Document: PCI SCSI controllers for OS/2 list Maintainer: Patrick Duffy, duffy@theory.chem.ubc.ca Revision Dates: 11/2/95, 11/26/95, 12/3/95, 5/18/96, 5/26/96, 6/2/96 Archived at: ftp.netcom.com, in directory /pub/ab/abe/ CompuServe (GO BENCHMARK) Web pages: http://warp.eecs.berkeley.edu/os2/workbench/work.htm http://www.os2forum.or.at/english/info/os2hardwareinfo/ (note that the first URL may not have up-to-date versions of the lists) This document is intended for use by individuals and corporations in a non-commercial manner. It may be distributed freely within those limitations. Commercial use of this document in any manner requires prior written permission of the author. This is the PCI SCSI controllers for OS/2 list. I've placed a '*' beside the cards which I would recommend for anyone assembling an OS/2 system. If you see '**' beside a particular card, this is an indication that I would choose it myself when picking a PCI SCSI card for my own system. The PCI vendor name and ID have been added in brackets below each card's description. The first number is HEX and the second is decimal. Dates in brackets indicate the last revision date for the related entry. As usual, please feel free to correct any continuing misconceptions I might have, or to insist that I should recommend a component I don't, or to add a new card/bit of information to what's here already. Your contributions and/or corrections are always welcome and certainly appreciated. General comments: (12/3/95) Make sure that for any SCSI device (if you have an Intel Premiere board) you have at least the seventh or eighth revision of the Intel PCI BIOS on your motherboard (rev. 14 is out for the 90/100 MHz boards, and is preferred). Earlier AMI BIOS revisions would not work properly with SCSI and (apparently) protected mode. In addition, it turns out that some SCSI cards will only work with some motherboards. If you're not sure what card to pick, cross-check this list with the PCI motherboard list. Note also that the Intel PCI Saturn chipset (rev. 1) had problems with cache integrity, and rev. 2 had problems with PCI to CPU burst mode, so that you're probably really better running these motherboards without SCSI controllers, or at the very least with all caches off. See the PCI chipsets list for further details on known problems with (Intel) PCI chipsets. One other motherboard-related issue apparently is that not all PCI slots on all motherboards allow busmastering. As all the cards in this list _are_ busmastering, ensure that the slot in which you put your SCSI card will accommodate a busmaster. Certain controllers (the Adaptecs most prominently) behave very erratically when put in a non-busmastering slot. Many motherboard manufacturers simplify the choice of SCSI controller further by including an NCR SCSI chip (for which there are OS/2 drivers) in their boards, so there is the potential that if you buy one of the cards listed below you could be buying a redundant SCSI interface. Check first. Make sure too that you are running version 3.02 or later of the drivers for the NCR chip (available from ftp.symbios.com); earlier versions did not allow DMA transfers above 16 MB. Note too that PCI SCSI controllers do not include floppy controllers on-board, as most PCI motherboards have these built in already, and fixed-address devices like floppy drives are not a good thing to put on a PCI bus. Also note: OS/2 2.1/2.11 treats PCI as a (very fast) ISA bus. It therefore is unaware of PCI's ability to share interrupts, and so if you put two of any one controller in any slot you're likely to have problems. This has been fixed in Warp, which is now apparently PCI 2.0-compliant. One more thing: If you have a motherboard with the NCR BIOS built in and you get an NCR card, make sure you get a card without the NCR bios on it, to save yourself some potential trouble that some card BIOSes seem to have coexisting with motherboard BIOSes (which cannot be disabled). I'm told that the newest rev. of the Intel BIOS (1.00.14.AX1) will also fix this problem for those of you with Intel Premiere boards. If, after all this, you're having problems getting your OS/2 SCSI setup to work, a very useful resource on the .net is the