Need some help with a Tekram DC-390U3D

[Schwartz]

I recently purchased a Tekram DC390U3D SCSI card and cannot get it to reliably detect my Toshiba SD-M1401 SCSI DVD drive and my Plextor 124TSi SCSI CD-RW drive. Sometimes the drives are detected by the SCSI card and will work, sometimes no drives are detected, and sometimes one or the other drive is detected. I am running XP Pro but I do not think this is an OS issue because of the intermittent decection of the drives by the SCSI card on boot before XP even tries to load. On the first channel I have a Seagate Cheetah X-15 drive which works fine. My Plextor has the SCSI ID of 2 and my Toshiba drive has the SCSI ID of 4 and is terminating, both drives are supplying power to the bus. I did try making only one supply power but it didn't seem to make any difference. I am using the default settings in the SCSI card BIOS for both channels. I am running BIOS version PCI-4.19.00 on the SCSI card. I have no IRQ conflicts. I am using an ASUS CUSL2 motherboard. The SCSI card is in PCI slot 2. The second channel is definity enabled in the SCSI BIOS. These devices do work on an Adaptec 29160N SCSI card so I would think the cabling and termination must be setup correctly. I tried another SCSI cable. I tried a single drive and the same stuff happens. I have tried everything I can think of, any suggestions? Anyone else ran into anything like this? Could the card be bad even though it doesn't spit out any errors?

[EvilHorace]

I have the same card and X15 HDD but there's seemingly few who seem to know much about SCSI stuff, at least around here. I'm only using one SCSI device but I did have a few problems too when I first set it up over a year ago. I'm afraid that I'm not much help to your specific question but I know a guy who's really into SCSI and HDD stuff (Radboy), who use to be an old AGN member years ago and is very knowledgeable concerning SCSI. I'll have to seek him out as I no longer have his e-mail addy handy in this PC (re-formatted and lost old e-mails) after I tryed installing XP on it a while back. At that time I thought it wouldn't work being that Telram didn't list or mention XP at their site but they now say to use the Win2K drivers. I'm happy with Win2K in this box, at least for now until XP is totally workable with all devices, etc.
Doc, who also still visits here once in a while might also either be able to help or refer you to a site (forum) that specializes in SCSI HDDs, like Harddrive review or something similar?
If I find more info, I'll post it.

Update:
Found it (Radboys report) via search under my nickname as he used my test results in his article a year ago. He wrote a very detailed report but if that's not good enough, try doing a search on SCSI related topics. I know that there's websites too that deal only with HDDs and SCSI related stuff but havent been to one since I set my PC up and havent had any specific SCSI problems since.
http://scsi.radified.com/scsi_03.htm

SCSI links also found there too:
http://scsi.radified.com/scsi_08.htm

Another site with alot of SCSI info on HDDs and adaptors found at Radboys site:
http://storagereview.com/

[Schwartz]

Thanks for the info, I believe I have tried everything possible which leaves one thing, the card is defective. I purchased the card from http://www.hypermicro.com and contacted them about it. Today they replied and it looks like they are going to do an RMA.

[Radboy]

Hey Evil, hey Schwartz.

I don't have that scsi card, but if I had that problem, I might try:

1. updating bios - both on the scsi adapter itself, and the cd-rom.
2. updating drivers
3. updating aspi
http://aspi.radified.com/

4. Doc said that it's possible to configure the card two ways:

1. 1 IRQ for the card
2. 1 IRQ for each channel

might try playing with that setting.

Rad

[Schwartz]

Did all of that already, thanks though. I'm going to get a new card.