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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.rmit.EDU.AU!news.unimelb.EDU.AU!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news1.digex.net!news3.digex.net!digex.net!not-for-mail From: dcmyers@access4.digex.net (David Myers) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: NCR810 SCSI help needed! Date: 7 Jan 1996 00:46:08 -0500 Organization: Express Access Online Communications USA: 800-969-9090 Lines: 69 Message-ID: <4cnmn0$dk8@access4.digex.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: access4.digex.net I picked up an NCR810-based SCSI controller the other day, and have been struggling with it ever since. At 68 bucks, maybe I don't have any right to complain, but here's what's happening. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Background: Pentium/75 system with 16 megs of RAM, 4 PCI slots. Quantum Fireball one gigabyte SCSI drive, NEC double-speed CDROM. No IDE devices are present; all I've got are the two SCSI devices and my trusty 1.44 floppy. The Fireball still has MacOS on it, so I'm working from floppy-only until it gets formatted. It's just me and DOS 6.22. The motherboard says its BIOS supports NCR810 and Adaptec SCSI devices. Using the BIOS set-up program, I tell it the main disk is SCSI. The Card: Cute little NCR810-based PCI card bought from Technoland in Santa Clara, California. "Made in Taiwan." The card has almost *nothing* on it -- the '810 chip, a 40 MHz crystal, a couple of jumpers, that's it. The manual is indecipherable, but I understand it supports PCI bus mastering, scatter/gather, full SCSI-II, etc. The sales guy tells me it doesn't work on all systems, but can't give me any particulars. The card says it must be placed in the busmastering PCI slot, but my motherboard manual doesn't tell me which one that is (I assume slot one). The only jumper on the card selects between "INTA", "INTB", "INTC", and "INTD". I have no idea what those mean. I'm not a PC person. It came set on INTA, but just to be different, I put it on INTB. The Symptoms: Remember, I still have to format the SCSI disk. Which means I've got to install some SCSI drivers so DOS can see the thing. So, I blindly copy over the following files onto my boot floppy, but note with some suspicion that they're copyright *1993* by NCR Corporation: DOSCAM.SYS CDROM.SYS MSCDEX.EXE I figured that these would act as the high-level DOS drivers, which would work in conjunction with my motherboard's SCSI BIOS to let met get access to the Fireball. Once the Fireball and the CDROM are on-line, I slip in the FreeBSD CD and off I go. Well, no. I get a message saying that the NCR BIOS would not load, because "SDMS BIOS not found." Now, I don't know what "SDMS BIOS" is, but my motherboard is supposed to be able to drive the '810 chip. What happened? I've got an indecipherable SCSI manual, an indecipherable motherboard manual, and almost no PC knowledge. I have no idea what to do next. Do any of you? My only goal is to get FreeBSD running; I couldn't care less about this MS-DOS nonsense, and would happily skip DOS-level formatting if it can somehow be avoided. Thanks in advance. -David. -- ________________________________________ David C. Myers dcmyers@access.digex.net