          Document:  PCI SCSI controllers for OS/2 list
        Maintainer:  Patrick Duffy, duffy@theory.chem.ubc.ca
Last Revision Date:  May 29, 1995
       Archived at:  ftp.netcom.com, in directory /pub/ab/abe/
         Web pages:  http://warp.eecs.berkeley.edu/os2/workbench/work.htm

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.

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:

Make sure that for any SCSI device (if you have an Intel board) you have
at least the seventh or eighth revision of the Intel PCI BIOS on your
motherboard (rev. 12 is out for the 90/100 MHz boards, and fixes some
problems with rev. 8 and SCSI support, and so 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 nearly 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 Adaptec
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)
built into 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 get the latest drivers
for the NCR chip (available from ftp.ncr.com); these now allow DMA
transfers above 16 MB where earlier drivers did not.  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 does not recognize PCI as anything different
from 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
(1.00.12.AX1) will also fix this problem.

Useful Numbers:
---------------
Adaptec:         (800) 959-7274 (tech. support)
                 http://www.adaptec.com (web site)
                 ftp.adaptec.com (ftp site)
BusLogic:        (408) 970-1414 (tech. support)
Intel:           (800) 628-8686 (tech. support) -- for the NCR controller
NCR:             stu.nuffer@ftcollinsco.attgis.com (OS/2 tech. support)
                 ftp.symbios.com (NCR SCSI drivers)
QLogic:          (800) 867-7274
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)

Manufacturer           Model         Comments
------------------------------------------------------
 Adaptec               2940          This is Adaptec's 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).  Adaptec now says that these cards
will work with the Intel 60 MHz boards, though they say that using the
controller with certain manufacturers' 90 MHz boards could be
problematic. (According to Adaptec, one bad rev. of the Intel 60 MHz
BIOS caused problems, which should now be fixed.)   The Intel 90 MHz
boards will work with this controller (I've had reports of success with
both the 2940 and the 2940W), although they will not work with the
Quantum Empire 1080S drive when communication speed between the drive
and controller is set to 10 MB/sec (they 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.  I've also seen reports of
mixed success with this card (the 2940) and the Asus PCI/I-P5SP4, so if
you get that particular motherboard, this controller is not a good
choice for it.  One other person has reported problems getting the 2940W
to consistently recognize either a Fujitsu or a Seagate 1 GB HD.

 Under 2.1/2.11:  This card will work with the driver contained in
adaptec.zip on ftp-os2.cdrom.com.  The latest driver can be obtained
from the Adaptec BBS or from the ftp site in the directory
/pub/BBS/os2/ as the file aha2940.exe

 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) will also work with Warp.

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 drivers that ship with the 2940 do not use these
BIOS calls, but write directly to the PCI hardware instead, and should
be used if the Warp drivers fail (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.

 AMD                   <various>     AMD makes a SCSI controller chip
                                     which is apparently used by Zeos
and Compaq in their computers.  OS/2 drivers are apparently shipped with
the boards which use it, and it is reported to work well, though I've
had no direct reports about it yet.

 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.

 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
three revisions of the PCI card out, the first two of which (released
before Nov. '94) were not PCI 2.0-compliant.  The newest revsion (C)
_is_ PCI 2.0-compliant, but people have been having problems getting it
running properly on motherboards with Opti chipsets (apparently the PCI
controller is not being programmed properly).  To get the older cards
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). To tell what version of the BsuLogic 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.  Bios version 4.86 is for rev. B, and 4.90 is for rev. C.

Deal of the week:  $275.36 from Vektron International
                                (800) 725-0081/(214) 606-1278

 DPT                   PM2024*       This card sounds like a less
                                     extravagent version of the PM3224
below.  The card apparently 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 module and RAM separately for the
card in order to do it.  The card is reported now to work well with Warp
(drivers in the Warp box), with the caveat that the card is full-length,
and that there is no plastic guide for the 50-pin connector on it.

 DPT                   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.  Again, I've had no reports of success (or failure) with
this card, but I'm guessing that it should work well given the PM3224
below.

 DPT                   SmartRAID     Now _this_ sounds like a card for
                       PM3224**      high-performance fanatics.  Driver
                                     support is included with the card.
The card is caching (RAM must be purchased separately) and, once RAM is
added, will do RAID automatically out of the box (once additional drives
are added). Quite obviously, these cards are _not_ cheap...  They are
reported, however, to work very nicely under Warp.


 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 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.

Deal of the week:  $105 from ComputAbility (800) 554-9950/(414) 357-7814

 Gigabyte              GA410         One reader has reported success
                                     with this card and OS/2 on the
Gigabyte motherboard in the PCI motherboards list.  I believe (though
I'm not sure) that this card uses the NCR 53c810 chip.


 NCR                   <Various>**   NCR makes boards and chips for OEMs
                                     (but does not sell the boards
themselves).  Boards using this chip are available from Acculogic, Asus,
and 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 66 and 90 MHz Intel Pentium
motherboards mentioned in the PCI motherboard list certainly do, as do
many others.  One other thing to do on the Intel motherboards (during
install only -- I haven't had this problem when running OS/2 the rest of
the time) is 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 IRQ for the card
set to 10 ('A') by default.  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.  In any event,
cards are available with BIOSes on them (the card by NexStor for
example) for those motherboards which do not have BIOS support built in.
These chips/cards _will_ work with the Quantum Empire 1080S 1 GB drive;
one is running in my system.   However, there appears to be a problem
with one of either the NCR OS/2 driver, the 53c810, or the Quantum
Prodrive 540S, as in order to get this combination to work together
synchronous negotiation must be disabled between drive and card.  The
problem does not seem to appear under DOS, however.  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

For Warp:  Apparently, 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 claims)
to make the card work properly (or at all) under OS/2. The latest
OS2CAM.ADD (which was supposed to solve these problems but apparently
did not), but it has been reported to be suspected (in one person's
system) to cause corruption of the system files (the system in question
was the Asus SP3G board using the built-in NCR chip).  The 4/28/94
OS2CAM.ADD is reported to work well with this board.

Deal of the week:  Acculogic SCSI3-PCI, $299, from
                   Hard Drive Super Source, (800) 252-9777/(510) 494-8501
                   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 an 8 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 on the card, and the IQ PCI/10 (fast only)
supports one.  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.

Deal of the week:  $289 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 chip (the "400" series) which
(in its VL and ISA implementations) does not busmaster.  I suspect,
therefore, that this card does not busmaster either.  I've had a few
reports of success with this card under Warp.

There's what I know.  Please E-Mail suggestions/corrections and I'll
post again.
