From: lbelan@fert1.fe.psu.edu (Lawrence Belan ][/40960)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.misc
Subject: OS/2, 2 RLL drives, 1542B SCSI and 32M of RAM? (Will it ever work?)
Date: 7 Nov 92 04:15:08 GMT
Article-I.D.: atlantis.!z!vHkwvpa
Organization: PennState - Fayette Campus Computer Center

I'm slowly going mad over this, so I'll ask if any of you have some
insight on this problem.

(Yes, I've talked to Adaptec, AMI and I've left lots of messages with IBM 
about it.)

I'm running an AMI SuperVoyager ISA 486/50 system with an Adaptec 1542B
board to control a 300Mb SCSI disk and I'm using a Western Digital
1006VSR2 (rll) board to drive two 200Mb disks and two floppies.

Here's how they're setup:
a:      1.44M Floppy
b:      1.2 M Floppy

Hard disk 1 (RLL)
c:      60  M    MS-DOS 5.0
d:      60  M    OS/2 2.0 w/the service pack \
e:      60  M                                 } Extended partition
f:      13  M                                /
         1  M    OS/2 2.0 Boot Manager

Hard disk 2 (RLL)
g:      60  M                                \
h:      60  M                                 \   setup as a single 
i:      60  M                                 /   extended partition
j:      14  M                                /
                (This controler is used under OS/2 by the ibmint13.i13 
                 driver...the latest ibm1s506.add still makes the drives
                 sound like a meat grinder.)

SCSI disk 1
k:      300 M   (under dos only, using the aspi4dos/aspidisk drivers.
                 OS/2 won't load it for some reason, even with the
                 aha154X.add driver in the config.sys.
                 any ideas on this problem??)

Everyting seems to work with only 16 meg loaded,
but as soon as I top it off to 32 Meg:

1)   Windows 3.1 hangs after i open up two DOS apps, and
     switch between them.

2)   OS/2 gives those annoying trap 2 errors at address 160:FFF6459E
     during window opening/closing or jumping from the Win-OS/2 fullscreen
     back to the desktop.

I'm getting conflicting reports on whether or not the 1542B can handle
the 32Mb of RAM that I have in the system, since it can only Bus Master
the first 16M of RAM.  Since i can't get it to work with OS/2 I can't 
really pin it on the controller, CAN I?  Smartdrive 4.0 dosen't want to 
double buffer the scsi disk and VirtualHDIRQ=OFF is set in the system.ini
file for windows.

I don't think it's a RAM error since I've mixed all the memory in various
16 Meg configurations.  It's pretty easy with only 8 SIMMS to work with.
The 256K RAM cache has even been toggled on and off but that dosen't help
either.

My other problem is trying to get the 1542B and disk to work with OS/2.
The card is at address 330, DMA 5, and IRQ 15...BIOS disabled.  It 
works great under DOS, and maybe on windows.

Should I be looking for a new (SCSI board, motherboard, Macintosh, job)??
-- 
 Lawrence (Larry) Belan ][                       lbelan@fert1.fe.psu.edu
 Computer/Telecommunications Specialist             bp3@psuvm.psu.edu (or)
 PennState - Fayette Campus                         bp3@psuvm.bitnet
 Route 119 North  Box 519                     75745.242@compuserve.com        
 Uniontown, PA  15041-0519                         (412) 430-4163
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.misc