VST UltraTech/66 Incompatibility Report

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The VST UltraTech/66 PCI card installed in PowerSurge machines (x500, x600, PTP, PW, S900/J700) seems to make the internal Fast SCSI bus (Bus 0) unusable by Retrospect, at least for CDRW Restores. The symptom is that the Restore begins but only gets a few MB in and then just sits. The cursor gears turn, but no further progress is made. If the SCSI cable is moved to the external/internal unenhanced SCSI bus (Bus 1) the Restore works fine.

 

 

 

I've been using Retrospect since V. 2.1, so I know this usually means that there is some kind of SCSI problem. This problem originated with a Yamaha 4416, Retrospect 4.1, OS 9.1 on a S900 MB with 512 MB RAM and RS set for 16 MB of RAM. The machine has a VST card with an IBM 75GXP and Acer 16X DVDROM drive, and an Adaptec 2940UW with three striped 18 GB WD drives. There is/was a Plextor 20X CDROM on the SCSI chain with the 4416.

 

 

 

In summary I've tried:

 

three 4416 drives,

 

a 4260 drive,

 

four different SCSI cables,

 

four motherboards (could be bad MESH chip),

 

putting different devices at the end of the cable to provide termination,

 

putting the CDRW alone and terminated at the end of the cable,

 

a pass through terminator where the SCSI cable plugs into the motherboard (in case of failed termination resistors or the circuit that activates them),

 

OS 9.1,

 

OS 8.6,

 

an Adaptec 2940UW as my UW SCSI card,

 

an E100 as my UW SCSI card (same as JackHammer),

 

S900 boards,

 

PTP board,

 

IBM 75GXP on VST card,

 

Maxtor 30GB drive on VST card,

 

drives formatted with SoftRAID,

 

drives formatted with HDTK,

 

WD 9.1 GB SCSI drives as individual drives,

 

WD 18 GB U2W drives as striped RAID.

 

 

 

In all this the only common factor was the VST card. As soon as I removed the VST card and tried again, the Restore worked flawlessly on the Internal Fast SCSI bus (Bus 0).

 

 

 

So I think I can safely conclude that the VST ATA/66 card creates some kind of problem with the Fast SCSI bus on at least some PowerSurge machines. I guess the real culprit could be all Yamaha 4416s and the 4260, but I'm guessing the real problem is the VST card.

 

 

 

This isn't a horrible problem because one can put the CDRW drive on Bus 1 and an external drive would be there anyway. But I like to put my hard drives on a PCI card, any internal SCSI devices that aren't fast hard drives on Bus 0, and have all ID's available for use on the external (Bus 1) bus.

 

 

 

I hope this saves someone else hours of frustration. I wasn't sure if it should go here or in the Hardware and Devices forum, but that forum seems more populated with Windows related postings.

 

 

 

Other incompatibilities I've run into with the VST card include disappearance of all HFS+ support under OS 9.1 (but not 8.6) if the VST card is in the same machine with an Apple/Adaptec 2940U2B or the Umax E100 (PCI JackHammer). HFS+ volumes won't mount and volumes cannot be initialized as HFS+ drives. On the other hand, ATAPI support with the card is great. My Acer 16DVDROM drive works flawlessly on the VST card using Apple's DVD/CD Extension.