Bit of a pickle - Compaq/SCSI experts preferred

basmic

basmic

basmic

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10 Apr 2004
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Right, I'll start from the beginning.

Motherboard is a Gigabyte 7VTX. 768mb RAM, 10gb IBM IDE drive, Pioner A06 slot DVD drive, Nvidia (?) card, network (3Com?).

I have a Compaq Smart Array 3200, connected to 2x 9.1gb IBM SCSI drives. This is installed in the bottom-most PCI slot.

Had a bit of a chew on getting into the case - five minutes of dremelling sorted that out. ;)

Got the card installed, setup a RAID 0 array - so far, so good. Did a quick format, and the thing just hangs on, forcing me to stab the reset button on the case.

Thought it might be a firmware issue with the card, so downloaded it, ran the software...bluescreens on me! :mad:
STOP: 0x000000D1 (OxF594063E, 0x00000000, 0xF5947D05)
Click to expand...
So I thought, right could well be a driver issue. Downloaded HP ProLiant Drive Array Driver for Windows 2000/Server 2003, updated drivers and rebooted. Still the same, when performing a quick format!

I would be VERY grateful of any advice/help anybody has to offer. Even any suggestions you think I might have overlooked (and probably have).
 
I should add that I tried to run HD Tach on the array.

Seemed to be fine until the Sequential Read test, then the mouse quickly became very slow to move, and just hung. :mad:
 
Right, split the array back into normal drives, so it's not in a RAID array.

I did a Quickformat, and (again) it hung the machine. :(

Arggh!
 
Hi,

I am not familiar with the HP SCSI cards, does it have a BIOS screen when it spins up the drives, ie. is there a "press crtl A" meessage?, if you press this you can get into the cards BIOS. It might be hidden but there should be a way to access it, check the documentation or PDF from the compaq site if you are not sure.

When you are in the cards BIOS does the card see the drives OK? I would normally low level format the drives from the SCSI card BIOS first, it takes a while but it is best practise and would elmiminate the drives because if the SCSI card can format them then there is probably nothing wrong with them.

What O/S are you using, Windows?, are you planning on keeping the O/S on the IDE drives and using the SCSI drives as storage?
 
Last edited:
Right the machine is running XP at the moment. It is from there I trying to do the format. When I try to format, the machine locks up and I can't move the mouse - I even left it for 20 minutes, but nothing.

From all I can gather, I make alterations to the card's configuration within the OS (in this case, XP Pro) and it writes the settings to the card's BIOS.

Hell, I've even reseated the card and it's daughterboards, and still the same problem. :(
 
I will try a full format - just wait for the machine to bootup.

Is there any reason why it crashes when I try to upgrade the firmware?
 
Machine hung doing the full format.

It flew through the full format - literally took 5 seconds to get to 100% - then it just hung! :mad::mad:

Anybody have any ideas?
 
Hiya,
First off, what is the driver referred to in your stop error (By Google this is an IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error)?- You could try uninstalling this & trying it without the driver.
Also, its probably an idea to update everything in sight and see if this does anything.
How sure are you of the status of the card & the drives?- The full format behaviour suggests to me that summat is toast.
Finally, you might want to try using Linux to get the array up & running, and therefore see if this is a solely Windows problem.

-Leezer-
 
Right a little more progress.

I physcially connected each of the two drives up, one at a time. Performed a format on both drives, no problem.

Connect both up, won't format. Switching the drives positions on the cables now. :(:o
 
Great, just great!

Phoned HP support, and was told:
a) The product is old and outdated, therefore unsupported.

b) Installed in a non-Compaq m/c, and diagnostic won't run on "generic" machine like my own.

So, basically, I'm on my own. :(
 
I just KNEW it was cabling!!

|---|---|---|---| - each | is a header on the SCSI cable

I setup the SCSI like so:
PCI card ---|--- Drive ---|--- Drive --- Terminator

Leaving a header spacing between each drive.

Finally! :D:cool:
 
ARGH!

I thought I had it, but when I ran the long test in HD Tach, it locked-up! :mad::mad:

Anybody know what it could be?
 
Hi,

Okay assuming you have done all of the basics :-

Make sure all drives are on seperate SCSI ID's
Make sure no termination on the drives (assuming you have a terminator at the end of the scsi cable).

I would be slightly concerned over a compaq controller being installed in a non compaq box. You might think what????!?? Compaq hardware certainly in the past has been designed to only fit with their servers due to using onboard stuff and having particularly weird bios/setup systems and from a quick peek at the manual its a SCU based one which I always found painful to use :(

Here is the manual for the controller

ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/supportinformation/techpubs/user_reference_guides/340862-002.pdf

Have a look at this article while not directly related points as some newer drivers I think?

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;305228

Hope this helps a bit.

Good luck.
 
Thanks, 1ofaKind - I've been doing some reading, and pretty much upgraded every single driver.

I think I've got the problem sussed now - power-supply.

These are the voltages without the drives connected, and hooked up to another PSU - when the CPU is idle:
3.3v: 3.22v (2.4% out)
5v: 4.76v (4.8% out)
12v: 12.67v (5.6% out)

Reading when the drives are hooked up, to follow.
 
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