Does any Know about SCSI

[beowulf437]

Does anyone know about SCSI camera/ printer setups.

Here is my problem we run Gateway computers with NT4. They have an adaptec 2930cu SCSI adapter running an atlantec photo printer then to a poloroid digital microscope camera. We have about 150 of these units out and all of them are getting a camera missing or broken message. Some of them get the message once or twice a week others every other capture.

What I have done so far is rearrange the cards to eliminate IRQ conflicts and to make sure the cards are on the proper IRQ's. I have changed the transfer speeds on the SCSI adapter and changed the termination. The things that seem to help are changing cameras, printers, cables, and reloading the miniport drivers. So far I have not been able to eliminate the problem. What is really strange is that I can change something in one location and help their problem and take the piece to another location where it will work better than what they had. I think that somehow I am doing some sort of impedence matching by moving things around but it is all hit and miss.

So has anyone out there had any experience with SCSI camera/ setups? Got any ideas? I have been going crazy since December when they installed this system.

[Truephoenix]

Did you install the SCSI host adapter driver BEFORE you plugged it in? Some cards need you to do this, check your documentation.

Also i think that you need to configure the SCSI ID on the back of the devices, i think most devices default to 6.

[beowulf437]

Yes the host adapters weree pre configured. The printer is on SCSI id 4 and the camera is on SCSI id 6 and terminated.

[Truephoenix]

Are you running the latest drivers for all your devices?

Have you tried plugging devices other than the camera and printer into the SCSI chain, and if so how did they perform?

Hope it helps.

[beowulf437]

That is a question. The printers are running the latest software drivers and most are the latest firmware revision. The aspi drivers are also the latest. The cameras on the other hand I cannot be sure of since their driver are imbedded in the program. If it were a case of flakey camera drivers I don't think some of the other stuff I have done would have helped.

I am not thrilled with the stability of Window NT4.0. I have to maintain some 150 of these machines and I end up reloading the operating system on at least one a week.

I am not really sure if these camera missing messages all have the same cause because the symptoms vary. I some cases the operator came just remove power from the camera, repower it and continue on. In other cases the whole station has to brought down and rebooted. Some of the stations work fairly well with less than one camera failure a week, other station have dozens in a day.

I have been making every effort to make sure every station is configured the exact same way (they were originally kind of hap hazzard when they arrived from Gateway), and that all have the latest vesions of the operating system, software and drivers.

Part of my problem is that these are relatively new systems (why the didn't go with Windows 2000 and USB I really don't know), and I am not all that familure with SCSI. We have been using SCSI printers for about eight years but we only introduced SCSI cameras in the last year.

[Truephoenix]

If have a test computer where you can try things out on, try loading NT5 or 5.1 on and seeing how it runs with the SCSI setup.

A lot of nasty things happen with NT4 in my experience.