🚀 go-pugleaf

keelers@igs.net (Stephen Keeler) wrote:

(snip)
> terminated (I'm assuming that the AHA-2940W is passively terminated 
> on-board -- please correct me if I'm wrong there!)

default is active termination enabled onboard.

> If better quality internal cable and/or active termination on an 
> internal cable is a suggestion, I'd also appreciate pointers to 
> companies (and even part names/numbers).  At this point, I'm a little 
> leary of spending even more money on hardware that 'might' fix the 
> problem.

Pat Davis of Division of Information Technology, UW-Madison advised
me to avoid the ribbon cables since he had problems with them in 
Novell servers he built.  He uses an IBM32G3922 which is twisted pair
ribbon except where the connectors go on.  It isn't cheap but it is
working for me, on Seagate 15150W's.

I tested it with a round-robin copy of a multimegabyte file.  After
about 4GB worth of reading and 4GB of writing, there were no errors
found when comparing the final copy to the original.
file O ->a -> b -> c -> a -> b -> c etc for about 800 generations, 
then compare to O)

Another possibility is Granite cables and terminators.

Good luck.

Ken

I had the exact same problems with a Gateway 2000 P5-60.
I exchanged the 2940 with a 1540CP (Adaptec) and the problems continued.

Finally, I intalled an ISA card from Future Domain (1600, 3 yrs old)
and everything worked fine.

You know what I think of Adaptec now, don't you?

And this was for a Department backup (about 10 NT clients).

The answer: Return the sucker, and get anything but Adaptec.

In article <4alk40$3gl@nntp.igs.net>, keelers@igs.net (Stephen Keeler) wrote:
>I've been having problems getting a complete backup for a couple 
>months now.  I'm running the NTBACKUP utility that ships with Windows 
>NT Workstation 3.51 on the following hardware configuration:
>   Dell OptiPlex XMT/590
>   Adaptec 2940W SCSI card (factory default settings)
>   Toshiba XM3501 CDROM drive (internal, not terminated)
>   Exabyte 4200c DAT drive (internat, terminated)
>

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Spyro Kotsonis, Development Engineer, Advanced Drilling Systems
Anadrill Schlumberger, 200 Gillingham Ln, # 125, Sugarland, TX 77478
E-Mail : kotsonis@sugar-land.anadrill.slb.com
These Views are MINE! MINE! MINE!

I would weigh in with the suggestion that if the rest of your 
SCSI chain is working, your cables probably are ok.

One issue I have had is the 2940 doesn't seem to like to slow 
down enough for the dat.  Going into its setup and slowing 
down the access to the DAT to 5MB per sec from the default 
10MB per sec can help some.
On any servers, I always use a separate SCSI card, (1510 or 
1522) for the slow stuff and the PCI SCSI for the hard drives.  
This will help to alleviate problems like this as well

I refuse to use the NTBackup utility after many failures, 
including one which cast me many hundreds of dollars of time.  
I have a few systems that have had similar problems.  I 
currently use Arcada Backup Exec and with the combinations 
noted above have none of the problems you report, after 
fighting them for months.  This product is a significant 
improvement over NTBackup

Good Luck
Matthew Sutton
Up & Running, 
Seattle, WA

keelers@igs.net (Stephen Keeler) wrote:

>I've been having problems getting a complete backup for a couple 
>months now.  I'm running the NTBACKUP utility that ships with Windows 
>NT Workstation 3.51 on the following hardware configuration:
>   Dell OptiPlex XMT/590
>   Adaptec 2940W SCSI card (factory default settings)
>   Toshiba XM3501 CDROM drive (internal, not terminated)
>   Exabyte 4200c DAT drive (internat, terminated)

>The SCSI chain looks like this:
>   <term>  Adaptec  <-->  Toshiba  <-->  Exabyte  <term>

	[snip]

>One thing of note, I've read that MS has deemed NT to be somewhat 
>sensitive to SCSI cabling, especially regarding active vs. passive 
>termination.  Currently, all my devices are connected via a single 
>internal ribbon cable of unknown quality, and both ends are passively 
>terminated (I'm assuming that the AHA-2940W is passively terminated 
>on-board -- please correct me if I'm wrong there!)

>If better quality internal cable and/or active termination on an 
>internal cable is a suggestion, I'd also appreciate pointers to 
>companies (and even part names/numbers).  At this point, I'm a little 
>leary of spending even more money on hardware that 'might' fix the 
>problem.

You should definitely use active termination for SCSI II. If you are
using an external passive terminator, then just switch to the internal
termination provided by your last device (Exabyte). If Exabyte is
providing termination then try turning on "provide power to
terminator" setting on Exabyte. According to SCSI specs only one
device is supposed to provide power for termination, it sometimes
helps to have last device also provide power.

If this still does not solve problem, try using the Toshiba to
terminate the bus by switching it and Exabyte on the cable. There is a
small chance that your internal ribbon cable or one of the connectors
is bad, but not too likely. Internal ribbon cables usually do not
produce problems unless they have loose connectors. External cables
tend to produce most SCSI cabling problems.

I have an Adaptec 1742 with 2 Seagate disks, Toshiba CDROM, and
Wangtek tape drive. The tape backup works perfectly with NT Backup.

It is possilbe that the Exabyte driver is having problems so you might
check for a newer version. But software is the least likely issue here
in my opinion.