are typical ports/devices on many 486, and especially Pentium Socket 5/7 motherboards, so it's best to just avoid them as a rule of thumb.
DOS Drive letters are assigned from the lowest SCSI ID/LUN ID to the highest, and in the following order:
- Hard drives
- CDROM drives
- Removable drives
It is recommended to have the following line in your CONFIG.SYS file:
LASTDRIVE=Z
Make sure your hard drive, the one you want to load an OS and boot from, has at least 1 Primary partition and that partition is set as Active. The DOS/Windows 95/Windows 98 installers don't always do this, resulting in a "Non-system disk" or "Option ROM invalid" error when setup reboots. Different operating systems also have a limit on how large of a partition they can use regardless of how big or small your hard drive is. For your convenience, here is a table showing the limitations:
| Operating System | Main File System Type | OS Addressable Size Limit | Can Also Read/Write |
|---|---|---|---|
| DOS 3.3 | FAT12 | 32MB | N/A |
| DOS 3.31 | FAT12a | 512MB | FAT12 |
| DOS 4.0 and higher | FAT16 | 2GB | FAT12, FAT12a |
| Windows 95/95A | FAT16 | 4GB | FAT12, FAT12a |
| Windows 95B/95C/98 | FAT32 | 2TB | FAT16, FAT12, FAT12a |
| Windows NT 3.5/3.51 | NTFS 1.1 | 4GB boot/main, 2TB storage | FAT16 |
| Windows NT 4.0 | NTFS 1.2 | 4GB boot/main, 2TB storage | FAT16, NTFS 1.1 |
| Windows 2000 | NTFS 3.0 | 2TB* | FAT16, FAT32, all previous versions of NTFS |
| Windows XP | NTFS 3.1 | 2TB* | FAT16, FAT32, all previous versions of NTFS |
NOTE: For NTFS version 3 and newer, larger partition sizes are possible with larger cluster sizes.
Windows (95 and above) will automatically list CDROM drives from BlueSCSI, once the Windows native drivers are loaded. DOS/Windows 3.1/3.11 will need a bit more work/effort. You will need:
- DOS Real Mode driver for your SCSI card
- DOS Real Mode ASPI CD driver
These are typically SYS files loaded via CONFIG.SYS. Using an Adaptec AHA-1542c ISA card as an example, you need:
-
ASPI4DOS.SYS- Real Mode driver for 1540/1542/1544 cards -
ASPICD.SYS- Adaptec's Universal SCSI CDROM driver
In your CONFIG.SYS, you'd have:
DEVICE=C:\ASPI4DOS.SYS /D
DEVICE=C:\ASPICD.SYS /D:CDROM
And in your AUTOEXEC.BAT, you'd have:
C:\MSCDEX.EXE /D:CDROM
With this setup, you'd be able to boot to DOS and have any ISOs on your BlueSCSI show up as CDROM drive letters, fully accessible/usable in DOS and Windows 3.1/3.11. These steps are doable with Windows 95 and 98 also but the native Windows 95/98 drivers should be used instead.
Removable drives, like Jaz, Zip, Magneto Optical drives, etc. can be used in DOS with either of the following options:
- Enabling "Set Removable Drives as Fixed during boot" in your SCSI card's BIOS (Most PCI-based SCSI cards will have support for this) OR
- Using the Real Mode drivers for the SCSI card and removable drive.
For cards without the "Set Removable Drives as Fixed" option, or cards without a BIOS, you can still use removable drives in DOS with the drivers noted above. Using an Adaptec AHA-1542c ISA card as an example once more, you need:
-
ASPI4DOS.SYS- Real Mode driver for 1540/1542/1544 cards -
ASPIDISK.SYS- Adaptec's Universal Removable Disk driver
In your CONFIG.SYS, you'd have:
DEVICE=C:\ASPI4DOS.SYS /D
DEVICE=C:\ASPIDISK.SYS
After booting to DOS, you'll now have additional drive letters, one for each removable drive you have connected. Back to Top
Once your SCSI card is configured, head on over to the PC Images
