Forums | MacLife

Funkey Monkey · 2005-04-09 5:17 pm

Hey hackers!

I recently bought a new PCI ATA controller for my mac, and it's working supah.

I pulled out the old Adaptec AHA-2940U2B SCSI controller card. I want to use this card on my PC, and pull out all the PC's ATA drives and use them in my mac.

I've gotten Windows XP to recognize the card and format/read/write to the attached disks. But I can't get the computer to boot from the darn thing. I suspect that it might be necessary to flash the ROM to a PC version. Looking around, I can see that Adaptec did sell this card in either PC or Mac versions.... so there SHOULD be a PC ROM floating around. Problem is, Adaptec has absolutely no mention of this card anywhere on their website. They do have an AHA-2940U2w instead of AHA-2940U2b.

And they have rom flashing software for the w model.

My question is this: IF I manage to successfully flash the rom with the w software, can I later flash it back to the mac version if necessary? (Apple has a mac flasher for this exact model on their website.)

OR

If the flash goes horribly wrong, will that destroy the card? Or can I just re-flash it back with the mac?

maxintosh · 2005-04-09 5:58 pm

I'm sorry, I just found the title of this thread incredibly humorous.

lol

test · 2005-04-09 6:38 pm

maxintosh wrote:
I'm sorry, I just found the title of this thread incredibly humorous.

Indeed. Does implied hermaphrodite exhibitionism count as a quadruple entendre? If so the English language may have just evolved before our eyes. Truly we live in a wondrous age.

Funkey Monkey · 2005-04-09 9:52 pm

excellent.... my ambiguously suggestive title has drawn you in...

now I'm certain to find the answer to my hardware question! sneaky

ironhawk · 2005-04-10 4:15 pm

Yes, you can flash both ways, if that's your thing.

linuxgeekintraining · 2005-04-10 8:20 pm

do you have your PC set to boot from SCSI?

I know on my pc systems with scsi cards I had to set the system to boot off of scsi first in the boot order, otherwise It always defaults to the IDE drives in the system.

just a thought.

Funkey Monkey · 2005-04-11 7:06 pm

Well, I couldn't even get that far. The computer wouldn't even let me do the hold down F1 thingie at startup. And actually, I removed and reformatted the ATA drives before I tried to boot from the SCSIs. I have no interest in blowing most of a day on re-installing/updating windows. So the card's on eBay and the PC's back in the closet. (Where it probably belongs, anyway.)

Beyond that, I couldn't find ANYWHERE that had any sort of Firmware flasher for this thing on the PC. (The W model turns out to be completely different from the B model, despite their similar numbers.)

linuxgeekintraining · 2005-04-11 9:08 pm

cool, I don't blame you on not wanting to mess with it.

Since I'm currently unemployed I've been using my idle time between pounding the pavement looking for a job to work on some of the misc Junk that I have in my spares closet.

My latest project is an old Gateway e-4200 (formerly a P2-350) that a friend gave me. It had a weird problem where it would only run correctly the first time it was powered on from a cold start, where the Power supply just had voltage applied to it. after a lot of head scratching, and parts testing I determined that everything in the system worked fine except for either the motherboard or the cpu. When I removed the motherboard and cpu a loose screw that had somehow gotten wedged under the motherboard fell out. I had hoped that removing the screw would fix the problem, but it didn't.

So I used a Socket 370 Motherboard and an old Socket 370 Flip chip 766 celeron chip that came out of a fried HP pavilion and now I have my very own little Gateway Frankenstein system. big_smile

The hardest part of the conversion was the Power button, as Gateway uses a premolded wiring block harness. I had to rig it for now and the power and hard drive leds don't work but I'll fix that as soon as I get access to another junk ATX case.

New system Specs

Celeron 766 (overclocked to 864 MHz, 75x11.5)
656 Megs of pc133 RAM (scavenged from other busted systems)
10 GB HD (original drive that was in the 400 MHZ Imac before I upgraded it)
32X CD-Rom (original drive from my G3 B&W, the stock CD drive wouldn't boot bootable cds)
ATI RAGE 3d Pro 8 Meg AGP video card (stock)
AC97 Sound Card (original sound card isn't linux compatible)

It currently has CentOS 4.0 Linux installed on it.

I'll play around with it for a while, then I'll probably give it to someone who needs a computer.

Last edited by linuxgeekintraining (2005-04-11 9:12 pm)

Forums | MacLife

#1 2005-04-09 5:17 pm

Can I flash both ways?

#2 2005-04-09 5:58 pm

Re: Can I flash both ways?

#3 2005-04-09 6:38 pm

Re: Can I flash both ways?

maxintosh wrote:

#4 2005-04-09 9:52 pm

Re: Can I flash both ways?

#5 2005-04-10 4:15 pm

Re: Can I flash both ways?

#6 2005-04-10 8:20 pm

Re: Can I flash both ways?

#7 2005-04-11 7:06 pm

Re: Can I flash both ways?

#8 2005-04-11 9:08 pm

Re: Can I flash both ways?

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