ACARD AEC-6860M PCI RAID ATA 66 card not showing connected hard drives

Hello birdy.....,

Sorry to take so long responding. Major disaster! My whole wall bookcase just tumbled, and I'm still working at excavating the family (of Macs).

Your card should work. I've used the Acard cards by the dozens without problem, though I've never used that particular 6860 card or set up a RAID ARRAY. Just checked, using a 6880 (RAID) though as a controller card and not as a RAID ARRAY, and found that my 2002 QS Mac would not see a standard hard drive(#2) running OSX (10.2) that had been formatted by the OSX install disk using the stock bus on the motherboard. It would, however, see a hard drive(#3) that had been formatted while connected to an ACARD controller card (6280). I'm guessing that an OSX installer disk is prepared to see and to deal with a SCSI drive, and that Disk Utility is not.

Check that.

Just removed the controller card formatted drive(#3) and re-installed the OSX(10.2) drive(#2); this time my 2002 QS saw it right away, both on the desktop and in disk utility. I guess it needed personal messenger service.

As I recall, I've seen that happen before using controller cards; as a result, I've always taken care to format a new hard drive by connecting it to a controller card if that is the way I intend to use it. Hard drives can be capricious, sometimes. At any rate, try formatting your hard drive(s) with an OSX installer disk (hoping you have one) while connected to the ACARD controller card - just click on erase (twice) and the drive formats automatically.

I'm a little mystified by reference to drivers; never installed any drivers, and always assumed none were needed.

Hope that helps. Check back and let me know.

Jon

Jon Smith-

I think you are on the right track.

Mac OS X does use drivers, although they are not nearly as obtrusive as the OS 9 Drivers. They are stored in multiple small partitions ahead of the data partition. That is why, if all the drivers for all uses get installed (as when formatting on the controller card) you see the Mac booting/loading from disk0s10, that is, s10 is the tenth "slice" (=partition) on the drive.

Often, when you format the drive on the built-in IDE Bus, it gets ONLY the IDE driver, and when it is moved to the controller (where a SCSI driver is used) it has no driver and cannot be mounted or installed on without re-initializing.

If 10.5 were involved, I would also caution that you may need to explicity erase the entire drive, as it may have an Intel GUID partiton Map, which may not work with 10.4 PPC.

Message was edited by: Grant Bennet-Alder

TRy booting into Safe Mode (sift key held down), This does one pass of
fsck -fy
and then boots up with few extensions loaded. The next time you restart, your Mac will re-consider what extensions need to be loaded, and if this is only a SCSI driver/extensions issue, that may solve the problem.

Jon Smith wrote:
my 2002 QS saw it right away, both on the desktop and in disk utility. I guess it needed personal messenger service.

So would you call that a Quicksilver Messenger Service?

Since I wrote that referenced thread, I have parted ways with my G3 Desktop wth the 6860M (seems that the old G3 Desktop forum is now retired, replaced with a G3 Tower forum, what's up with that?)

Now I am using the 6880M in a G4 MDD with 2 500GB drives in a striped RAID. I think if I had done some more homework I would have gone with PCI SATA, those single drives can pretty much match or exceed the ATA133 RAID read/write performance. Although for the price, the ATA66RAID is a good value if you are using <120GB drives.

I never had any problems with setting up the RAID, first initializing both drives with the PCI dip switch in normal mode, then slide the switch to stripe RAID mode and initialize again. Each drive at the end of its own cable, jumpered to master. I haven't used more than two drives with one of these cards.

Hi Glen-

(seems that the old G3 Desktop forum is now retired, replaced with a G3 Tower forum, what's up with that?)

Part of a "new and improved" forum meant to "to decrease confusion and increase accessibility":
http://discussions.apple.com/ann.jspa?annID=867

Might leave your thoughts on the changes here:
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1076

I think the changes have hurt us.
Let them know what you think!

I agree with you there. I thought it was organized well enough before, not sure why they scrambled the old groups, it has been very helpful to be able to search archived threads, or ask questions of fellow owners of a particular model, as they all have some very specific features and limitations. Not to mention the impact this has on the Top Users & points listings, that's a real bummer to lose the previous rankings within the previously more detailed categories.

What forum are G4 Cube owners left with?

What forum are G4 Cube owners left with?

I assume the Power Mac G4 forum.
That's all that is left.......

It all feels poorly thought out, relatively untested, and has left us with a shell of a forum.
The search failures and lack of results are the real issues.....