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Potential system lockup issues with Adpatec 39160 System
I have a Quicksilver DP 800 with 1.25 GB SRAM, OS X 10.2.2, 39160 Adaptec card, and two 36GB 10K LaCie external hard drives. I've been having freezing problems with this card in OS X (all versions). In the worst case, I lost my current working files (I work with 500MB or larger Photoshop files).

I tried everything I could to resolve the problem. When I called Adaptec technical support, they told me they still don't have any solution to this except to decrease the speed of the hard drives to a lower speed (7200 rpm maybe). I talked to Apple, and they said Apple can't support every third party vendor's products, so we have to live with this error. One interesting thing is the Adaptec technical guy told me that they recognized the probem with their card but have no new driver to fix it, yet they are still selling that card now.

I don't know if this is a hint or not, but hope someone who wants to use the 39160 for RAID, or just to run regularly with OS X, might want to check it out first to make sure it works as expected.

[Editor's note: Any other experiences, good or bad, with the 39160 card? I have a much older and slower Adaptec card that's been relatively trouble-free, but that's no comparison to something like the 39160.]
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Potential system lockup issues with Adpatec 39160 | 15 comments | Create New Account
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Get an Atto Tech card
Authored by: pmreiz on Dec 06, '02 09:43:25AM

The Adaptec 39160 is a very fine card, IF you're using OS9. It just does not work reliably under OSX--any version.

I junked the Adaptec card about a year ago and replaced it with an AttoTech Express PCI UL3D. I'm happy to report that the card has worked flawlessly in both my Dual 1Ghz desktop running 10.1 through 10.2.2 and in my Dual 1Ghz server running 10.2.2

Adapted doesn't fully support the Macintosh community, so I no longer support Adaptec.



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Adaptec card unsupported
Authored by: barryjaylevine on Dec 06, '02 10:23:58AM

Adaptec's website states that a number of their older SCSI cards are not recommended for use in OSX (any version). I did have one in my B&W and found that as long as I booted from the ATA drive on the motherboard bus, problems were minimized; freezing was gone, just long shut-down times.

I've since sold the B&W with the card and 10K drive into a site that uses OS9 on that Mac.

Junk the card and get the SIIG ATA/133 card with a couple of WD120's with the 8MB cache; that will work beautifully!

Barry



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Adaptec and OS X
Authored by: musmis on Dec 07, '02 11:36:37AM

My company has stopped buying Adaptec SCSI cards to use with OS X. Even the "supported" models don't work very reliably.
We use Initio cards, and they work flawlessly. We have also used ATTO once or twide, with no problems.



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Adaptec and OS X
Authored by: DavidRavenMoon on Dec 07, '02 04:33:06PM

OrangeMicro cards also work very well.



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Adaptec & MacOS X
Authored by: BMarsh on Dec 06, '02 10:37:15AM

Dantz of all companies has a web page with a listing of what cards from Adaptec have been fixed for a problem with corruption, and which still have a problem

the last time I checked the website the 2906 and 2930 were fixed as of 10.2.something.

The *160 series still had problems

http://www.dantz.com/index.php3?SCREEN=kbase&ACTION=KBASE&id=27381

scroll down until "Adaptec SCSI Cards and Mac OS X (Jaguar)
DantzLab testing has shown that xx160 series Adaptec SCSI cards (including the 29160, 29160N, and 39160 SCSI controllers) may pass incorrect data to and from any program communicating with a SCSI device."



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Adaptec 39160 problems
Authored by: michaellarson on Dec 06, '02 12:33:39PM

I have been having similar problems with an Adaptec 39160 in a Dual 500 tower. If Adaptec doesn't fix the problem soon, I'll be forced to ditch the card and go with another vendor.



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Adaptec seems below par on OSX
Authored by: dieterm on Dec 08, '02 09:18:28AM

i use the adaptec 2930 scsi card and it has never performed very well under any version of OSX. i find that if i have a drive mounted with this card that after a couple of days (if energy saver is set to spin down drives) it simply will not wake up, resulting in the death beach ball eventually locking everything up. solution, i unmount the drive with disk utility when its not in use, not exactly ideal.

hmm, if you are considering a scsi card it seems a non adaptec solution will be more satisfying with OSX.



