fast and slow SCSI bus issue |
September, 10, 2003 6:27 PM |
jonck |
Hi guys, A few threads back we discussed the issue on doing an OS X install with the HD on the slow SCSI bus and then switching it back to the fast bus after the install is complete. I have tried everything I could think of (changing throttle settings, starting up in single-user mode, verbose mode etc...) but I could not get my mac to succesfully boot OS X when my HD was on the fast SCSI bus. Does anybody have any suggestions what I could do to get my HD on the fast SCSI bus? My machine is working fine, but writes from and to my HD are very slow, around 6MB/sec. I have a 9600/300, with 832 MB RAM, Sonnet G4/700, ATI Radeon 7000 in slot A1, OS X installed on original 4GB internal HD which is currently on the slow SCSI bus (along with the CD ROM), 16 GB HD (partitioned into 2 8 GB parts) on a PCI SCSI card in slot B1, USB/FireWire PCI card in slot C1. I don't know the brands of the SCSI card and the USB/FireWire card, I got this mac with those cards already installed. Any help is much appreciated, Jonck |
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RE: fast and slow SCSI bus issue |
September, 14, 2003 11:27 PM |
ltking |
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Hi Jonck: I haven't been to this forum in quite a while because I have basically given up on OS X. Before anyone sends me a flamer let me say that it is decision made after fiddling with a PPC 8500 for several months and actually getting OS X to boot and run. So what, I have no interest in running any of the iTune, etc. on it and it won't run my relational database software so it really is/was an experiment in foolishness. But I digress … For reasons no one has ever adequately explained, I too had to connect the drive on which OS X is mounted to the "slow" SCSI buss. It is the same buss that has the external SCSI connector attached to the motherboard. - yes, they are one and the same. Run Silverlining (with some SCSI devices attached) and check it out. The internal connector is difficult to access. Another curious thing was that OS X will not install nor will it run unless I have the original 4x CD ROM installed. If I tried to switch back to the 12x Apple CD ROM I installed to run Riven, OS X will NOT boot. No one has ever adequately explained that either. There was a post on this issue last fall in which the individual reported that he had indeed switched his OS X HD back to the fast buss and got OS X to boot and run by altering the jumper having to do with "attention." I thought briefly of trying it but was overcome by work events and never did. As for Sonnet, I have a G4 800MHz for sale. In the PPC 8500 I eventually traced it down to be the cause of the choppy video and audio I was experiencing. I eventually had to change back to my NewerTech 500 MHz G3 to load Yellow Dog Linux. Lonnie |
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RE: fast and slow SCSI bus issue |
September, 14, 2003 1:44 AM |
joevt |
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The two connectors inside the 9600 are labled FAST SCSI - SCSI 0 and STD SCSI - SCSI 1. The external 25 pin SCSI connector is on the same bus as the STD (slow) SCSI connector. |
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RE: fast and slow SCSI bus issue |
September, 13, 2003 3:09 AM |
jonck |
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Well no, actually I was not referring to the external SCSI port on the back of the machine. I'm not sure on which bus this port is, but the port on the back of my machine is unused anyway. The 9600 has two SCSI *buses* on the motherboard (right beside each other, located inside the case, on the motherboard itself), as I understood it one of these is fast and the other one is slow(er). Then there's the PCI SCSI card, which is a third bus. I connected a second internal HD to this card, and it's showing quite a bit faster reads/writes (9MB/sec if I remember correctly) than the HD connected to the "slow" SCSI bus on the motherboard. I hope I was clearer this time. All this jargon! :-) Cheers, Jonck |
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RE: fast and slow SCSI bus issue |
September, 12, 2003 10:23 AM |
cjsconfections |
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Just to confirm your setup. You have 3 scsi busses, correct? The slow one, external on the back of the computer, runs 5Mbs/sec . The "fast" internal one. Another scsi bus on the pci scsi card? When you say that you are hooking up to the "fast" bus, is it the pci card or the internal bus (which runs 2x as fast as the external bus)? My guess is that since you said that you are getting 6megs/sec you have a slow drive on the internal bus. Switching it to the pci card won't give you any performance boost. If you are calling the scsi card the "fast" bus, then the problem is likely the pci scsi card. If you use the system profiler/hardware (in 9 or X) it will identify the scsi card. Some are bootable in X and some have issues for bootability into X. I too have a 9600 with 3 scsi busses and the pci card I have (Atto express pci) had issues on bootability into X which I resolved but now the cards rom will only allow X. I have to remove that card if I want to go back to 9. Others using the same setup as me report no problems with similar setups so it may be a ghost in my machine. Who knows?? |
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RE: fast and slow SCSI bus issue |
September, 12, 2003 7:00 AM |
KCurry7463 |
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I also have 9600/300, upgraded to the Sonnet 800Mhz G4, w/768MB of RAM, an ATI Radeon Mac Edition 32MB card in slot E2, (the original, not the 7000), and an Orange Micro OrangePC 660 Compatibility card in slot A1. I have the OEM 4GB IBM HD, the OEM 24x CD-ROM, a Yamaha 6416 CDRW, a Seagate 36.9GB HD, and a Seagate 2.1GB HD all running on the Fast SCSI bus with no problems. Of course I am not running OSX on the 4GB drive either. When I updated to the 800Mhz Sonnet card I did at first have problems booting into OSX, version 10.1.5. but that was due to not have the L2 and L3 configured properly. But after downloading and installing Sonnets free OSX Tuneup, (which works well with XPostFacto), everything has worked flawlessly ev |
