BlueSCSI v2 DB25 on 486 Always In-2000 SCSI ISA card

[dgveedubbus89]

Hello Tinkerers,

I have been trying to get my BlueSCSI v2 DB25 to boot and I have been having issues to say the least.

My SCSI card is an Always IN-2000 ISA card with Bios.

If I set a blank image as ID0 the bios says it sees a SCSI HDD but using MS DOS DEBUG as the manual says to initialize the image shows nothing but the controller on ID7 found.

If I set the images to ID3 or ID4 for example, the bios on boot up doesn't see the images but MS DOS debug does. When I try to initialize the images, it says it doesn't have a drive connected.

I seem to be in a fun loop lol

SCSI card has termination installed but I haven't tried removing them.

If I try and leave the image as ID0 the computer tries to boot but says "No ROM Basic, System Halted" and all I can do it ctrl-alt-del which then freezes when looking for the disk again.

I'm on the verge of just getting an XT-IDE but I REALLY want to make this SCSI card work. Does anyone have any experience with this issue or a premade image I can try? The images on the BlueSCSI documentation don't seem to be working as it's one of the images I have tried to load.

Here are a few photos of the debug interface:

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[bakkus]

What does the debug log from the BlueSCSI look like?

 

[dgveedubbus89]

Good Morning Bakkus,

Here is a copy of the logs:

Platform: BlueSCSI Pico
FW Version: 2023.11.16-release Nov 17 2023 03:26:27
Flash chip size: 2048 kB

=== SD Card Info ===
SD card detected, exFAT volume size: 7661 MB
SD Name: SMI , MID: 0x6F, OID: 0x00 0x13

=== Global Config ===
Config file bluescsi.ini not found, using defaults
Active configuration:

=== Finding images in / ===
== Opening /HD3_DOS622.img for ID: 3 LUN: 0
---- WARNING: This image does not appear to be a valid Macintosh Device image. See: https://github.com/BlueSCSI/BlueSCSI-v2/wiki/Disk-Images
---- Image ready
== Opening /HD4_NEWDOS622.img for ID: 4 LUN: 0
---- WARNING: This image does not appear to be a valid Macintosh Device image. See: https://github.com/BlueSCSI/BlueSCSI-v2/wiki/Disk-Images
---- Image ready

=== ROM Drive ===
Platform supports ROM drive up to 1692 kB
---- ROM drive image not detected

=== Configured SCSI Devices ===
* ID: 3, BlockSize: 512, Type: Fixed, Quirks: Apple, Size: 2097216kB
* ID: 4, BlockSize: 512, Type: Fixed, Quirks: Apple, Size: 2096640kB

Initialization complete!
INFO: Pico Voltage: 3.258V.

Other than it saying the images are not valid Mac images, which is obviously correct, I don't see much else out of place. What do you think?

 

[eric]

I've had great luck with the Adaptec card on my 5x86 PC build with @Stinkerton18's premade image (links on the bluescsi docs)

That said I know next to nothing about PC's of the early 90's so hopefully someone can help you out!

Note if you'd like to skip the check add this bluescsi.ini file to the root of your SD card:
[SCSI]
System=Generic

It wont change anything except the log.

 

[dgveedubbus89]

Got it working!!!

So here is what I learned. I sat and read the manual for my SCSI controller and it states that you can't skip SCSI ID's, on this controller, you just set the first device to ID0 and the second to ID1, etc. So trying ID3 and ID4 was the reason it was seeing the HD .img files but I could not initialize them and error out.

Next thing I did was try again using ID0 but I ditched the premade images from the BlueSCSI documentation. I found a way to create 2GB image files and after changing the name to follow the BlueSCSI format and making the new image ID0 I booted into my DOS Startup floppy and used the debug command which finally allowed me to initiate the image. So far so good!!!

Next I quit from the debug program and used fdisk to delete the image partition and start a new DOS partition.

Last but not least I used my DOS 6.22 install floppies to successfully install DOS to the newly found C: drive. It asked to format the disk again which took a bit of time but all went smoothly from there.

Looks like we can add a new working SCSI Card to the BlueSCSI documentation!!

Let me know if I can help test anything else, I am more than happy to try whatever you need.

Thanks!

 

[eric]

I sat and read the manual for my SCSI controller and it states that you can't skip SCSI ID's, on this controller, you just set the first device to ID0 and the second to ID1, etc.

"Back in the day" you only had the manual - glad you figured it out and what an odd requirement for a card. If you want to try the BlueSCSI DOS Toolbox app (you can switch CD's, transfer files, etc from the BlueSCSI via DOS program) checkout the Toolbox page in the docs for a link.

 

[dgveedubbus89]

"Back in the day" you only had the manual - glad you figured it out and what an odd requirement for a card. If you want to try the BlueSCSI DOS Toolbox app (you can switch CD's, transfer files, etc from the BlueSCSI via DOS program) checkout the Toolbox page in the docs for a link.

My next challenge is to get my PicoGUS working and after reading the documentation, I was stumped at how they wanted me to "extract" the install files over to the 486 being that the sum of the zip file does not fit on a single floppy. This is definitely going to help! Will try the DOS APP and keep you posted Eric.

P.s. I realized last night who you were and I wanted to thank you for all of your contributions to the vintage computer space. All 4 of my Mac's (That support SCSI) have Internal BlueSCSI's and my DB25 is one hell of a tool in my toolbox. I appreciate the attention you gave me on this issue and hope to keep helping any way I possibly can.

THANKS!

 

[eric]

Maybe @polpo can comment on the size of the zip - but since DOS is just a FAT file system and you're using a BlueSCSI - another way is if you're on a modern mac just name the image file ending in .img and double click it! It'll mount right on your desktop and you can copy files too and from it. If you're on windows you can use WinImage I believe to load files onto a FAT image file.

 

[dgveedubbus89]

Maybe @polpo can comment on the size of the zip - but since DOS is just a FAT file system and you're using a BlueSCSI - another way is if you're on a modern mac just name the image file ending in .img and double click it! It'll mount right on your desktop and you can copy files too and from it. If you're on windows you can use WinImage I believe to load files onto a FAT image file.

You my friend are a genius.

PicoGUS is working like a charm. I backed up my working image in case I messed anything up then used WinImage to create the folders and transfer the files needed to get it working. From there it was a piece of cake.

Now I need to make some time to test out the BlueSCSI file transfer.

My girls wanted to play Cosmic Osmo so I had to stop and setup my IIci.

Thanks for the suggestion Eric!