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Adaptec cards not supported by Retrospect
Authored by: LobsangDibbler on Dec 08, '02 09:37:52AM

For lots more on why adaptec SCSI cards should not be used with OS X, see the Dantz web site. They test cards very carefully and make it clear that the adaptec cards currently have problems in OS X. Indeed, Retrospect intentionally will not support adaptec cards under OS X to avoid said problems.



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Garbage
Authored by: baw on Dec 08, '02 10:31:21AM

I knew the 39160 had issues over a year ago. The hard drives would lock up during data transfers. I went through two new hard drives, one motherboard, three 39160s' and a completely new G4, the lockup issue is still there. I gave up and threw the card away.



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Garbage (is eBay cash)
Authored by: imageworx on Dec 09, '02 09:32:21AM

I agree. i spoke to Tech Support at Adaptec (Roxio) and the guy even went to the trouble to tell me that Atto is partnered with Apple (some contractual item). So any card that will work with the Mac is going to be ATTO. It was frustrating to me as we have two 39160 (one in a box) and two 29160n cards. That's about $1500. Some lucky individuals on ebay got them (for quite less).
The good news: the ATTO cards have been running 24/7, 9 months, and no problems to an Exabyte EZ17 Autoloader and Dantz retrospect.
If Adaptec doesn't get cooperation from Apple, then its time to dump the cards and get ATTO brand. :(



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Adaptec 39160 Nightmare
Authored by: SLO_Dave on Dec 09, '02 01:07:31PM

I have also been bitten by the Adaptec 39160 problem with OS X. Early in the 2nd Q 2002 we purchased a Quicksilver DP 800 server and had the Adaptec card installed along with dual 73 GB UW drives, all recommended by our local Mac vendor and tech support. Our intent was to mirror the internal drives for operational redundancy. Little did we know that the Adaptec card was flawed in its operation with OS X.

We experienced total failure of the system three times, with "Keys out of Order" errors, resulting in data loss. This was our first server and it was in the shop for about 6 weeks. The tech bill was so large that it threatened our relationship with our local Mac vendor.

To their credit, every possible solution approach was tried. We replaced a motherboard based on Apple's Tech CD analysis of the system after one crash. As it turns out, the motherboard tested fine after removal, so there might be another issue here as well.

The Adaptec card was also swapped out with no change in system status. Adaptec support was anything but. Our tech support vendor eventually got a hold of an Adpatec engineer who suggested slowing down the read/write speeds of the drives.

This has worked pretty well, except for one recent crash (Keys out of order again) of one of the hard drives. If it were not for the fact we have external firewire drives for redundant back-up, this event would have severly hurt our business operation. As it was, we spent a lot of money for equipment that could not perform as intended or claimed by either Apple or Adaptec.

I still cannot believe that Adaptec markets the 39160 for OS X. Their performance claims are incompetent at best and criminal at worst. We are running at 40 MB/sec at that is the best we can get. Period.

When the problem first occured for us, we searched all the Mac boards looking for others with the same reported problem but we did not find any. I thought it incredible that we alone were facing this problem. While I am sorry to hear of the others listed on this thread, it at least confirms the problem exists.

Thanks to pmreiz for the heads-up on the Atto Tech card.

We do intend to get the UW speed and mirroring we originally intended. We are now running OS X Server 10.2.2. The funny thing is that Apple has a driver in this OS that "supports" the 39160, but it does not correct the problem.



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Well, give it a try
Authored by: arthurnguyen on Jan 16, '03 04:20:39PM

I just download this new driver from Adaptec v. 1.2 for my 39160 scsi problem. I'll install and keep an eye to see if it does what it said.
http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/support/driverdetail.html?sess=no&language=English+US&cat=%2fOperating+System%2fMacintosh+OS+X&filekey=apd39160_X_v12a.hqx



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long URL
Authored by: arthurnguyen on Jan 16, '03 04:31:06PM

Sorry, about the long URL. Someone may show me the way to make a short cut for that in IE. Thanks.



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long URL
Authored by: nakedgremlin on Apr 02, '03 03:39:04PM
Just make the url shorter with the spiffy TinyURL.
   http://tinyurl.com/8ox7

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long URL
Authored by: halcyon on Aug 28, '04 03:09:25AM

Adaptec is no longer supporting ANY SCSI cards for ANY MacOS. It's a complete disaster:

http://tinyurl.com/3jdxy

And to think that I bought that SCSI cards just to run it with OS X.

<sigh>



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