🚀 go-pugleaf

I have a Dimension cube with optical.  I also have a Syquest 44MB  
removable drive (PLI, purchased from NeXTConnection).  My cube has the  
Maxtor 8760S drive (660 MB), which replaced an earlier Maxtor 8380S drive  
(330 MB), which was sold after getting the 660.

PROBLEM: The Syquest drive won't get along with the Maxtor drive, and it's  
not a termination issue, SCSI ID issue, or cable issue.  It's also not a  
power-on sequencing issue.  If I want to use the Syquest drive, I must  
boot from optical.

This problem existed with both the 330 MB Maxtor, and the current 660 MB  
Maxtor.  Taking the Syquest drive to another cube system that also has the  
330 MB Maxtor replicates the problem.  Taking the Syquest drive to yet a  
third cube containing a Quantum drive does NOT show any problems!  Taking  
the Syquest drive to a station with a Quantum drive also works with NO  
problems.

Both the Maxtor drives (330 MB and 660 MB) share the same controller board  
design.  A simple visual check of both drive's internals will tell you  
this.  Therefore, there is something peculiar about that one particular  
hard drive controller board (that Maxtor uses) that doesn't get along with  
the Syquest unit.

If I boot off of optical, everything works OK (provided the Maxtor drive  
is never mounted).  However, after booting, if I manually mount the Maxtor  
hard drive, then any process that attempts to do I/O to the Maxtor will  
hang.  And, no it's not a permissions problem or anything like that (I am  
a long time Unix hacker, and know Unix system administration well).

An interesting aspect of the problem is: if I boot off of the optical,  
then manually mount the Maxtor drive, processes doing I/O to the Maxtor  
WON'T hang until about 10 to 30 seconds later.  Interestingly enough, the  
hang will exactly coincide with the little green light briefly lighting on  
the Syquest drive (presumably indicating a SCSI drive select command to  
the Syquest?).

To summarize and repeat: The controller-board used for these two Maxtor  
drives does not get along with the controller-board used for the (PLI)  
Syquest drive.  Anybody got any ideas why?  Are there any mods, jumpers,  
or configuration changes that can rectify the problem? 

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