The AAA-13x uses an industry standard PCI 2.1 compliant PCI-to-PCI bridge. Certain systems use PCI-to-PCI bridges on the MOTHERBOARD to get additional PCI add-in slots. Some earlier systems used PCI 2.0 compliant PCI-to-PCI bridges(e.g. Digital part numbers DEC21050 or DEC21052) to get these additional PCI slots. If AAA-13x is installed on BUS1, the secondary side of a PCI 2.0 PCI-to-PCI bridge an incompatibility may exist. It is recommended that the AAA-13x be installed on BUS 0 (the primary side).

Problems have been observed when using early versions of the Seagate model ST19171W, 9-GByte UltraSCSI drives, with firmware version 0017 and the Array1000 Family product. Contact Seagate to update or replace the hard disk firmware with the most current version.

CDR devices are not supported with this release.

Some uncommon network card configurations may cause the array configuration to hang. If this happens, check for conflicts with the network card configuration.

Some systems that have AWARD BIOS 4.51PG dated older than August 15th 97 may cause one of the following errors if AAA-130 Array Adapter is installed:

• BIOS expand error
• Fdisk reports no hard drive present
• Inaccessible boot device message during NT installation after CDA1000 driver is loaded.

Compaq ProLiant 2500 gives a warning message if AAA-130 (or any adapter with a PCI to PCI bridge) is installed in PCI slots 1, 2, or 3. The warning message is "move the bridge card in slot x to available slot 4, 5, or 6". Where "x" is the PCI slot # where the AAA-130 is installed. Move AAA-130 to slot 4, 5, or 6 and warning message will disappear.

If AAA-13x adapter is installed in Power Edge 2200/4200 a reset will occur after the "bios installed successful message. To correct this,
Update the DELL Power Edge 2200 System Bios to A04
Update the DELL Power Edge 4200 system Bios to A01

Digital Prioris XL 5200 Server is not compatible With AAA-130 Series Array Adapters
If an AAA-130 Series Array Adapter is installed in Digital Prioris XL 5200 Server an error message "AIC7870/ Sequence error Code: Sequencer RAM error" is displayed by AAA-130 series Array Adapter BIOS.
No Resolution at this time

"Error 1801 - memory resource conflict" is displayed if the BIOS of AAA131 is enabled. Also if AAA is installed in Primary bus NMI error is displayed. Update the System Bios of the IBM 325 to Bios version 45A.

All SCSI channels on AAA-130 Series Array Adapters use INTA channel for Interrupt. IBM PC Server BIOS tries to assign different IRQs to the same INTA channel which causes a problem. However, the IBM System BIOS allows manual selection of IRQ's for PCI slots which solves this problem. The steps for setting the IRQ manually are as follows:

• Run System BIOS setup
• select "Advanced setup"
• select "PCI Bus Control"
• Select "PCI Interrupt Request"
• Set IRQ for corresponding PCI slot where AAA-130 Series Array Adapter is installed

Micropolis Tomahawk & Stinger Hard disks will cause CDA1000.SYS driver to hang during the load or install of NT 4.0.
Micropolis Tomahawk & Stinger series Hard disks are not supported.

Currently Multi-LUN DAT and Tape devices are not supported.

NT Workstation 4.0 Installation may fail on reboot with error:

• "Windows NT could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt."
• sys

AAA-13x RAID adapters may not be detected by NT 4.0 installation in Supermicro P6DNx series motherboards due to system BIOS incompatibilities. No resolution available at this time

Arconfig may not detect AAA-130 Array Adapter in some PCI slots in some systems that have multiple PCI buses. Install AAA-130 Array Adapter in other possible slots to remedy this problem.
Booting from the Arrayconfig disk utility may cause the system to hang with a message "scanning for host adapters". Boot from an MS-Dos disk then manually run arconfig to remedy this problem.

