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NEC T128 with DEC DSP-3160: Unknown SCSI Drive

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marcoguy

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I've got an NEC T-128 SCSI controller in a 5161, and my previous hard drive died so I bought a DEC DSP-3160 to replace it. I configured it as SCSI device zero, and to automatically spin up. When I boot up my 5160 and the T-128's BIOS loads, I get the message, "Unknown SCSI Drive." The system then proceeds to boot into PC-DOS 3.3 from the floppy drive. I tried running FDISK, but it says, "No fixed disks present." What am I doing wrong here that is causing the "Unknown SCSI Drive" error and preventing DOS from detecting the hard drive? Also, here is information that may be helpful about the T-128 and DSP-3160:
T-128
DSP-3160I
 
I think somebody mentioned it earlier, but are you sure T-128 will support large hard drives? (that disk seems to be 2 GB). Although SCSI disks use linear addressing, as I understand SCSI BIOS have to translate it to C/H/S format normal INT 13 uses (or the opposite way around). And it is possible that T-128 is so old that developers never thought about supporting such as large disks.
 
sergey said:
I think somebody mentioned it earlier, but are you sure T-128 will support large hard drives? (that disk seems to be 2 GB). Although SCSI disks use linear addressing, as I understand SCSI BIOS have to translate it to C/H/S format normal INT 13 uses (or the opposite way around). And it is possible that T-128 is so old that developers never thought about supporting such as large disks.
Click to expand...

A SCSI BIOS uses CHS when talking to the computer, and LBA when talking to the drive. (INT13 is CHS based. SCSI devices are LBA based.) XT-IDE does the same thing. (But you probably knew this already ...)

SCSI-1 used 6 byte CDBs with a 21 bit LBA field, so they only can access drives up to 1GB in size. Your larger drive might be confusing the T-128 BIOS.
 
Ah, thanks. I'll try using TFORMAT on the drive tomorrow and see if that does the trick.
 
On second thought, I'll try out TFORMAT tonight. Does anybody have a copy of TFORMAT that works with the T-128?
 
Unfortunately that version of TFORMAT doesn't detect my SCSI card. I know it's just the program because other programs I have for it detect it properly. This version reports its self as 2.02, maybe an earlier version would properly detect the T-128.
 
tran317.exe appears to be a "Diskette Image Decompression Utility". From what I've heard, a version of TFORMAT that will properly detect the T-128 should do the trick. The hard drive that was previously installed in the system was about 1.5Gb and it worked flawlessly so I don't see why this one shouldn't.
 
Ahh, I probably would have figured that out had I not quickly ended the program after seeing "formatting a:" while my only PC-DOS boot dick was in the drive. I'll check if 2.01 works later, but I honestly doubt it because I already tried 2.02 and it wouldn't detect the t128. I was hoping somebody knew where I could get a copy of tformat 1.x
 
I tried TFORMAT 2.01 and had no luck. Anyone know where I can get a copy of 1.x?
 
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