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Tekram Technology DC-820B User Manual

Eisa fast scsi caching adapter mirroring + caching
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EISA Fast SCSI Caching Adapter
DC-820B
Mirroring + Caching
EISA Fast SCSI Host Adapter
Acknowledgements of the following trademarks:
Intel is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation.
Adaptec, ASPI, and AHA 1540/1542 are registered trademarks of Adaptec.
Novell and NetWare are trademarks of Novell, Inc.
Sytos Plus is a registered trademark of Sytron Corporation.
ARCserve/Solo are registered trademarks of Cheyenne Corporation.
MS-DOS, Xenix, Windows, and Microsoft are registered trademarks of Microsoft
Corporation.
SCO Unix and SCO Xenix are registered trademarks of Santa Cruz Operation Inc.
ISC is a registered trademark of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
USL is a registered trademark of Interative Systems Corporation.
Unix is a registered trademark of America Telephone and Telegraph Company Bell
Laboratories.
OS/2 is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation.
NCR is a registered trademark of National Cash Register Corporation.
Mylex is a registered trademark of Mylex Corporation.
Music Box is a trademark and Trantor a registered trademark of Trantor Systems, Ltd.
(other trademarks shown are the property of their respective owners)
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  • Page 1 EISA Fast SCSI Caching Adapter DC-820B Mirroring + Caching EISA Fast SCSI Host Adapter Acknowledgements of the following trademarks: Intel is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation. Adaptec, ASPI, and AHA 1540/1542 are registered trademarks of Adaptec. Novell and NetWare are trademarks of Novell, Inc.
  • Page 2 Each DC-820B is equipped with an FCC compliance label which shows only the FCC Identification number: FCC ID: KHADC-820B This device complies with Part 15 of the FCC rule.

  • Page 3: Quick Installation Guide

    Quick Installation Guide . Install the cache DRAM - Sec 1.4 . Set your SCSI HDD's ID to 0 and 1 (if avail- able) . Plug the adapter onto your system & Cabling . Power on the SCSI device(s) & then the system Enter the mainboard's CMOS setup &...

  • Page 4: Table Of Contents

    1.5 Powering Up and Entering the System CMOS BIOS Setup ... 14 1.6 Running the ECU ..15 1.6.1 DC-820B Adapter Hardware Options ..17 1.6.2 DC-820B Adapter Firmware Options ..19 1.6.3 DC-820B SCSI Device Options ..23 1.7 TOOLBME.EXE Utility &...
  • Page 5 Appendix A. Technical Specification ... Appendix B. Product Support Form ... Appendix C. General Troubleshooting Tips ... EISA Fast SCSI Caching Adapter...

  • Page 6: Chapter 0 Introduction

    Introduction The DC-820B is an intelligent multi-tasking SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) bus to EISA bus host adapter. Up to six DC-820B adapters can be installed in one system with each adapter supporting up to seven SCSI devices. In addition, the DC-820B offers hardware-based disk mirroring under all operating systems in order to further safeguard your valuable data.

  • Page 7: Easy Dos Driver Installation Software (Install.exe)

    EISA Fast SCSI Caching Adapter All versions of MS-DOS support two hard disk drives without adding device drivers. If MS-DOS 5.0 is used, the DC-820B BIOS can handle up to eight devices, including fixed disk and removable media, by enabling the DOS 5 Support enable/disable option during the ECU (EISA Configuration Utility) setup process.
  • Page 8 The System has the following Host Adapter(s) 1 DC-820B HA#0 Base 330H DMA 5 IRQ 11 ID 7 2). This screen provides the information of the SCSI devices controlled by the chosen adapter (HA#0).
  • Page 9 EISA Fast SCSI Caching Adapter 3) The following screen provides you the information about how many SCSI devices installed in the system and requires you to answer if to install the driver(s) or not: The next following screen requires you to specify the directory pathname for the device drivers: If your system has CD-ROM device(s) and want to install the driver, another screen will pop up and require you to assign the pathname for MSCDEX.EXE.
  • Page 10 EISA Fast SCSI Caching Adapter And then you go on to assign the first drive letter for the CD-ROM drive(s) used by the MSCDEX.EXE. In this case, Drive: F is reserved to the first CD-ROM drive. After confirmation, this installation program will modify both the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files.
  • Page 11 EISA Fast SCSI Caching Adapter...

  • Page 12: Chapter 1 Hardware Setup

    Chapter 1 HARDWARE SETUP Before plugging the DC-820B into your system, make sure all jumpers on the card are correctly set according to instructions outlined in section 1.1. Also take care that the SCSI ID number (0-6) of each SCSI device is set properly for the host adapter (ID 7) (if necessary, check the user manuals for the respective devices).