Currently multiple AAA-130 Array Adapter in a system are not supported. However, AAA-130 can be installed with other Adaptec SCSI Host Adapters. Future revision will have support for multiple AAA-130 Array Adapters.

Memory errors or other problems may be experienced if both AHA-2940UW and Array1000 Family product coexist. To solve this problem, upgrade the AHA-2940 UW BIOS to the most recent version, v1.24 or later. If both AAA-13X and the AHA2940UW are installed in the same system, one of the adapters may not be visible by the system. This problem is caused by the system BIOS. Correct this problem by enabling the shadow RAM for all the address ranges in the system BIOS setup.

EZ-SCSI 4.01 includes ASPI8DOS.SYS v1.26 which is incompatible with the AAA-13x. The Array1000 Family product requires ASPI8DOS.SYS v1.3.1(included on Array1000 Family v2.0 Manager Set diskette or higher). Also, some utilities of the EZ-SCSI 4.01 and 4.01a (e.g. CD Player, CD Writer, SCSIBench) do not work with the Array1000 Family product. It is recommended to uninstall EZ-SCSI software before installing Array1000 V 2.0 software. Later revisions of EZ-SCSI will support Array1000 Family products.

ATI Mach64VT video driver version 3.1.76, 4.0.0 for NT 4.0 may cause problem booting to NT. You may get NT blue screen dump error message similar to "KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED Address ff0c5d97 has base at ff0b500 - ati.sys". To remedy this problem upgrade NT to service pack 3.

The Bios incorrectly reports that a 16MB SIMM is installed when there is no SIMM physically present. A 1 OR 4 MB SIMM must be installed for proper functioning.

Do not configure the system to share interrupts between the Array1000 Family product and network interface cards (NICs)or Video adapters in the system. Refer to the system BIOS manual for information on how to configure PCI interrupts, or change the PCI slot in which the NIC is installed.

It is important to properly terminate both ends of the SCSI bus for the AAA-13x card to function properly. Improperly terminated SCSI busses often can still operate under lightly loaded situations (only a couple of drives). SCSI bus scans will generally work and find all devices even if termination is incorrect. Under heavy workloads, bad termination leads to SCSI bus errors and data miscompare.
Refer to AAA-13x documentation for termination instructions.

Scanners are not supported in this release.

Workaround : Use Floppy based installation. As long as it is not starting the installation from the CD itself, the installation will go as expected.

After exiting from the Novell NetWare Server, and the arconfig utility is executed at the DOS prompt, it may hang in some configurations. Workaround : It is recommended that ARCONFIG program should be run after booting from the ARCONFIG floppy.

Workaround : Load EMM386.EXE with following options :

		EMM386.EXE X=A000-F7FF NOMOVEXBDA
		

If you would like to copy system and public files for Novell Novell NetWare 4.1x using install module option, the system may appear hung for approximately 2 minutes while coping at 5%. If you let it continue, copy should proceed normally

Removable storage media devices can't be a part of a RAID array, although they can exist in the system as individual devices.

1. Passive termination (resistors in a single in line package (SIP)) are a common, low-cost method of SCSI termination.
2. Active termination ( circuits which pull up or pull down voltage actively in order to force accurate termination) is a more expensive, but more accurate. Active termination is highly recommended. It is recommended not to mix active & passive termination at two ends of the bus. The AAA-13x and included cables contain Active termination.
3. External Termination Plugs (both Active and Passive) are available which connect directly to the SCSI Bus. This makes drive swapping much easier, since termination does not change as drives are removed or added.
4. Many SCSI devices have the option of supplying termination power to the SCSI bus. This should be enabled. It is a good idea to supply termination power to the SCSI bus from all devices in case one of the termination power sources fails, since there will still be termination power on the SCSI bus coming from another source.

CIO Array Management software for Windows NT, Win95 , Windows 31x is located in the Win31x sub-directory on the cdrom.

The "products" folder on the CIO Array Management cdrom is empty