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RE: fast and slow SCSI bus issue |
September, 11, 2003 7:22 PM |
jonck |
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Hi Ed, Thanks for the heads-up, the 4GB drive I'm using is indeed IBM. So you think it could be the jumper settings? I set the jumpers to exactly what the online manual told me to do, but perhaps other settings are necessary to boot X succesfully? Thanks very much, you've given me a new route to explore :-) Cheers, Jonck |
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RE: fast and slow SCSI bus issue |
September, 11, 2003 6:19 PM |
egonzales21 |
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I have an original 9600/300 upgraded to a Sonnet G4800 with 768 MB RAM, ATI Radeon 7000 32MB in slot A1 and all other slots full. I have never had to use the slower SCSI bus. I have booted from a 9GB Quantum, 9GB Seagate, and 18GB Maxtor (68 pin - 50 pin adapter). I never however tried to install OS X to the original 4GB drive. It seems from reading lots of posts many people have problems with the 4GB drives which I believe are all IBM. Most have to deal with jumper settings especially the unit attention disable one. I am currently booting from a Seagate ATA drive attached to Sonnet 133 card which provides good speed. The original 4GB drive will wind up being to small to do anything usefull in X. Would suggest using only for OS 9. Good Luck Ed |
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RE: fast and slow SCSI bus issue |
September, 11, 2003 4:03 PM |
jonck |
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After installing the card I asked Sonnet for assistance. They asked me whether it booted OS 9 ok, which it did. By their reasoning they had done their part in that case, since booting 9 proved that at least the card was not faulty. So their chief techie wrote me an uppity email asking me what the heck I was thinking, trying to run OS X on an unsupported mac. My retort was that I had been running OS X just fine with the G3 card, also of their manufacture, so if that worked, why the heck *shouldn't* I try it with a *faster* card? I guess the guy sat behind his desk, read my reply, scratched his head for a while and was just pondering whether or not he was actually going to put some effort into his job that day when he saw that it was time for his lunch break. Whatever his choice may have been, I never got a reply to my second email, though I did get a very funny email (made my day) where Sonnet asked me to "rate" the service I had received :-) But anyway, that's all ancient history. Lucky for me someone on this board suggested that I switch my HD to the slower SCSI bus which got things working again. All in all my computer definitely underwent a speed increase by switching to the G4 card, though it is less than it could have been if my HD would be on the fast SCSI bus. I guess I'll just have to keep hoping that one of these days someone with a flash of inspiration will suddenly realise what has to be done to get my HD back on the SCSI bus, rushes to his keyboard and sends me an email about it. In the meantime I guess the beach ball is spinning around a bit too long and the icons are bouncing a few times too many.... but all this gives me time to reflect on how pleased I am to be running OS X on a mac somebody else deemed so worthless that he "gave" it to me for 25 euro's <:-D All the best, Jonck |
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RE: fast and slow SCSI bus issue |
September, 11, 2003 1:16 PM |
voxxdigital |
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Hmmm... I was thinking about a G4 upgrade, now you're scaring me to death! Did you report this to Sonnet? Or did you try SonnetX for instance? |
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RE: fast and slow SCSI bus issue |
September, 11, 2003 11:16 AM |
jonck |
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Yeah, all PCI cards have been removed, shuffled, RAM removed, interleaved, de- interleaved, fiddled with SCSI termination... you name it I did it :-) I know for a fact that my SCSI is terminated correctly, I have quadruple-checked it myself, and had a former Apple-tech friend of mine take a look at it and everything checks out as being configured correctly. I ran TechTool pro on all my hardware (RAM, VRAM, HD's etc...) and it was all reported as being fine. I mentioned this in an earlier post/thread (sorry for repeating myself): for me everything was working fine as well with my HD in the fast SCSI bus when I still had my Sonnet G3/400 (I had exactly the same one you have apparently). However, I have at a certain point purchased a Sonnet G4/700 and at that point I could not boot anymore with my HD in the fast SCSI bus. Yes, I have tried putting back my G3/400 card and my HD back in the fast SCSI bus, everything booted fine once again. But putting back the G4/700 card would not allow me to have my HD in the fast SCSI bus. Is there anyone out there with a similar setup (9600 with a G4 card) who has his/her HD in the fast SCSI bus? I'd be very interested to hear what configuration that is and whether any of my problems sound familiar. Thanks very much, Jonck |
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RE: fast and slow SCSI bus issue |
September, 11, 2003 9:27 AM |
voxxdigital |
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Hmmm... :-/ I have a 9600/300, with 320 MB RAM, Sonnet G3/400, ATI Radeon 7000 64MB in slot F2 (default), OS X was installed on original 4GB internal HD and it always worked fine in the fast SCSI. Now I replaced the original HD by a 70GB by a UWSCSI-3 with an adaptor, connected to the fast SCSI (all slots full), and it still works great. Did you try to remove all PCI cards, leaving only the Radeon in the lowest slot (F2) and make a test? |
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