document "SCSI - A Game With Many Rules and no Rulebook?", compiled by Gary Field (garyf@wiis.wang.com). The document may be found at ftp://ftp.wang.com/pub/garyf/scsi/. You might also check out the SCSI FAQ: Where to get the latest copy of the SCSI FAQ: The comp.periphs.scsi FAQ is posted to Usenet during the first week of each month. In addition, a recent version can be obtained via anonymous ftp from: ftp.wang.com: garyf/scsi/scsi-faq.part* OR rtfm.mit.edu: pub/usenet-by-group/comp.periphs.scsi/comp.periphs.scsi_FAQ_part_* OR via World Wide Web (WWW): http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/scsi-faq/ OR (in HTML format) http://www.paranoia.com/~filipg/HTML/LINK/F_SCSI.html NEW THIS WEEK ------------- I've added the Tyan Yorktown controller to this list, and added the Tyan contact information to the useful numbers section below. I've also added the WD 7197 controller, also reported to work well with Warp. Apparently the DPT controllers require the latest driver (not the one that comes with Warp) to avoid traps with OS2ASPI.DMD. That can be obtained from the DPT web site. I've had another report of success with the BusLogic Flashpoint controller, and a report of qualified success with the WD 7296 controller. The NCR controllers apparently do not support drives with more than 64 heads and 1024 cylinders. In addition, the 2940 controller may not work with the Asus PVI-486SP3. I've also learned that the PCI slots in 2.0-compliant boards are edge-triggered. This is in direct contradiction to information which I've had before... I've also added new (and expanded) contact information for Intel. Useful Numbers: (6/2/96) --------------- Adaptec: (800) 959-7274 (tech. support) ftp.adaptec.com (ftp site) www.adaptec.com (web site) ftp.adaptec.com (ftp site) Advansys: (408) 383-9400 (main desk) (800) 883-1099 (direct credit card sales) (800) 525-7440 (tech. support -- 24 hours) (408) 383-9753 (FAXback) (408) 383-9612 (FAX) (408) 383-9540 (BBS - N81) ftp.advansys.com (FTP site) www.advansys.com (WWW site) BusLogic: (408) 492-9090 (Voice) (408) 654-0760 (tech. support -- 7 A.M. - 5 P.M. Pacific Time, Mon. - Fri.) (408) 492-9118 (FAX) (408) 492-1984 (BBS - N81) techsup@buslogic.com (E-Mail tech. support) ftp.buslogic.com (FTP site) www.buslogic.com (WWW site) DPT: (800) 322-4DPT (sales) (407) 830-5522 (tech. support) (407) 831-6432 (BBS) ftp.dpt.com (FTP site) www.dpt.com (WWW site) Intel: (800) 628-8686 (tech. support) FAXBack: -------- (800) 525-3019 (US or Canada) +44 1793-432509 (Europe) +65 256-5350 (Singapore) +852 2 530-4116 (Hong Kong) +886 2 514-0815 (Taiwan) +822 767-2594 (Korea) +61 2 975-3922 (Australia) (503) 264-6835 (World wide) BBSes: ------ (503) 264-7999 (US or Canada/World wide) +44 1793-432955 (Europe) +65 256-4776 (Singapore) +852 2 530-4116 (Hong Kong) +886 2 718-6422 (Taiwan) +822 784-3430 (Korea) +61 2 975-3066 (Australia) ftp.intel.com (FTP site) www.intel.com (WWW site) NCR: support@symbios.com (OS/2 tech. support) ftp.symbios.com (NCR SCSI drivers) QLogic: (800) 662-4471 (sales) (800) 867-7274 (tech. support) sales@qlc.com (sales E-Mail) qlcts@qlc.com (tech. support E-Mail) ftp.qlc.com (FTP site) www.qlc.com (WWW site) Tekram: www.tekram.com (WWW site) Tyan: (408) 956-8000 (sales) (408) 956-8044 (FAX) (408) 956-8171 (BBS) www.tyan.com (WWW site) ftp.tyan.com (FTP site) Washburn (AMI): (800) 836-9026 / (716) 248-3627 (General inquiries) (800) 836-8028 (faxback and information about specials) (716) 383-6086 (tech. support) (716) 381-7549 (FAX) Western Digital: www.wdc.com (WWW site) Manufacturer Model Comments ------------------------------------------------------ Adaptec 2940* This is Adaptec's non-RAID SCSI controller for the PCI bus. The basic 2940 uses fast SCSI (SCSI-2, 10 MB/S), and the 2940W uses fast/wide SCSI (SCSI-2, 20 MB/S). There latest driver for the card (available from the Adaptec FTP site) now supports the extra driver switch /PCIHW, which tells the driver to bypass the PCI BIOS and query the PCI hardware directly for configuration information. This switch should now enable the adapter to work on most systems. The controller is definitely known to work with the Intel Premiere and Premiere II boards as well as most (if