I have an adaptec 2906 scsi card that I installed myself when I bought
my G4 a year and a half ago. It worked in both OS 9 and X with no
problems until a few weeks ago. All of a sudden it stopped showing up
in the system profiler. I called adaptec support. They had me try
putting it in a different slot. That did not work so they replaced the
card. I got my new one this week and installed it but it is not
showing up either. I'm assuming that the card is not the problem.

The only thing I can think of is that I installed some new memory
right before it stopped working. The problem originally occurred
several weeks ago so I do not remember doing anything else that could
have done to caused this problem.


Any ideas?

MEGAN

On Fri, 12 Sep 2003 10:16:04 -0700, Megan wrote
(in message <68172bc9.0309120916.136c9034[at]posting.google.com>):

> I have an adaptec 2906 scsi card that I installed myself when I bought
> my G4 a year and a half ago. It worked in both OS 9 and X with no
> problems until a few weeks ago. All of a sudden it stopped showing up
> in the system profiler. I called adaptec support. They had me try
> putting it in a different slot. That did not work so they replaced the
> card. I got my new one this week and installed it but it is not
> showing up either. I'm assuming that the card is not the problem.
>
> The only thing I can think of is that I installed some new memory
> right before it stopped working. The problem originally occurred
> several weeks ago so I do not remember doing anything else that could
> have done to caused this problem.
>
>
> Any ideas?
>
> MEGAN

Just the obvious. Pull the new memory and see if the card is recognized.
Outside of that, corrupted card driver? I don't know if this card even
required driver software when you originally installed it, but if so, it
could've become corrupted. Deleting the current version and re-installing
might be worth a try.

Diagnostics and Utilities disks can be useful as well. Your G4 should've come
with a hardware diagnostic disk, as well as a system installer which can also
perform a disk first aid and a fix permissions (on the OS 10 side, anyway).

On 9/12/03 4:31 PM, in article
0001HW.BB878935026FA1BCF0284600[at]netnews.comcast.net, "Steve"
<nobodyNOSPAM[at]comcast.net> wrote:

> On Fri, 12 Sep 2003 10:16:04 -0700, Megan wrote
> (in message <68172bc9.0309120916.136c9034[at]posting.google.com>):
>
>> I have an adaptec 2906 scsi card that I installed myself when I bought
>> my G4 a year and a half ago. It worked in both OS 9 and X with no
>> problems until a few weeks ago. All of a sudden it stopped showing up
>> in the system profiler. I called adaptec support. They had me try
>> putting it in a different slot. That did not work so they replaced the
>> card. I got my new one this week and installed it but it is not
>> showing up either. I'm assuming that the card is not the problem.
>>
>> The only thing I can think of is that I installed some new memory
>> right before it stopped working. The problem originally occurred
>> several weeks ago so I do not remember doing anything else that could
>> have done to caused this problem.
>>
>>
>> Any ideas?
>>
>> MEGAN
>
> Just the obvious. Pull the new memory and see if the card is recognized.
> Outside of that, corrupted card driver? I don't know if this card even
> required driver software when you originally installed it, but if so, it
> could've become corrupted. Deleting the current version and re-installing
> might be worth a try.
>
> Diagnostics and Utilities disks can be useful as well. Your G4 should've come
> with a hardware diagnostic disk, as well as a system installer which can also
> perform a disk first aid and a fix permissions (on the OS 10 side, anyway).
>


The 2906 does require a driver, and the card itself may need to have
settings changed in the control panel for it.

The 2930 does not require a driver in OS 9, and there are adapters that
convert its SCSI-2 to SCSI-1. I took the other tack; Adaptec is dropping all
Mac support, so I dropped Adaptec and replaced all my SCSI items (flatbed
and slide scanners, Zip drive) for USB and FireWire devices, adding Adaptec
USB 5 port and FireWire 3 port cards instead.

Brian

Brian Paul Ehni <behni[at]comcast.net> writes:
>
> The 2930 does not require a driver in OS 9, and there are adapters
> that convert its SCSI-2 to SCSI-1.

Two misunderstandings here:

1: All SCSI cards require drivers. OS 9 incldues a 2930 driver
because that card is one of the models that Apple has bundled with
hardware. (When I bought my G4, I ordered the $50 SCSI option and
got a 2930).

2: SCSI-2 is a protocol specification, not a connector
specification. SCSI-2 devices have been manufactured with all of the
standard connectors (Centronics-50, micro-50 and micro-68, etc.) and
several non-standard connectors (like the DB-25 that Apple's
motherboard SCSI usually uses.)

> I took the other tack; Adaptec is dropping all Mac support

Where's your proof for this claim? I've just been all over Adaptec's
web site, including their press releases and have found no such
information.

Their Mac products home page:
http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/product/prodtechindex.html?cat=/Technology/Macintosh

also says nothing of the sort.

Please don't go spreading rumors without at least some kind of
supporting evidence or a link to a reliable source.

> so I dropped Adaptec and replaced all my SCSI items (flatbed and
> slide scanners, Zip drive) for USB and FireWire devices, adding
> Adaptec USB 5 port and FireWire 3 port cards instead.

This isn't a bad idea in general, if you want to spend the money on
new devices.

Did you do this because your SCSI card stopped working, or because
you were listening the Adaptec rumor that you referred to?

If your SCSI card stopped working, you could have replaced it with
another card that is supported. Even if you believe the Adaptec
rumor, there are other vendors that make Mac SCSI cards. A lot of
people seem to like Atto cards (and at least one Atto card was
distributed by Apple as a part of their Ultra-160 hard drive option
for the G4 towers, so you can probably get a card that has driver
support built-in to MacOS)

-- David