8RDA6+ and Adaptec 39320 SCSI RAID

[ebwibble]

Hello all,

I recently acquired this SCSI card and have been unsucessfully trying to get it to work without any resource conflicts.

Heres what I've tried so far:
1. Removed all other PCI cards
2. Disabled onboard SATA, Firewire and other unused devices in the BIOS
3. Turned off the SiI3114 BIOS
4. Tried the card in each of the PCI slots
5. Disabling the 3114 in Windows

Changing the PCI slot does make a difference, ranging from the card itself putting up an error about resource conflicts on boot and not working at all at worst, to having one of the two channels working, the other marked with the exclamation in Device Manager at best.

Even when the one channel is working, when doing big transfers it stalls every now and again.

My suspicion is that it is some kind of conflict with the SiI 3114 SATA, as they always both try and share the same IRQ, an I've heard mass storage controllers don't always play nice with each other.

If only I could completely disable the 3114!

Has anyone got this card to work right in this board, or have any further suggestions?

Many thanks,
Ed

[hoinar]

Did you try different versions of that board's drivers? Maybe with a new driver you'll be able to solve your problem.

[Áedán]

The PCI specification states that devices should be capable of sharing IRQs.
Having said that, have you tried to update the BIOS on the 39320 card?

[edit]It looks like many people have had issues with the 39320 card, and have found the best way to resolve it to replace the card with a different brand...

[ebwibble]

Thanks for the quick replies.

I'll have a go with some earlier drivers, so far I've just been using the latest non-WHQL ones. I'll try some of the older WHQL ones.

As regards the BIOS, unfortunately it is a Dell OEM card, and I've got the latest BIOS that Dell supplies. I'm wary of trying to stick the retail Adaptec BIOS on there in case it breaks the card.

I'll have a bit more of a play with it. If I can't get it to work, I think I might try and get one of the AMI MegaRAID cards and try that instead.

Cheers,
Ed

[nerius]

Hey,

I have the exact same board and scsi card, and had the exact problem.
I got it fixed though.
Heres what you have to do...
In Bios.
Goto==> Advanced Chipset Features ==>Special I/O for PCI CARD ==>Enable.
and set it to 16 b.
And that should do the trick.

I had such serious IRQ problems on my system, so this fixed it all.

[nerius]

Oh and by the way...
You have to set the 39320 SCSI card in the first PCI slot also.(nr.1 slot)
yes, there is sucha serious IRQ problem with SiI 3114 SATA, and AGP.
But as i decribed above that will fix it.

[ebwibble]

Many thanks for the suggestions!

I'll give it a go later, although my 1st PCI slot is being blocked by a big cooler on the GFX, so I'll have to work something out there.