not all) of the Asus boards. The cards will not coexist with the Quantum Empire 1080S drive when communication speed between the drive and controller is set to 10 MB/sec (the card won't recognize it during the BIOS scan, which makes it difficult to boot...). If you're not sure whether the 2940 will work in your setup, you can call the Adaptec FaxBack service (408-957-7150) and request document 21105, which gives a list of PCI systems tested with the card. (It may be necessary to disable the green functions in the motherboard's BIOS to get the card to work properly.) There have been reported problems with getting the 2940W to consistently recognize either a Fujitsu or a Seagate 1 GB HD. As the 2940 and 2940W are essentially similar controllers, this problem may be endemic to both. (Adaptec: 9004/36868) (11/26/95) Under 2.1/2.11: This card will work with the driver found on ftp-os2.cdrom.com. Under Warp: Driver support is built in, though not as robust as it could be (from reports I've seen on the .net). The latest driver (mentioned above) should fix this. The driver which comes with fixpack 10 (5/30/95, 5:53p, 34092, AIC7870.ADD) apparently does not work with the Intel Plato boards and BIOS revision 1.00.13.AX1. The latest driver available from Adaptec (8/8/95, 2:44a, 40956, AIC7870.ADD) apparently does work. (The adapter halts at the start of the boot process with the floppy light and hard drive light glowing.) Apparently as well the fixpack 10 driver will not report the total number of PCI buses present, whereas the Adaptec driver will, indicating that perhaps the fixpack 10 driver is likely based upon an older version of AIC7870.ADD. Version 1.21 of the BIOS does not work with the Asus PVI-486SP3 motherboard. Note: Many of the problems people have reported with the card may be due to things beyond Adaptec's control: Some problems may be caused by BIOS bugs. The reason for this is that the drivers included with OS/2 Warp make use of BIOS calls to configure the PCI BUS. These calls fail in older BIOSes which do not support this feature properly. The latest drivers have as an option writing directly to the PCI hardware instead. This option should be used (by adding the /PCIHW switch to the basedev line for the adapter) if the driver fails (either that, or update the BIOS, if possible). Of course, if you can't update the BIOS and your motherboard does not support a driver which writes to the PCI hardware directly (some don't), you're stuck. Adaptec 2940UW* This is Adaptec's first UltraSCSI controller. It is essentially the same card as the 2940 above, with the exception that it now supports the 20/40 MB/s fast and fast/wide SCSI bus timings. I've had several reports of success (all in combination with Intel Advanced/ZP boards) and one report of failure with the card. (Adaptec: 9004/36868) (12/3/95) Under 2.1/2.11: Driver support unknown, though presumably it's in place. Under Warp: Driver support is in place and reported to work well on Triton-based boards but not at all on another board (Asus PVI/486SP3 -- the system did not even get past the bus scan on initial power-up). Adaptec 3940* This is Adaptec's two-channel SCSI controller for the PCI bus. Like the 2940, it comes in a fast-only model (3940, 7 devices on each channel for a total of 14 devices, 7 of which may be external) and a fast/wide model (3940W, 15 devices on each channel for a total of 30 devices, 15 of which may be external). To put more than one channel on a card, Adaptec employs two AIC7870 processors (one for each channel) linked by a PCI-PCI bridge. In order for these cards to work, therefore, your system _MUST_ support PCI-PCI bridges, and not all do. Check with Adaptec and/or your system motehrboard manufacturer before proceeding. I've had a report of success now with the 3940W in a couple of different installations, one of which had another 2940 in a different slot, so I've upgraded their status to 'recommended'. (Adaptec: 9004/36868) (5/26/96) Adaptec 3985 This is Adaptec's RAID controller, and performs some RAID functions automatically with more than one drive attached. In a manner similar to the 3940, the 3985 uses multiple (three in this case) AIC7870 chips linked by PCI-PCI bridges to