  • Page 13: Checking The Terminators On The Scsi Bus

    SPEAKER. Floppy Enable/Disable (JP3) JP3 is shorted to enable the floppy controller of the DC-820B. Note that only one floppy controller can be enabled in the system. If another floppy control- ler in the system cannot be disabled, then JP3 should be left open (floppy controller disabled).

  • Page 14: Cable Connection (Cn1, Cn2, & Cn3)

    1.5 Powering Up and Entering the System CMOS BIOS Setup When the DC-820B is inserted in an available EISA bus master slot and the jumpers and cables are properly set, first turn on the power of your external SCSI devices and then the main system power.

  • Page 15: Running The Ecu

    For the best performance, enable the Advanced CMOS ROM shadowing option in order to speed up the DC-820B’s operation. This can be done in most system BIOSes by enabling the shadowing of the adapter ROM loca- tion in upper memory (between C8000h and DFFFh) corresponding to the DC-820B’s BIOS ROM address.
  • Page 16 1. The limitations for both the I/O port 330H and SCSI ID starting from 0 no longer exist. 2. As for DOS 5.0/6.0, the DC-820B can control up to 8 devices through DC-820B’s BIOS, such as fixed disk and removable media devices.

  • Page 17: Dc-820B Adapter Hardware Options

    EISA Fast SCSI Caching Adapter 1.6.1 DC-820B Adapter Hardware Options This field allows you to select the Interrupt level, Adapter BIOS address, I/O port address, and DMA channel. Since most options in this category are Adaptec-compatible, some enhanced options will be pointed out specifically.
  • Page 18 I/O port definition: 330H - default. This option selects the starting address of the block of four I/O ports employed by the DC-820B. Also, be sure that no other adapters use the same I/O port. For UNIX systems, you have to choose 330H for the host adapter that controls the bootable drive with the SCSI ID as 0.

  • Page 19: Dc-820B Adapter Firmware Options

    DMA channel be sure that there is no conflict with other adapters. 1.6.2 DC-820B Adapter Firmware Options This field allows you to select the Cache line size, Cache DRAM test, Host Adapter SCSI ID, DOS 5 Support, and Power ON delay for SCSI devices.
  • Page 20 Choosing the Simplified test option would only activate the regular pattern test. Host Adapter SCSI ID: 0-7. The default ID of DC-820B is 7. Each device, including the DC-820B, must have its own individual SCSI ID. If any conflict occurs, check the device menu for proper ID setting.
  • Page 21 To set this option as Enabled you are able to coexist with an Adaptec SCSI adapter, but you have to leave 330H for Adaptec’s adapter and switch the DC-820B’s I/O port to some other address. Aside from this, you have to add the necessary device driver(s).
  • Page 22 BIOS INT 13H device option as HD (refer to the next subsection for more details). In this way, the DC-820B’s BIOS INT 13H won’t sense its existence and the new eight devices’ scanning sequence would be re-...

  • Page 23: Dc-820B Scsi Device Options

    They can be selected to either In- stalled or Removed by setting this option to Enable or Disable. 1.6.3 DC-820B SCSI Device Options This field allows you to select the Cacheable device, Parity Checking, Syn- chronous Negotiation, Disconnect/Reconnect, Max DOS disk capacity, Mir- rored to SCSI ID, DOS device type, and Max Synchronous transfer rate.
  • Page 24 Parity Checking: Yes/No. This option defaults to enabled, i.e., Yes. If set as No, the DC-820B won't perform the parity checking on the SCSI bus. For some devices that do not implement the parity function, you have to disable this option.
  • Page 25 BIOS INT 13H. MAX Sync Xfer rate: 10.0 - 2.00 MB/sec. DC-820B supports the 10.00 MB/sec as its highest data transfer rate to work with SCSI devices comply- ing with Fast SCSI protocol.

