I have been using SCSI controllers in one form or another in some of my PCs for over 15 years. At this time, I have only a couple of SCSI devices left - one 36 GB hard drive made by Seagate that spins at 15,000 rpm, and a DAT DDS-4 tape drive made by HP. The last SCSI controller I bought was purchased in 2001 and is based on the 53C1010 Ultra160 SCSI chipset by LSI Logic, formerly Symbios, formerly AT&T, formerly NCR. This chipset worked wonderfully under a variety of operating systems, from OS/2 up to and including Windows Vista x64.
Enter Windows 7. Earlier this wednesday, I attempted to migrate the system containing this SCSI controller from Windows Vista x64 to Windows 7 x64. I was told that there was no driver for Windows 7 for the controller. This was quite disappointing, after 8 years of loyal services. I disabled the device in the device manager, and proceeded with the installation of Windows 7 anyway.
At the time of this writing, I have been unable to locate a proper driver for this controller under Windows 7 x64. This means the OS can no longer see my two SCSI devices. I don't care much about Windows no longer seeing the DDS-4 tape drive as I wasn't using it under Windows. But I am bothered by no longer seeing the SCSI hard drive, which still contains a bootable copy of OS/2 Warp Server for E-Business SMP. While that SCSI hard drive is formatted as HPFS, and can therefore not be mounted under Windows 7, it could still be imaged and backed up with Acronis True Image Home, at least under Windows Vista back when the SCSI controller worked. I may end up going back to Windows Vista on this system if I can't resolve this issue. Or I might move my OS/2 installation to another drive.
Similar situation, just found out that there are currently no Win7 drivers available for Adaptec's line of U160 Scsi controllers.
ReplyDeleteI found the solution, 2 years later. The driver from Windows Vista x64 can be made to work under Windows 7 x64. There are reportedly issues trying to install Windows 7 x64 to a SCSI disk on this controller given that the driver is unsigned. However, I was able to easily add the driver to an existing installation booting from an SATA drive. I can now see the DDS-4 tape drive from Windows.
ReplyDeleteThis solution was unfortunately too late to help my Cheetah x15 drive, which has died since I ran into the issue two years ago.
Interesting !!
ReplyDeleteMind sharing the working links for 32/64 bit drivers,
EFI/Firmware settings :)
I don't have an EFI system to test this on, and I don't know much about EFI.
ReplyDeleteIf the LSI SCSI drivers for Win64 are anything like the OS/2 drivers, they actually make some calls into the BIOS to function. I discovered this when I put the SCSI card into a slot on which the motherboard wouldn't load the SCSI BIOS, due to too many other add-on cards. Without the SCSI BIOS loaded first, the SCSI drivers would not load under OS/2 - with OS/2 booting from a non-SCSI drive, of course. I have not tried this with Windows, so I don't know if the driver architecture is the same.
If EFI doesn't allow the SCSI BIOS to load on bootup, then you are probably S.O.L.
As for the working drivers for BIOS systems, I don't have a download link to the drivers. If you have a Vista disk and make a temporary install (no need to activate) you can look at the drivers in Device manager, see which SYS file it is, then look for the INF of the same name on your drive. Make a copy of both files. Then boot Win7, and install the drivers manually from the device manager (using "have driver disk"). You will be prompted to use the unsigned drivers. Just accept. This will work OK as long as your Win7 is not booting from a SCSI drive. I am only using the SCSI interface for DDS-4 tape access nowadays.
I don't think you will be able to install Win7 and add the unsigned drivers during the install.
Greetings, could you upload these two files in Windows Vista 64bit, for download and mount in Win 7.?
ReplyDeleteHaving to install Vista for me this is a bit difficult.
Please....