support up to 21 devices on the adapter. It also has a dedicated RAID coprocessor to handle all RAID 5 parity calculations. It comes with software (Netware-based, I think) to monitor the array status and performance from the server console or any windows-based client on the network. The adapter supports hot swapping of drives and hot spare drives. All connections to the card are standard 50-pin, and no wide model exists. I've had no reports from people using this card. (Adaptec: 9004/36868) (8/27/95) Advansys ABP9XX Advansys is a relative newcomer to the SCSI controller market, but they make what could be a very nice line of SCSI controllers. All adapters run on the same driver (drivers are available for OS/2, NT, DOS, SCO, Interactive, Win/95, Linux, and Netware). All adapters are capable of starting a local I/O request 10 microseconds after the SCSI bus is detected as being free and should, therefore, be ideal for RAID applications (especially the higher-end controllers). The controllers also auto-terminate, so that you need not worry about termination problems if you have a removable external device attached. I've had a (very positive) report of success with the 940 and OS/2 Warp and Warp Connect. I've been less lucky with the card myself, however (I got the 940 after all the reports of success); the card does not seem to co-exist nicely with my SB-16 Value Edition, cutting out sound in DOOM at random points with the drivers loaded, and causing Windows (under DOS) to lock up during exit (possibly also related to the sound problem). Tech. support (24 hours) knows about the problem and worked with me extensively on a solution, but with no luck. I've noticed too that the OS/2 drivers for the card will not work from a floppy (utility disk) boot; OS/2 reports no drive present. Others have reported that the DOS drivers don't work in Win/95, though this is less of an issue given that you can set up a menu at boot time to select drivers. Given these troubles, I really can't recommend these cards, in spite of the fact that the company has been one of the very best ones I've dealt with. (Advanced System Products: 10CD/4301) (5/18/96) The controllers themselves are: 1. ABP950 -- 2 channel SCSI adapter with 500 I/O requests stored locally on the adapter. 50-pin high-density external connector. 2. ABP940 -- 1 channel SCSI adapter with 250 I/O requests stored locally on the adapter. 50-pin high-density external connector. ($149 from the Advansys 800 number for card, four-connector cable, and driver disk. $199 will get you CorelSCSI.) 3. ABP930 -- 1 channel SCSI adapter with 20 I/O requests stored locally and a 50-pin high-density external connector. 4. ABP920 -- 1 channel SCSI adapter with 20 I/O requests stored locally and a 25-pin low-density external connector. ($99 from the Advansys 800 number) AMD AMD makes a SCSI controller chip which is apparently used by Zeos, Compaq, and HP in their computers. OS/2 drivers are apparently shipped with the boards which use it. The controller is reported to work well under DOS/Win and OS/2 by one user on an HP, though one user reports lock ups under OS/2 after a couple of hours. (Advanced Micro Devices: 1022/4130) (9/10/95) AMI MegaRAID Here's a controller for the truly power-hungry. This is a fast/wide controller with three separate SCSI channels, each of which supports up to 15 peripherals (so you can attach up to 45 SCSI devices to _one_ card). It uses an Intel i960 RISC processor to control all this, and will take up to 128 (!) MB of cache (in 72-pin SIMMs) on the controller itself. It is PCI 2.0-compliant and supports all the regular SCSI features, as well as RAID. Three NCR53C720 processors (one for each channel) are used. The card has 50 and 68-pin internal connectors and a 120-pin external connector. It is fault-tolerant. I've no reports of success with this card as yet, but driver support is there, apparently. (American Megatrends: 101E/4126) (8/27/95) BusLogic BT946C* This is BusLogic's PCI SCSI controller. The same SCSI controller chip is apparently used in their VL card, and so the drivers for that card will work with the PCI card as well. There are apparently six revisions of the PCI card out, the first two of which (released before Nov. '94) were not PCI 2.0-compliant. The newer revsions (C, D, E, and F (for Micronics motherboards only)) _are_ PCI 2.0-compliant, but people have been having problems getting revision C running properly on motherboards with Opti chipsets (apparently the PCI controller is not being programmed properly). To get the older cards (A and B) running, you have to either set the card to match the IRQ pin in your PCI slot (usually A, B, or C), or move the card to slot A (where the card is set initially). Failure to do so will result in hangs under Warp (but apparently not 2.1/2.11). The newer versions of the card do this automatically. To tell what version of the BusLogic Card you have, either look at the revision number in the model (it's indicated there), or have a look at the firmware and BIOS levels on startup. The firmware version should be 4.22 for rev. B, and 4.23 for rev. C. The latest version is 4.25J. Bios version 4.86 is for rev. B, and 4.90 is for rev. C. (Buslogic: 104B/4171) (12/3/95) Deal of the week: $180 from Billy Bath ASA Computers,Inc. (408) 232-5999 x 201 (voice) (408) 232-5959 (FAX) Billy@ASAComputers.com (E-Mail) http://www.asacomputers.com (WEB site) http://gw1.asacomputers.com/asa/products/hdd.htm (product/price information) BusLogic Flashpoint This is an UltraSCSI (narrow) LT* controller from BusLogic. Througput (to non-ultra drives) is said to be better than the Adaptec 2940, and driver support is in place. The card supports SCAM (SCSI Configured AutoMagically), which will allow IDs to be set automatically as new (SCAM-compliant) devices are plugged in. The card can be configured manually (via the BIOS setup routine on the card) if needed/desired. I've had a couple of reports of success with this card and OS/2. (Buslogic: 104B/4171) (6/2/96) DPT PM series** DPT makes a series of cards, all of which are reported to perform very well under OS/2. All cards have seven LEDs which light in repsonse to actions taken by the card (cache hit, SCSI bus activity, etc.), and a cache design which starts cache flush 250 ns after CPU idle is detected, thus protecting data from system hangs, etc. The cards are reported to be very sensitive to termination, to the extent that if the SCSI bus is not properly terminated not all peripherals will be seen or work properly. (By contrast, I ran my NCR controller with termination disabled for weeks without knowing it.) Make sure too that you have the latest driver (not the one that comes with Warp) to avoid traps with OS2ASPI.DMD (if you're using it) and the DPT20XX.ADD driver. Version 2.A8 is, apparently, included with Warp. Note that the latest driver (and others before it) cause the SCSI activity LED to stop working once they're loaded. The various cards are as follows: (Distributed Processing Technology: 1044/4164) (6/2/96) PM2024 This card uses a Motorola 68000 chip for SCSI operations and, like the PM3224 below, will do caching and RAID, but apparently you must purchase the cache/RAID modules and RAM separately for the card in order to do it. This card is full-length, and there is no plastic guide for the 50-pin connector on it. (8/27/95) PM2124 This is a similar card to the 2024 above. The primary difference between this card and the 2024 is that the 2124 uses a 20 MHz Motorola 68020 for SCSI operations, in contrast to the 16 MHz 68000 used by the 2024 above. (8/27/95) SmartRAID Now _this_ sounds like a card for PM3224 high-performance fanatics. The card is caching (RAM must be purchased separately) and, once RAM, a separate RAID module, and the necessary drives are added, will do RAID automatically. (8/27/95) Future Domain TMC-3260SVP This card _will_ work with the 60 MHz Intel Pentium motherboard, with one reported exception, and one note. The exception: It hangs during BIOS initialization during the device scan if a SCSI tape device (the reported one was a Wangtec 5525ES) is connected. Replacing this tape drive with a Conner 2GB DAT drive solved the problem (switching the older tape drive to SCSI-2 mode did not). The note: FD sets things up differently than most other SCSI adapters, in that the hard disk with the HIGHEST ID is set to drive C:, and is the boot drive. (Future Domain: 