  • Page 26: Toolbme.exe Utility & Disk Mirroring Initialization

    EISA Fast SCSI Caching Adapter 1.7 TOOLBME.EXE Utility & Disk Mirroring Initialization TOOLBME.EXE is a utility program performing the functions of Low-Level Format, Disk Copy, Disk Compare, and Mirroring Initialization. Since it is a DOS-formatted utility, you have to execute it either under DOS or from a bootable DOS diskette for Non-DOS environments.
  • Page 27 Mirror pair initialization: The pair of mirroring drives are defined in the Mirrored to SCSI ID option of the DC-820B SCSI Device Option when executing the ECU. This module helps you prepare the necessary procedures before performing disk mirroring and restore the data once one of the mirror- pair drives is in trouble.
  • Page 28 EISA Fast SCSI Caching Adapter always duplicates the Master Disk to the Backup Disk (slave). If one of the Mirror-Pair drives is malfunctioning, you can try to adjust the proper Mas- ter-Backup relation by selecting the Mirrored to SCSI ID in the ECU and then execute this module to put things in order.
  • Page 29 EISA Fast SCSI Caching Adapter If both the Master and Backup Disk drives are new or contain useless data, you may key in instead to proceed the initialization:...
  • Page 30 EISA Fast SCSI Caching Adapter Disk image copy utility: This module copies the data from the Source Disk to the Target Disk on a drive-to-drive basis. Still, you have to set the copy- pair drives, one to Source Disk and the other to Target Disk, by pressing the <Space Bar>.
  • Page 31 Write error log information for all devices attached to it. This error log information screen will show the times of error logged during the whole device access history. Note that only the DC-820B and its series are able to record the times of error.

  • Page 32: Chapter 2 Aspi Driver For Dos

    EISA Fast SCSI Caching Adapter Chapter 2 ASPI Driver for DOS This chapter describes the ASPI (Advanced SCSI Programming Interface) driver installation for DOS and some other useful utility programs under this ASPI environment: 1. The ASPI driver, ASPIBME.SYS, provides the basic communication interface for the host adapter device driver and DOS operating system.

  • Page 33: Installing The Aspi Driver

    Install the DC-820B properly and add a line in CONFIG.SYS: device=c:\aspi\aspibme.sys The DC-820B is able to coexist with other host adapter in the same system. When it co-exists with Adaptec’s adapter, you must set the I/O port address as 330H for Adaptec’s adapter to ensure proper operation. Of course, you should not set the I/O address as 330H for your DC-820B under this circum- stance.
  • Page 34 3rd physical drive nx: x = 1 .. 8 and the value of nx ranges from 0 to 9 nx=0: DC-820B scans the number of logical drives automatically the ordering of physical drives starts from primary to secondary and SCSI ID from 0 to 7 It is recommended that DOS 4.x or DOS 5.0 be used.
  • Page 35 Drive A: Floppy drive Drive B: Floppy drive Drive C: Adapter 0, SCSI ID 0 (BIOS INT 13H controlled HDD) Drive D: Adapter 0, SCSI ID 1 (BIOS INT 13H controlled HDD) Drive E: Adapter 0, SCSI ID 4, Primary DOS (MO) Drive F: Adapter 0, SCSI ID 4, Extended DOS logical drive (MO)

  • Page 36: Disk Partition Utility

    CONFIG.SYS file: device=c:\aspi\aspibme.sys device=c:\aspi\diskdrv.sys It enables you to transfer the DC-820B drives to other adapters by selecting a proper parameter translation method. For instance, if you choose the Adaptec translation mode, then the drives partitioned by the DC-820B can be transferred to other Adaptec host adapters.

  • Page 37: Chkdrive.exe Utility

    Special translation method This method partitions the drive to work with other Tekram adapters. Heads = 8/16/32/48 Sectors = 26/32/48/63/64/128/192 Cylinders = xxx depends on drive’s capacity (The head # and Sector # will be calculated automatically, and can not be modified manually.) Mylex translation method This method partitions the drive to work with Mylex or Ultrastor adapters.

  • Page 38: Installing The Cd-Rom Driver

    /d:cdrom0 /t:SON Add a line in AUTOEXEC.BAT file: -> c:mscdex.exe /d:cdrom0 /m:12 2.6 Installing Tape Streamer (DAT) After installing the ASPIBME.SYS driver, your DC-820B is able to support the following tape backup subsystems. SYTOS PLUS Tape backup program from SYTRON CORP.
  • Page 39 EISA Fast SCSI Caching Adapter...

  • Page 40: Chapter 3 Netware Drivers

    EISA Fast SCSI Caching Adapter Chapter 3 NetWare Drivers The DC-820B supports drivers for NetWare V3.10/3.11/3.12/SFT-III/4.00/ 4.01 under separate directories to support fixed disks, removable media, and tape subsystems. <NetWare.40X> This directory supports drivers for NetWare V4.00/4.01: NV40XBME.DSK supports SCSI devices, such as Fixed drive, Remov- able Cartridge, and Re-writable Optical Disk (MO), and provides inter- face to ASPITRAN.DSK module...

