goings@felix.UUCP (David Goings) (08/17/90)
Hi, I have two problems: I recently inherited an ADAPTEC SCSI CONTROLLER and... 1. I can not get the ADAPTEC 1542A SCSI controller to recognize or read a 1.2 mb floppy disk in a 1.2mb floppy drive. Does the 1542A support 1.2mb floppies ?. A very unsupportive sales person told me that it "probably did not". 2. Assuming that the 1542A does not support 1.2mb floppies, can the 1542A be upgraded ? 3. Yes I know I said two... can any one name a good vendor that handles the Adaptec products. FLAME ON Hamilton Avnet - personnel - "all technical support is directly related to a sale." Guess he can't tell me if a new bios will work unless I buy it first ? FLAME OFF Thanx Dave G.
ardai@bass.bu.edu (Michael Ardai) (08/18/90)
In article <150237@felix.UUCP> goings@felix.UUCP (David Goings) writes:
-1. I can not get the ADAPTEC 1542A SCSI controller to recognize or
- read a 1.2 mb floppy disk in a 1.2mb floppy drive. Does the 1542A
- support 1.2mb floppies ?. A very unsupportive sales person told me
- that it "probably did not".
Not only is the salesperson unsupportive, he is wrong. My system at home
has a 1.2Mb floppy on a 1542A. Has the drive/cable worked on another
controller? Has any other drive worked on the Adaptec? Did you tell the
PC it has a 1.2Mb drive? Is the floppy controller on the 1542 enabled?
(J13 installed, J17, J18, and J19 jumpered pins 1 and 2)
Adaptec's number is (408)945-8600. They will help over the phone, but
they ask for your dealer's name in order to 'better educate' him.
\|/ Michael L. Ardai ardai@bu-pub.bu.edu
--- ---------------------------------------------------------------
/|\ ...!sun!teda!ardai (preferred)ajm@icc.com (Al Marmora) (08/20/90)
In article <150237@felix.UUCP> goings@felix.UUCP (David Goings) writes: >Hi, > >I have two problems: > >I recently inherited an ADAPTEC SCSI CONTROLLER and... > >1. I can not get the ADAPTEC 1542A SCSI controller to recognize or > read a 1.2 mb floppy disk in a 1.2mb floppy drive. Does the 1542A > support 1.2mb floppies ?. A very unsupportive sales person told me > that it "probably did not". The 1542A indeed does support 1.2MB floppies. However, your vendor's BIOS may not deal with the floppy controller in a socially acceptable manner. For example, on my Everex STEP 25/386, if I initially boot on a 1.2MB floppy, I can only access 1.2MB floppies; attempting to read or write a 360K diskette fails. If I boot on a 360K floppy I can only access 360K floppies. I questioned Roy Neese at Adaptec about this, [sure miss adaptex... provided much more help than Adaptec's telephone support ever did] and he indicated that the problem was with the computer's BIOS. This was confirmed when I installed VP/ix (MS-DOS under unix) which uses a different (Phoenix) BIOS. When running under VP/ix the floppy access problems went away. I believe the Everex BIOS is based on AMI's BIOS; Does anyone out their know if the vanilla AMI BIOS has this problem? [at the time (early 1989) Everex claimed to be looking at the problem. I recently (mid-1990) tried the 1542A in a new Everex machine, and the problem still existed] --al