1036/4150) (8/27/95) Deal of the week: $105 from ComputAbility (800) 554-9950/(414) 357-7814 NCR/Symbios ** NCR makes both boards and chips. Boards using the NCR/Symbios chips are also available from Acculogic, Asus, Nexstor, and many others (note that Intel is no longer selling this board). One of these boards is used in OS/2-certified systems of which I know. As all of the NCR chips support busmastering, are PCI 2.0 compliant, and are available in your choice of fast/wide SCSI combinations (the Acculogic is made special note of here for its wide array of possible connectors), they are both fantastic bargains and highly recommended at typically about 25% of the price of the Adaptecs. One thing to check for when picking your SCSI card is whether or not your motherboard has the NCR BIOS built into the system BIOS. The Intel Premiere and Premiere II motherboards mentioned in the PCI motherboard list certainly do, and I believe all of the Asus boards have that support built in. If you don't have the supporting BIOS built into your motherboard, cards are available with BIOSes on them (the card by NexStor for example) which have BIOS support built in. (NCR: 101A/4122) (6/2/96) In any case, the chips themselves are as follows: NCR53c810 - FAST SCSI-2, no BIOS NCR53c815 - FAST SCSI-2, BIOS NCR53c820 - FAST WIDE SCSI-2, no BIOS NCR53c825 - FAST WIDE SCSI-2, BIOS Setup tips: It may be necessary on some motherboards (during install only -- I haven't had this problem when running OS/2 the rest of the time) to set IRQ9 to 'used' in the flash BIOS, so that the card will be assigned IRQ 10 (which isn't this weird cascaded thing like 9 is anyway). Other cards (like the one by Asus) have the PCI INT# for the card set to 'A' by default, so be sure to put it in the right slot. If you're installing 2.10 (not 2.11), you may have to rem out the dpt20xx.add in your disk 1 config.sys in order to get the install to proceed if you have this card. It may also be necessary to set the "2nd SCSI" jumper on some adapters to get them to work (even when there are no other SCSI adapters in the system, oddly enough). Potential problems: Revision 3.02 of OS2CAM.ADD appears to be incompatible with the Quantum Prodrive 540S; revision 3.03 is required for trouble-free operation. Be warned that revision 3.03 of the driver may conflict with some revisions of the SoundBlaster driver (the 8-bit card), and cause desktop corruption. The problem does not seem to appear under DOS. Some NCR cards come configured for edge-triggered interrupts as default, which causes problems for OS2CAM.ADD. Level-triggered interrupts must be used (despite what the manual may claim) to make the card work properly (or at all) under OS/2. This, though, is in direct contradiction to information from Intel, who say that 2.0-compliant boards must use EDGE-triggered interrupts... In addition, early revisions (A) of the NCR 53c810 will reset the chip to use asynchronous mode when more than one fast SCSI-2 device is present in the SCSI chain. What should happen is that the chip should negotiate with each device attached and use the fastest mode available for each different device. This, quite obviously, was not the case for the early chips. Revision B 53c810 chips and the full 53c825 series correct this problem. Note also that the NCR/Symbios drivers have problems with drives using removable media: if no media is present at boot time, the drive will not be given BIOS support (after a protracted waiting period), and all versions of os2cam.add will hang on startup (with a trap 000d) if no media is present. The chip apparently does not properly support drives with more than 64 heads and 1024 cylinders, as it will not recognize partitions which begin past the 1 GB point. Deal of the week: $199 for a (brand-unspecified) 53c825-based fast/wide SCSI controller (with 50 and 68-pin internal connectors and a 50-pin external connector), from JDR Micro NCR 8250, $110, from Insight, (206) 820-8100 QLogic IQ PCI* Qlogic makes what are apparently very good fast and fast/wide SCSI cards which have drivers for OS/2 (1.12 are the latest and are reported to work well under Warp). They feature a 12 MIPS processor (as opposed to the 1 MIPS one which forms part of