  • Page 41: Aspi Drivers For Netware

    :load nv311bme <Return> ASPITRAN.DSK will be automatically loaded first, as shown on the console. The system then prompts you to select the I/O slot number of your DC-820B. If you forget this number, you can access it by entering the ECU. After...
  • Page 42 Slot Number In case that two or more DC-820Bs are present, you have to load the same driver by typing “load nv311bme” as many times as the number of DC-820B adapters installed. To simplify the booting procedure thereafter, you may want to edit STARTUP.NCF file by adding the line:...
  • Page 43 5. The message shown on the console informing you of the new media geometry looks like this: *** (DC820B#3/ID#5) Removable media: hds=64 sec=32 cyls=120 *** (This indicates that your DC-820B is installed in slot 3 and your device has a capacity 120MB with SCSI ID 5.) 6. At the NetWare prompt, type: :mount volume_name_as_desired Then the file system is mounted and the device is locked.

  • Page 44: Duplexing Utility

    Mirroring is associated with two drives but on the same single adapter. Before enabling the duplexing function, be sure to load the driver NV311BME.DSK two times. Since hardware mirroring of your DC-820B takes effect under all operating systems, it makes no sense to enable both the NetWare’s mirroring and the adapter’s hardware mirroring at the same...
  • Page 45 EISA Fast SCSI Caching Adapter...

  • Page 46: Chapter 4 Unix Lock/Unlock Driver Packages

    This chapter introduces the installation procedures of UNIX LOCK/UNLOCK support for removable media devices. It is especially important for removable media devices that employ the caching capability supported by the DC-820B. 4.1. SCO UNIX V.3.2.2 This SCO UNIX driver is in the SCO/ISC UNIX drivers’ diskette. Since its driver diskette is UNIX-formatted and cannot be read from DOS, you may refer to the latest information in the README.TXT file on the DOS/NetWare...

  • Page 47: Isc Unix V3.2

    The procedure is the same as ISC UNIX V3.2 (refer to Sec 4.2). Removable media support This driver supports removable media like the Magneto-Optical drive. Upon successful installation, two utility files rmount and rumount will be found under /etc to replace original “mount” and “umount” commands. These two files lock/unlock the medium before/after the file system is mounted/un- mounted, preventing accidental replacement of the medium.
  • Page 48 EISA Fast SCSI Caching Adapter Driver Removal To remove the driver, follow these procedures: 1. At the prompt, type removepkg 2. Type the corresponding number of: “EISASC Lock/Unlock Driver Package” 3. Press <Enter> to remove the driver 4. Press <Enter> to reboot Removable Media Support This driver supports removable media like Magneto-Optical drives.
  • Page 49 EISA Fast SCSI Caching Adapter...

  • Page 50: Technical Specifications

    EISA Fast SCSI Caching Adapter Appendix A: Technical Specifications Performance Cache DRAM sizes: Not-Installed/1MB/4MB/16MB Hardware Disk mirroring support High speed 32-bit bus master, burst data transfer up to 33 MB/sec Fully support SCSI-I and Fast SCSI-II protocols AHA 1540/1542 series compatible Compatible with major operating systems Software porgrammable Active Terminators for easiest adjustment w/o opening the cabinet...
  • Page 51 Functional Enhanced SCSI I/O protocol: Multi-threaded & Multi-tasking support, Enhanced mailbox structure breaking 16MB bus master addressing limit, and Scatter/Gather data transfer support EISA Auto-configuration support Easy DOS driver installation software (INSTALL.EXE) helps you in- stall the needed driver(s) by updating the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT automatically EISA Fast SCSI Caching Adapter...

  • Page 52: Product Support Form

    The following information should be provided to your supplier in writing to obtain technical support assistance: 0. Ever try General Troubleshooting Tips in Appendix C and without suc- cess? Yes? ____ No? ____ 1. DC-820B Information Serial # : ________________________ Purchase Date : ________________________ Firmware Version # : ________________________...
  • Page 53 Other SCSI device(s) 3. System Software Configuration (please list the version) Operating System : _____________________ Application Program : _____________________ 4. Detailed description of error messages and symptoms: 5. Provide information of CONFIG.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT, and ECU op- tions EISA Fast SCSI Caching Adapter : 1.

  • Page 54: General Troubleshooting Tips

    DEVICE.LST file. Please also note the DOS 5 support feature in your DC-820B. Your system is able to control up to eight drives through BIOS INT 13H without adding device drivers.
  • Page 55 I/O cards and make sure none are conflicting n VGA card with “Fast Address Decode” option enabled -> this may cause all I/O cards that employ 8-bit ROM BIOS, DC-820B in- cluded, not to be recognized. Please disable this option, if possible.
  • Page 56 EISA Fast SCSI Caching Adapter This is also a common measure used by other caching adapters, such as Mylex, to improve the performance. Of course, if you turn the cache off, i.e., set the "Cacheable device" option to "No", and you'll find things are back to they used to be.

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