Category Archives: SCSI

Learn Something Old Every Day, Part IX: AHA-154xB and ASPI4DOS.SYS

Posted on August 31, 2023 by Michal Necasek

The other day I had a pressing “need” to examine the behavior of Adaptec 154x and compatible SCSI HBAs and their DOS drivers. I found the hard way that the AHA-154xB does not work with Adaptec’s last DOS drivers from … Continue reading →

Posted in Adaptec, Bugs, BusLogic, SCSI | 6 Comments

SCSI HBA Recycling?

Posted on February 10, 2021 by Michal Necasek

Several weeks ago I bought this Adaptec 39160 64-bit PCI SCSI HBA in order to experiment with different HBAs: The motivation was that although I’ve been a happy user of LSI HBAs (SCSI and SAS, PCI and PCIe) based on … Continue reading →

Posted in Adaptec, Fakes, PC hardware, SCSI | 10 Comments

CF/IDE/SCSI Benchmark Update

Posted on April 22, 2017 by Michal Necasek

To see how the CF-to-IDE-to-SCSI solution really performs, I tried it in a slightly faster system. GA-586HX motherboard (Intel 430HX chipset), AMD K5-133 processor, and PCI SCSI HBAs. The first tested configuration was using a Tekram DC-390 HBA. Sysinfo showed 8.7 … Continue reading →

Posted in CompactFlash, SCSI, Storage | 12 Comments

Resetting Disks Is Hard

Posted on February 26, 2017 by Michal Necasek

After digging through BIOS listings and disassembling the Adaptec 1542C BIOS as well as the PC DOS 2000 boot sector, it’s clear why the floppy-less SCSI boot does not work on my test system. It’s because disk reset done by the boot … Continue reading →

Posted in BIOS, Bugs, SCSI | 22 Comments

Booting Is Hard

Posted on February 23, 2017 by Michal Necasek

So I had this brilliant idea of using SCSI drives with old 286/386/486 boards which have old BIOSes that can’t handle IDE drives bigger than 500-ish megabytes. The SCSI HBA is the first one I happened to grab, an Adaptec 1542C … Continue reading →

Posted in 386, BIOS, CompactFlash, DOS, SCSI | 21 Comments

Ladders and Dragons

Posted on December 28, 2014 by Michal Necasek

While looking at the Windows 95 disk subsystem, something seemed oddly familiar. The nagging feeling was confirmed by the Windows 95 DDK documentation (a file called BLOCK.DOC). The new Windows 95 layered block device driver model called “Dragon” wasn’t all … Continue reading →

Posted in OS/2, PC history, SCSI, Windows 95 | Leave a comment

Installing Windows 95 on SCSI in a VM

Posted on September 26, 2014 by Michal Necasek

For the adventurous, it is possible to install Windows 95 in a VM configured with SCSI storage (hard disk, CD-ROM) attached to an emulated BusLogic HBA. This works in VirtualBox, but there’s a catch—the emulated PCI BusLogic HBA must have … Continue reading →

Posted in BusLogic, SCSI, VirtualBox, Windows 95 | 7 Comments

Timing In Software Is Too Hard?

Posted on May 16, 2014 by Michal Necasek

I recently attempted to install RedHat Linux 3.0.3 (that’s the one from 1996, not RHEL 3.0) in VirtualBox. I thought I’d use the BusLogic SCSI emulation and the newer 1.3.57 Linux kernel. It did not work at all. The problem … Continue reading →

Posted in Bugs, BusLogic, Linux, SCSI | 32 Comments

Installing Oct ’91 NT from CD

Posted on December 15, 2013 by Michal Necasek

With VirtualBox 4.3, it is possible to install the oldest known pre-release of Windows NT directly from CD, the way Microsoft intended. This is the Fall ’91 Comdex preview which only supported the x86 architecture and a very short list … Continue reading →

Posted in Microsoft, NT, SCSI | 35 Comments