the NCR fast/wide processors, for whatever that gets you) and are fully SCSI-2 compliant. The IQ PCI supports two SCSI channels and 1000 queued I/O operations, and the IQ PCI/10 (fast only) supports one channel and 400 queued I/O operations. These cards will work with the Intel 60 MHz motherboard, and one (the fast/wide one) is in fact being used with a #9 GXE64 in a 60 MHz system with no problems (under 2.11 or Warp). The IQ PCI is now at revision 2. One caveat: The IQ PCI series of cards uses extended BIOS translation for 1GB+ drives. There's no way to disable this, so if you're switching from a controller where you had extended translation disabled, you'll have to reformat your drive. It should be noted that it seems like QLogic controllers will _not_ work with NEC CDR-84 CD-ROM drives. QLogic apparently knows of the problem but is not addressing it. (QLogic: 1077/4215) (5/18/96) Setup tips: If you are using the controller with an Asus P54/P55 motherboard, get the newest BIOS chip from QLogic to fix a problem caused by the motherboard, which does a PCI bus reset after the controller scans the SCSI bus, causing problems for the controller. (It will be obvious if you have the problem -- your system will not boot.) The ISP1020 firmware level should be 1.27 or greater. Deal of the week: $209 from Hard Drive Super Source, (800) 252-9777 (510) 494-8501 QLogic PCI Basic* This card differs from the previous two QLogic cards in that it's cheaper ($135 MSRP), and that it uses a different chip (the "400" series). I've had a few reports of success with this card under Warp. It should be noted, however, that it seems like QLogic controllers will _not_ work with NEC CDR-84 CD-ROM drives. QLogic apparently knows of the problem but is not addressing it. (QLogic: 1077/4215) (8/27/95) Tekram DC-390* This card is apparently a low-cost fast SCSI-2 to PCI adapter. It includes drivers for OS/2 2.0 (!) and Warp. It has a menu-driven setup program to configure the adapter, attached devices, and card BIOS. The BIOS supports 7 drives (as most cards do) and drives bigger than 1 GB (presumably this means sector translation; I don't know if this can be disabled). The card also automatically terminates itself (like the Advansys cards). The card is reported to work well with OS/2 Warp/Warp Connect/Warp Japanese. (Tekram Technology Co., Ltd.: 10E1/4321) (9/13/95) Tyan Yorktown* This card is based on the NCR 53c825 fast/wide chipset and is reported to work well in combination with OS/2 and the Tyan Titan III motherboard. (Tyan Computer: 10F1/4337) (6/2/96) Western Digital WD7193* This card is about equivalent in performance (perhaps slightly better) than the Adaptec 2940, with similar features. It does, however, have a flash BIOS, unlike the 2940 (and, for that matter, most of the PCI adapters listed here). It also auto-terminates. I've had a report of success with this card under Warp. (Western Digital Corporation: 101C/4124) (5/18/96) Western Digital WD7197* This card is about equivalent in performance and features (perhaps slightly better) than the Adaptec 2940W. It does, however, have a flash BIOS, unlike the 2940 (and, for that matter, most of the PCI adapters listed here). Connectors are provided for wide and narrow internal devices, and high-density wide external devices. It also auto-terminates. I've had a report of success with this card under Warp. (Western Digital Corporation: 101C/4124) (6/2/96) Western Digital WD7296* This card is about equivalent in performance (perhaps slightly better) than the Adaptec 2940W, with similar features. It does, however, have a flash BIOS, unlike the 2940W (and, for that matter, most of the PCI adapters listed here). It also auto-terminates. Apparently it is necessary to get the latest drivers from WD to make sure the card works properly with Warp (the drivers which come in the box may not, although they claim this). I'm not sure what differentiates this card from the 7197, listed above. (Western Digital Corporation: 101C/4124) (6/2/96) There's what I know. Please E-Mail suggestions/corrections and I'll post again. -- Patrick Duffy, duffy@theory.chem.ubc.ca "Evil is out there making hand-crafted mischief for the swap meet of villany." -- The Tick