DATMAN TECHNICAL BULLETIN #023
From: Kan Yabumoto tech@datman.com
To: DATMAN user
Subject: Win95 does not recognize my tape drive!
Date: 1998-11-05
====================================================================
Once in a while, we hear DATMAN-99 users having problem in the initial
setup sequence where DATMAN Command Center (DATMANCC) does not list
the tape drive in the "Drive List" box in the Drive Selection dialog.
Since DATMAN-99 always accesses SCSI tape drives using Win95's built-in
low level device driver, the problem is almost always that of the
device driver.
The simplest case is when you forget to turn on the power to the tape
drive (usually with an external drive); DATMANCC does not find your
tape drive because Win95 has not detected the tape. This happens
because Win95 scans the SCSI bus only once when it initializes the
system immediately after it starts the Win32 environment. If the tape
drive does not have power at that time, the system would not sense the
drive and therefore, DATMAN will not see it either. In this case, you
need not reboot the system. You can manually have the Device Manager
rescan the SCSI device by the following steps.
1. Control_Panel > System > Device_Manager
2. Highlight the SCSI Controllers line
3. Click the Refresh button
4. Wait until the "Computer" line (at the top) is highlighted
5. Run DATMANCC again and it will find the tape drive.
The above case assumes that the SCSI host adapter is properly
installed. This article is to discuss the cases which exhibit
strange behaviors by the tape drive. A typical description...
"Win95 does not recognize my tape drive".
With respect to DATMAN, the user finds that DATMAN-DOS works perfectly
and yet he finds DATMAN-99 not working at all. In this case,
DATMANCC's tape drive list is always empty. To confirm that this is
due to a problem with the low level device driver, you can check the
device manager for the driver status by the following steps.
1. Control_Panel > System > Device_Manager
2. Expand SCSI controllers (click the [+] sign)
3. Select the SCSI host adapter which is connected to the tape.
4. Click the Properties button
5. Select the Resources tab
Look at the window labeled "Conflicting device list" where you may find
possible resource conflict such as the IRQ. The most common problem
is with the IRQ setting that occurs frequently when your PC has many
ISA (old AT-bus) plug-in cards such as the sound card. The Plug and
Play scheme sometimes fails to work when nearly all of the IRQs are
to be assigned to various devices which limit the possible combinations
which satisfy all devices' requirements and the restrictions. For
example, most motherboards with a built-in printer port accepts only
IRQ 5 or 7, else it need to be disabled. The I/O address space sometimes
becomes an issue. For instance, Adaptec's AHA-152x has only two
alternate I/O addresses.
You need to resolve all possible resource conflicts with respect to
the SCSI host adapter in order to use DATMAN-99 successfully. One
convenient, but not very obvious way to view the current assignments
of various system resource is to click the Properties button after
highlighting the "Computer" line which is the first item in the
Device_Manager window. It gives you summary pages with respect to
the IRQs, DMAs, I/O Addresses, etc.
If you do not find any line under "SCSI Controllers" which corresponds
to your SCSI host adapter, or a yellow question mark is shown on the
icon for your SCSI host adapter, you may reinstall the SCSI adapter
from scratch.
1. If you already have an entry for your SCSI host adapter,
highlight the line and click the Remove button
(and click Yes on the confirming dialog box).
2. Control_Panel > Add_New_Hardware > Next
3. "Add New Hardware Wizard" will ask you the following question:
Do you want Windows to search for your new hardware?
4. Select (o) No, I want to select he hardware from a list. Next.
5. Select SCSI controllers in the Hardware types list. Next.
6. Select the company name in the Manufacturers list
7. You should find your SCSI adapter in the Models list. Next.
8. You may be asked to insert the Win95 CD-ROM to copy the driver.
9. Reboot the system.
10. Check again the device manager for possible resource conflicts.
************************************************************************
*
* If your Win95/98 system has rather a long CONFIG.SYS file which loads
* many real-mode device drivers (by DEVICE=...), it may be better if
* you build the system configuration without the use of real-mode
* drivers (e.g., SMARTDRV.EXE). In general, it is safe to say that
* almost all real-mode device drivers can be removed in the Win95 system.
* For example, if you still invoke MSCDEX.EXE to access the CD-ROM,
* there is a very good chance that Win95/98 already has a 32-bit driver
* for your CD-ROM. Since it is relatively time consuming
* and you may want to restore the current setting before the entire
* new setup has been completed, you should always make a backup copy
* of the current state.
*
* 1. Reboot the system and enter real-mode DOS (by Pressing F8)
* 2. Make a backup copy of \WINDOWS\SYSTEM.DAT
* a. attrib -r -h c:\windows\system.dat
* b. copy /y c:\windows\system.dat c:\windows\system0.dat
* 3. Make a backup copy of \CONFIG.SYS and \AUTOEXEC.BAT
* a. copy /y c:\config.sys c:\config0.sys
* b. copy /y c:\autoexec.bat c:\autoexe0.bat
*
* When you need to go back to the original setting of these files, simply
* revert to the original files (from the real mode DOS environment).
*
* attrib -r -h c:\windows\system.dat
* copy /y c:\windows\system0.dat c:\windows\system.dat
* copy /y c:\config0.sys c:\config.sys
* copy /y c:\autoexe0.sys c:\autoexec.bat
*
*************************************************************************