recovering data from old hard drive

[stan]

On 2020-01-25 2:57 p.m., Jon Elson via cctalk wrote:
> I have dug out an old SCSI hard drive from 1997 that may have some 
> interesting stuff, most especially the source
> code for the SGI Iris flight sim demo.  I have a Linux system with an 
> Adaptec 2940 (aic7880) that has two
> connectors on it.  It SEEMS from some probing that the 50-pin IDC 
> connector on the top of the board is
> single-ended SCSI (it seems to have mostly grounds on one row of pins).  
> Same for the drive, which is a Quantum
> ProDrive LPS.  The drive spins up and does some seeking right after 
> power-on, so it sounds like it is
> working.  But, I can't seem to find that the drive is being recognized 
> by the aic7xxx driver.
> So, looking at /proc/scsi/aic7xxx/## I see the device addresses all show 
> just the negotiation settings,
> and /proc/scsi/scsi just shows my SATA devices but not the real SCSI ones.
> 
> I have the right cable to plug my old HP scanner into the mounting plate 
> Honda connector, and it shows up
> fine.  I could try getting a Honda to IDC-50 cable, but I thought the 
> IDC50 connector on the board edge OUGHT to
> work.
> 
> Does anybody have any suggestions on what to try?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Jon
> 

The Adaptec SCSI cards have a firmware  diagnostic utility on them as 
well. IIRC, a <Ctrl-A> keypress at the appropriate time during boot-up 
of the peecee will start the utility, which allows for setting 
controller options as well as running some drive tests or a low-leevel 
format.

Stan