Adaptec made a number of SCSI controllers back in the ISA bus days. Does anyone know if the new Spinrite will support these?
Adaptec - will the new Spinrite work?
- Thread starter Duckpaddle
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/Steve. -
BootAble – FreeDOS boot testing freeware
To obtain direct, low-level access to a system's mass storage drives, SpinRite runs under a GRC-customized version of FreeDOS which has been modified to add compatibility with all file systems. In order to run SpinRite it must first be possible to boot FreeDOS.
GRC's “BootAble” freeware allows anyone to easily create BIOS-bootable media in order to workout and confirm the details of getting a machine to boot FreeDOS through a BIOS. Once the means of doing that has been determined, the media created by SpinRite can be booted and run in the same way.
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Do they show up under DOS? If they don't appear in DOS and they don't appear as a type of drive hardware that SpinRite already recognizes, such as IDE or SATA/AHCI then odds are not good that SpinRite 6.1 will find them. You could attempt to use the current 6.1 preview version and see if SpinRite 6.1 will benchmark them. If it does, then you're all set, and they'll work. If they're not recognized by the 6.1 preview then it's unlikely they will be recognized by the release version unless @Steve takes some specific measures to support them.
This was answered over in the old-school newsgroups... https://www.grc.com/x/news.exe?cmd=article&group=grc.spinrite.dev&item=37726
@Steve posted the following in the NG on 07-05-2022:
"Back in the ISA days, SpinRite was able to run on Adaptec SCSI-connected drives without trouble, thanks to [the Adaptec] BIOS.
ReadSpeed doesn't look at the BIOS. But as we know, the SpinRite v6.1 test releases do. And the last few releases are what v6.1 will be using, So "Duckpaddle" could try running a late test release under DOS to see whether it sees the SCSI drives. If any of those last releases DO see the drive, v6.1 will too... but conversely, if they don't see a drive, v6.1 won't be getting any better in that regard."
