Adaptec 39160 SCSI card to pair with?

naro

naro

naro

Associate
Joined
5 Jun 2006
Posts
388
Location
Singapore
hey guys,

I just bought an Adaptec 39160 SCSI card. It has connectors for 2 x 68-pin for LVD SCSI and 1 x 50-pin for Ultra SCSI.

May I know what type of SCSI hdds can i pair it with? I'm pretty confused by SCSI conventions.

thanks
 
SCSI is pretty good for forward and backward compatibility however there are a few things to keep an eye on. The easiest way to go is stick with either U160 or U320 drives, either 68 pin ones or 80pin ones with adapters. Just make sure that you go with a cable and adapters which support U160 SCSI.

Ideally you're going to want 15Krpm drives if you can but they're heck of a noisy.
 
Thanks.

Oh ya, with regards to the pins, there are 80, 68 and 50 pins. Could you explain to me what their differences are? it seems that U160 and U320 hdds are 68pins.
 
50 pin is the original SCSI connector, 8 bit data transfer and pretty slow transfer rates. The cable is like a big IDE cable.

68 pin was originally introduced with Wide SCSI to give 16bit data transfers and a higher density cable. This connector is the most common not only because it's faster but it takes up less space on the drives.

80 pin is also known as SCA and is used in servers to provide hot swap capabilities by integrating power and data into a single connector. SCA drives also don't have the jumpers to allow you to set the SCSI ID (each drive on a cable must have a unique ID), the ID for SCA drives is set on the hot swap backplane. The signalling is identical to 68 way SCSI and so adapters are widely available to breakout the SCA connector into a 68 way and a molex power plus DIP switches to set the ID for the drive.

You'll see a lot of 80 way drives up for auction second hand in server manufacturer's caddies, these can normally be removed easily to let you use the bare drive in your own PC.
 
Thanks rpstewart. Everything is much clearer right now.

So, i can say that the 80 pins connector allows for hot-plug.

Reading from Adaptec's website, it seems like the driver for the Adaptec card has to be installed using floppy disk. Is there a way to work around it because i don't have floppy and don't want to waste money to buy a floppy just to do that.
 
naro said:
Reading from Adaptec's website, it seems like the driver for the Adaptec card has to be installed using floppy disk. Is there a way to work around it because i don't have floppy and don't want to waste money to buy a floppy just to do that.
Click to expand...
I'm guessing that's just for installing the driver during the Windows install in which case you can use nLite to integrate the drivers (and a whole lot else) onto a custom install CD.
 
how do i use nLite?

I've already got windows XP installed on the machine. But i'll need to update the BIOS to recognise the card right?
 
nLite's windows based, it's just a big wizard really, folloe the on screen instructions and that's about it.

The card should be recognised by the system without the need for a BIOS update. Once it's in the machine windows should boot normally and ask for drivers when it recognises the new hardware. You should be able to load the drivers from the CD at this point.
 
Thanks. I'll try it out.

But if i want to boot from the SCSI card, do I have to set anything in the BIOS? I just read from the user reference guide from Adaptec that I have to set the BIOS Boot Specification to 'No Hard Disk'
 
rpstewart, thanks for your help.

I'll try them out and get back to you if i've more problems.. :)
 
Try to get 68 pin SCSI drives if you can, some cards i noticed drop the transfer rate to 80 instead of U160 etc.. for some reason when i use 80 to 68 pin adapters, however i haven't had an issue with Adaptec SCSI cards, plus its less flimsy with 68 pin drives as the adapter has both power and SCSI cable hanging off of it :D If you can score a few Seagate cheetahs cheap it'd be nice :) Currently have a few 10k 73 and 36Gb versions and 2 Atlas 73Gb 15k ones plus a couple of 15k 18.2Gb Hdds, loud as hell but fast :D
 
are you using it on PCI-X or PCI slots? my mobo only has PCI slots, so i can only go up to 133MB/s. So, you manage to get 80MB/s with or without Raid?

i'm on the lookout for the Cheetahs. just got a cheap Fujitsu 18.2gb 15k rpm to try out.
 
Justintime said:
Try to get 68 pin SCSI drives if you can, some cards i noticed drop the transfer rate to 80 instead of U160 etc.. for some reason when i use 80 to 68 pin adapters,
Click to expand...
From what I've heard you need to be careful when buying adapters to make sure that they're U160/U320 compatible, most of the cheap ones aren't.
 
Have used some pretty good stuff and some pretty crap cheap chinese stuff and funnily the chinese stuff seemed to work more often at the right speeds :D Like i said though, haven't found it so much with Adaptec, only brands like Tekram and Mylex. The adapters worked full speed with most cards so they were 160/320 compatiable.
 
Last edited:
naro said:
are you using it on PCI-X or PCI slots? my mobo only has PCI slots, so i can only go up to 133MB/s. So, you manage to get 80MB/s with or without Raid?

i'm on the lookout for the Cheetahs. just got a cheap Fujitsu 18.2gb 15k rpm to try out.
Click to expand...

Using 64 bit PCI in my personal setup.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom