# Adaptec Powerdomain 39160



## bowb4cisco (Apr 5, 2005)

I have a dual g4 1 gig. I installed an adaptec powerdomain when I first got it and I remember going nuts trying to install jaguar to my drive. Well 3 years later.......

I have the original 80 gig ATA..strictly for file storage...I have a 36gb cheetah (10k) that has my current osx 10.2 on it...I want to install 10.3 fresh on my 18 gig cheetah (15krpm) since I will run only Logic off the Mac. I ran the panther setup disc, selected the 18 gig as the install drive and upon rebooting it just hanged. I booted with the option key and waited forever for it to populate the drives. Then I selected the 18 gig and it loaded my 10.2..... what is that about? I remember it doing this to me the first time around, but that was years ago.

Basically I burned to CD any files I might need. I need instructions on how to format the two scsi drives as i have no idea how to do this in a mac environment. Then install panther clean on the 18 gig (and also have it successfully boot to it!!!!) Since im honestly not adept with MAC yet (I bought the OSX bible - reading as much as I can around work!) I'm not to sure how this is done. I recall adaptec having me change a fprot in the flash rom to get my power domain to boot the right drive, but im really drawing blanks.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!


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## bowb4cisco (Apr 5, 2005)

Hi all, Ive been messing around and still no luck. Basically i have this scsi card with two scsi drives. I did get jaguar to install with adaptec supports help, but that was 3 years ago!!

Now im trying to install panther on the other scsi drive. Heres what happens. The first panther cd runs its course and restarts. Upon restarting my system just hangs on the gray apple with the animated circle to indicate activity, but thats it. I let it sit for 20 minutes...no go. So at that point i tried to do a option boot to the drive. It will boot....but it boots to the older scsi drive with jaguar....even tho i picked the drive with the first panther disc installed. Also if i tried a second  time...i get an error when its loading that i have to restart the Mac, and its an endless loop. 

After this i detached the Scsi drive with jaguar installed and did a fresh install on the scsi drive i want panther on. Again it just hangs after the first CD installs. If i reboot again i get the restart error. 

Im pretty sure its a 'driver' issue, and if i barely recall adaptec 3 years back had me boot into os9 on my old ide and move/change their driver files on the scsi. Does anyone know how to remedy this? I can easily attach my jaguar drive now and repair whatever needs to be on the panther drive, but I honestly dont remember how or where. (im a pc guy attempting mac). I think it was something to that effect. 

Sorry for the novel, but the more details the more we can diagnose right?! Does anyone else use this card with osx and experienced a similiar issue? I know I documented this as well, but I cant find my notes =/  I cant be the only one with this scenario!

Thanks for the assistance!


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## DeltaMac (Apr 5, 2005)

There's pretty good support information if you look at the Adaptec web site. An example would be this Driver for OS X that you could download and install.
I've also read about some who cannot install Panther without removing the SCSI adapter card, and reinstalling the card after the OS X install is completed.
hint: OS X seems to install best to an IDE bus. If you have ONLY SCSI drives, this could be a challenge.


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## bowb4cisco (Apr 5, 2005)

I posted a more accurate description in the peripheral forum! Its pretty much a driver issue now that my brain is turning back on. Hopefully someone around here knows otherwise ill call good ol adaptec. Thanks folks!


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## bowb4cisco (Apr 6, 2005)

WOW Adaptec wants $80 to try and support me, and ill be they will weasle out by saying we dont support OS X 10.3   

Im pretty sure i just need to remove the generic drive apple loads and replace it with their latest driver. Has anyone ever done this??? Im in a catch 22.


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## bowb4cisco (Apr 16, 2005)

I figured part of it out. I had to go into the extensions folder. Apple has a few older 29160 ext in there. I deleted them and copied the 39160 file from my scsi that does work with 10.2 to the scsi that has disc 1 of 10.3 installed. Well heres the bad part. It still doesnt work, however instead of the boot screen (greay apple with the animated circle) just hanigng forever this time someting sort of loads... but the gray apple turns to a no smoking symbol thingy...... So I def know those ext have something to do with it. Now its do there latest non supported beta drivers actually work in 10.3??

Doesnt anyone use a Adaptec powerdomain 39160 in the OSX panther? 

I could use any advice. What does that symbol mean?

Please help!


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## DeltaMac (Apr 16, 2005)

Now you know what _doesn't_ work!
The 'prohibitory' sign is fairly new for Apple, but is similar to the 'broken folder' that sometimes appears at boot for similar reasons, usually parts of the system have been moved.
Here's an ARTICLE that discusses some possible causes, and a good start on fixing it.  Generally, you will need to reinstall the OS X, using the Archive and Install option.
BTW, Panther already has drivers installed by default for the PowerDomain 39160. Check in your /System/Library/Extensions folder for a file named Adaptec39160.kext


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## tumbleguts (Apr 18, 2005)

Hey... I just might have the trick.

First things first...
I think it's a shame that the Mac has moved away from SCSI.
SCSI was once what made Macs so special.
It was (and still is in some cases) a great interface.
Especially, not having that initial lag in responsiveness that you get with ATA drives because the ATA interface is CPU dependent...
And personally, I've always preffered the 'tempermentals' of the SCSI setup.
Cos' once you get it set-up right - nothing compares... 

So... with my G4 (digital audio) I decided to put in fast SCSI drives.
Got myself an Adaptec 39160 and a couple of ibm 10,000rpm drives.
Anyway, not too long into the whole process did I soon discover that it was nearly impossible to make any SCSI drive attached to the 39160 a startup disk. 
Eventually... found a link to xlr8yourmac that featured an OF tweak to allow Adaptec cards to drives to boot in Quicksilver, MDD and G5 Macs. And even though my G4 was an earlier model - this turned out to do the trick:

http://forums.xlr8yourmac.com/actio...onse=answer.faq.lasso&-recordID=34084&-search

I don't know? Somehow it works...
Go figure...


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## tumbleguts (Apr 18, 2005)

Adding...

BTW I'm running OS X 10.3 Panther.
The above link is an "openfirmware" tweak that enables you to startup boot (mac OS X) from a SCSI drive attached to Adaptec cards in later G4 models.
Hope this helps...

mmmmmm.


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## bowb4cisco (Apr 18, 2005)

TumbleGuts, thanks!

However I did this three years ago to get my 36 gb cheetah to boot jaguar with an adaptec tech. We did that and manipulated their extension files - finally it booted.

Now 3 years later I installed panther on my empty 18 gb scsi drive and I get a panic or a prohibitory sign on reboot from disc 1. So I tried to run their beta driver installer while I was booted into Jaguar on my SCSI drive as I see MAC installed 1.1 with panther...and I pointed the installer to update the 18gb scsi drive (it has panter partially installed) and it failed! NSGenericException.

But get this, it erased the extension on the jaguar drive for no reason as well! So now I lost both drives. Maybe I need to do that open firmware again, but I doubt it since it has worked and if I hold option down on boot up I see the two scsi drives in the list. Ive tried replacing the 39160 EXT with every version of the driver (1.1  .2 .3 beta)  If I touch the original ext Panther put in - no go. I tried putting 1.2 BACK on the 36gb with Jaguar... NO GO... prohibitory. I put the SAME DRIVER back lol it makes no sense. I dont know MAC enough to know what else it might have effected other than replacing the ext file......

Honeslty im so fed up with how unfriendly their card and software have been that I might just get an ATTO and eat what that damn card cost me. I mean Tiger is out Friday and Adaptec wont update their driver ..ever again...thats not good... ATTO has tons of em. I need stability as I am also using this for digital audio as well to run Logic Pro

But if I get the atto now I'll probably have to revert that Open firmware stuff and im not very adept in MAC

Very frusted!!!! lol


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## bowb4cisco (Apr 18, 2005)

BTW...

I am running a Dual G4 1 gig its the mirrored drive door one. Also that Open Firmware...is that the bios of the MAC I messed with??? or the powerdomain? 

Def need help,

Thanks


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## tumbleguts (Apr 18, 2005)

Okay...

Lets be systematic about this:

Firstly, I'd suggest to re-format the SCSI drive with a partial OS X 10.3 Panther on it. Because OS X has not been fully installed - it's buggered. Don't waste your time trying to fix it - (you will soon do a clean install...read on).

>1. re-format the SCSI drive which has a partial OS X 10.3 Panther install.

One of the first things I did when I received the Adaptec 39160 was to update the cards firmware. I downloaded Adaptec's Flash Utility (39160 v1.2). That was the latest firmware at the time (6 months ago). Reading back over the thread it seems you may have overlooked doing this - and I'm assuming that the newer drivers probably wouldn't take to well to an older firmware... 

>2. Update Adaptec 39160 card firmware to version 1.2

I'm using the Adaptec 39160 driver 1.2.
I started off putting the 1.3beta driver on (thinking newer was gonna be better) but I think I remember running into similar problems as you have had. Got some feedback that I shouldn't use it because the advantages of the newer 1.3beta version  fixed issues that were irrelevant to my setup. And I think I too - had problems installing and uninstalling the various drivers. My solution was to boot into OS 9 - manually remove all Adaptec 39160 drivers from the extensions folders on all  systems (OS X and OS 9) and then ran the driver 1.2 installer. What this did - was remove all previous versions of the 39160 drivers (which was impossible to do without booting into OS 9). The driver version 1.2 has it's own installer that prompts you if the driver was not installed properly.

>3. Remove all 39160 drivers manually thru OS 9

(If you don't have OS 9 installed - install it! - sorry I have no other suggestions to remedy this... I don't know how to bypass the OS X "prohibitory" alerts without disabling OS X by booting into OS 9  / Remember the OS X 'extensions' folder is located within the System/Library folder...) 

>4. Use the Adaptec 39160 driver 1.2 installer.

Now run the openfirmware tweak. 

>5. Using the link above to the xlr8yourmac page - run the OF mod.

Now you should be in a position where your Adaptec 39160 has the current/suggested firmware installed, there are no other 39160 drivers installed but the 1.2 version (so conflicts cannot happen), and you have run the OF tweak that allows you to use a drive attached to a 39160 as a startup disk.

>6. Now do a clean install of Panther on to the desired drive.

If I remember correctly, and if you follow these steps everything should work out.
If the new Panther install will not boot as a startup disk I would repeat the last few steps including:
> using the Adaptec 39160 Driver 1.2 installer on the new Panther system.
(as the new Panther install may have the older driver)
> and repeating the OF tweak on the driver after the Panther install.
(as the Panther install might revert the OF tweak)

If none of this works out - well... sorry can't help u.

I too was surprised to learn of the lack of support for using Adaptec SCSI cards with OS X. It seems that ATTO is the only maunfacturer really carrying on the SCSI bandwaggon for the Mac users. And it's bullshit! I brought my Adaptec 39160 card with the writing on the box saying OS X was supported!!!
I can only hope that the current drivers work just as well with OS X 10.4 Tiger.
Because I must say - once I got the SCSI drives up and working I have not had a problem since. And at a general tranfer rate of nearly 100mb/sec... well happiness is warm and fuzzy feeling inside - isn't it?

Gook Luck...


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## bowb4cisco (Apr 19, 2005)

Yup, latest firmware


and no luck!!!

I tried everything. variations on what you mentioned. The driver installs on a blank scsi drive fine, but when i go to install panther it makes it an old os9 folder lol. same deal - panics and prohibitory signs.

Oh well barring some techno miracle I think I'll just see what ATTO is offering and save up for a summer switch. Question. The OF commands. IF and when I do switch cards. Do i need to turn that fcode debug around at all? its at true false..was it originally false false? Is ther a way to make the OF default? im assuming this OF is like a bios on a PC (i know i know, im a pc convert - dont get mad!) Well thanks anyways for your help and time tumbleguts!


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## tumbleguts (Apr 20, 2005)

Sorry I couldn't help...

It sounds like your Adaptec card just doesn't like the situation.
If you still cannot install the second Panther disk because of the panics and prohibitory sign - you could try installing OS X 10.3 on the ide ATA drive - then using Carbon Copy Cloner to transfer the OS over to the SCSI drive... At least then you would have an operational OS X Panther on the SCSI drive and if problems persisted you would only need to fiddle around with the drivers and OF tweak. You might be able to narrow down the problem.

But I understand... You don't want to go through this everytime you add a new drive to the SCSI card - maybe ATTO is the way to go. Then again, there are numerous people (who obviously don't visit macOSX.com) using the Adaptec 39160 with their G4's and G5's. It's just a shame - cos' you know it can work...

In regards to the OF tweak - and restoring the default settings. I'm not sure?
I'm thinking that it probably wouldn't matter. Anyway, worry about that when you get the ATTO card... and start having problems with it! - (sorry, poor joke.)

One last thing... you're not using a flashed "DELL" branded 39160 card are you?
Because I know that those cards have caused a lot of trouble...


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## bowb4cisco (Apr 20, 2005)

No, its a real mac powerdomian =/


lol,

thanks again


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## tumbleguts (Apr 28, 2005)

Hello bowb4cisco...

I don't know if you are still continuing in your efforts to use the Adaptec 39160 card with your mac - but I thought I'd let you know that I just installed a second SCSI drive on my 39160 setup and experienced YOUR problem!

After I installed the new SCSI drive, I lost the ability to boot into any OS X system I had on either the original SCSI drive or the ATA drive (I was adding a 3rd drive).

After much frantic messing about and overcoming that feeling of dread - (thinking I had just lost everything) - I found by detaching the new SCSI drive and booting up on the PANTHER install disk, then running disk utilities (repair volume) on both drives = I managed to restore the setup to what it was before I attached the new drive.

I have yet to find a way to add the new SCSI disk (haven't had enough time to play around just yet) but thought I would inform you of this "restore" solution.

I will keep you posted...


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## bowb4cisco (May 1, 2005)

Hey TumbleGuts...

I FIXED IT!!!!

Want to know how?

I sold my copy of panther on ebay (made $45...not bad) and I bought tiger (I just graduated college good ol' education discounts =) 

and since we both know how stupid computers are in general guess what... YUP you guessed it: Tiger installed on my SCSI Drive without a damn hiccup or complaint! lol Logic 7 is also installed and functioning perfectly. 

For troubleshooting.... Tiger has 1.2 drivers standard. I think that is the key. The problem is Adaptec softwar updates SUCK and always crash. One thing, make sure you turn off the deep sleep. My card and drives woke up fine believe it or not) but it kept spinning my drives up and down! So I unchecked turn off HD when it can and now its Perfect! Dude I am so happy lol. Im not surprised that this worked you know how stupid electronics and software are lol.

Anyways my recomendation for you is to buy Tiger - oh yeah and make sure you tell them your still in college  They never check. My college allows two software and two hardware purchases a year. Gotta love a good hustle lol.

Keep in touch you were really very helpful throughout everything. I owe you one!

cisco


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## tumbleguts (May 6, 2005)

Hello bowb4cisco...

That is excellent news!
I'm glad you finally got things to work.

Eventually I will get Tiger, but until I scape together enough scratch I can't afford it! -  I don't have the same college price discounts as you cos i'm located in Australia! Please let me know what you think of Tiger. Have you noticed a significant performance increase from Panther???

Meanwhile, back in Tumbleguts land, many things have happened.
I've done a lot of research and i'll dispense the information here for both your knowledge & understanding and anyone else who may come looking for Adaptec 39160 answers on a mac G4. 

First things first, earlier in this thread you wanted to know what the OF tweak did - and whether it needed to be reversed if you were going change to an ATTO card. I found out that the OF tweak which allows a SCSI disk connected to the Adaptec card to be bootable (ie- startup disk) is a "nvram" patch/tweak. Meaning that it 'tweaks' the nvram (where the cards firmware is) on the Adaptec card. So, in answer to your concerns - if you had decided to go with another branded card - the OF tweak would not be needed to be reversed - as it only effects the Adaptec card.

(Adaptec notes that this OF tweak is needed for 29/39160 cards used in Quicksilver and later Macs to allow booting from connected drives.)
But as I also found out, it is needed and works on earlier G4 macs as well - like my G4 733mhz Digital Audio.
(See earlier posts on this thread for the link)

Second thing, Adaptec notes that the Adaptec 39160 is bootable from OS X when using "firmware 1.20" on the card (combined with the OF tweak).
(Download from Adaptec site)

And the third, (final secret ingredient) is using Adaptec driver 1.2 version.
As bowb4cisco noted - "this is the key..." Don't bother with the 1.3beta driver, because that is exactly what it is - a beta version. Untested, unverified, and that fact that Tiger ships with version 1.2 says to me that the newer beta version still isn't reliable.
(Download - mac OS X driver 1.2 - from Adaptec site)

So in summary, 3 things:
1. make sure "firmware 1.20" is on the card.
2. (for mac OS X) it's best to use Adaptec "driver 1.2" version.
3. (to make card bootable) apply "OF tweak". 

If you can apply these 3 things your Adaptec card (provided all hardware is okay and termination is set properly) will work flawlessly in OS X.

oohh - I also discovered that in some cases you may need to apply the Adaptec driver 1.2 installer on all SCSI HDD - even though these HDD may not have a system folder on it. The reason is - I found if a SCSI disk (without a system folder) didn't have the driver installed, you could copy files to that disk, but not be able to copy from it (computer would freeze or endless spining beachball). 

As I and bowb4cisco have found out, Adaptec has, in more ways than one, stopped supporting the mac platform. And it is almost impossible to discover what works (like the 3 simple steps above) on their website. 

As noted in my earlier post, I had trouble when I attached a new SCSI drive  to the SCSI chain. Unfortunately I ended up having to wipe the existing SCSI drive before I could get the Adaptec to see both drives. Although I didn't spend a huge amount of time fiddling around - this could be a major issue. Personally, if anyone knows of how to add an extra SCSI drive without reformating the existing drives, I would love to know about it!!!
Bowb4cisco and I cannot be the only fools still using the Adaptec 39160 card on a mac G4...

Okay... one last thing.

Now I've been to many forums where this was discussed, but never got a clear "yes" or "no" answer. Or how to go about setting it up for that matter.
So... here it is:

Question: Can I make a RAID setup the startup disk? 

Now in mac help it states;
"In most cases. you cannot include the startup disk in a RAID set." 
Apple basically says this to avoid having to support it.
And what they are getting at is that you cannot include an existing startup disk in a RAID set - (because you wipe a drive when you add it to a RAID set). However you CAN create a RAID set, put the system software on it, and then make it bootable!
So... this is what I did.
My Adaptec 39160 is dual channel - which means it has two 68pin connectors on the top, each channel a separate data path to the cards IO processor - ideal for RAID. Using my two 10K 36gb SCSI disks (best to use 2 matching drives) I attached the drives using separate cables to each of the 68pin connectors. However, you still need to create the RAID using Apple's disk utility - which supports RAID 0 (stripe) and RAID 1 (mirror) since the introduction of OS X. Or you could use RAID software such as "softraid'. I created RAID 0 (stripe) from my old ATA connected startup disk using disk utility and giving me a single 68.36GB disk. After making sure I had the "3 steps" covered (see above) I used Carbon Copy Cloner to transfer the system software from the ATA drive to the new RAID 0 (striped) array. (I first tried installing Panther on to the RAID using the install disks but it hung half way through... and didn't bother pursuing it). After using the disk utiltity to "repair permissions" on the newly cloned OS X on the RAID from the ATA startup disk, I rebooted with the RAID as the desired startup disk. 

So far, everything is fantastic and I haven't had any problems. The system loads much faster, and Applications in general load twice as fast! The computer is a lot snapper and a greater pleasure to use. Using Speedtools "quickbench" I noted that I am getting an average read at 115MB/sec and average write at 125MB/sec. WOW! That is over 3 times faster than the Seagate Barracuda 80GB ATA drive connected to the inbuilt ATA/66 controller. (Always remember that generally most 7200rpm drives max out at about 35-45MB/sec regardless of interface speed). As single disks, these 10K SCSI drives were averaging 65MB/sec read/write.   

Yep... I'm pretty happy!

Keep in mind that the only drawback to RAID 0 (stripe) is that if one of the disks fail - you lose everything. I'm planning to combat this by getting a single 72GB SCSI (or ATA) disk that I periodically clone the RAID contents to. Although, from my research it seems that the Apple RAID is usually very stable and it is rare for it to fail. Even so, you should always back up your important files anyway... 

So... there you have it!

The Adaptec 39160 still has a place in the mac community (even in a G5).
You just can't knock transfer rates of 125MB/sec even if you're using the newer serial ATA interface!

I hope all this mumbo-jumbo is able to help others out there!!!!!

Good Luck.


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## tumbleguts (May 8, 2005)

... following up on my previous post and the ability to make a RAID volume the startup disk...

Having done a little more research it seems apparent that using Carbon Copy Cloner (or a similar utility) is the best way get the OS X system files on to the RAID disk. Doesn't look like the Panther installer supports installing onto the RAID - this may have changed with Tiger...

I decided to get a fresh install of Panther on my RAID. So I wiped the ATA disk (where I cloned from) and installed OS X 10.3.0. However, once I had cloned the system files over I couldn't get the RAID to boot. It was driving me nuts! Eventually after having tried cloning the fresh install numerous times without success I decided to upgrade the install on the ATA drive to Panther 10.3.9. And what do you know... yep! - it worked!!!

So maybe the updated versions of Panther has something that the original 10.3.0 doesn't that fixes this problem - thought it was worth mentioning.

Another thing... I found that when I booted from a cold start the RAID startup volume failed. It would get to the grey startup screen then hang - no apple logo / no little round swirly thingy.
(BTW - is it just me or does everyone stare stupidly at the little round swirly thingy and try to guess which line it will end on...)
After a little search through Anubis RAID's (a 3rd-party software RAID application) troubleshooting pages, I found the following;

Problem: When the machine is restarted the RAID doesn't mount.

Answer: This is usually attributed to the Extensions.mkext file not being in synch with what is really in your /System/Library/Extensions folder. To synch them you will need to use Mac OS X's Terminal application to type the following command:

sudo touch /System/Library/Extensions

The Terminal will prompt you for your administrator password, enter it and hit return. Restart your Mac and your array should mount upon restart.

And the above fixed the problem for me.

Keep in mind that you should have as closely similar drives as possible (if not the same) and the drive jumper settings configured to "motor start mode enabled" so the drive starts up as soon as it receives power.

One more thing: 
The problem that 'bowb4cisco' encountered:
"...make sure you turn off the deep sleep. My card and drives woke up fine believe it or not) but it kept spinning my drives up and down!..." is a problem that the newer Adaptec driver version 1.3beta was supposed to fix. 
I had another go using this the 1.3beta driver (instead of the recommended 1.2 version) but had many problems - ie: drives would not mount.

So... it is probably best to stick with the 1.2 drivers and turn off "put the hard disks to sleep when possible" in the Energy Saver preference - as 'Bowb4cisco' noted.

That's all for now.


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## skeenna (Nov 15, 2009)

Hi, 

I just acquired a 39160 scsi controller ( the mac version ).

It came in  a 400 mhz blue and white g3 but with no hard drives attached to it.

I installed osX 10.2.3 from cd to an Quantum Atlas V ultra 160 capable scsi hard drive connected through the 39160.

That went without a hitch.

When I boot off the ATA drive (running Tiger) in the G3, It can view all the newly generated osX files on the scsi drive.

However when i tried to boot the newly generated osX from the scsi hard drive, I got the flashing folder (os missing) and no boot.

I read this post and went searching for firmware version 1.2 for the controller. after much googling, can't find that anywhere. all the download sites reference the ftp adaptec site which is no longer responding.

any one know where I can get a copy of this firmware file?

Thank you for having a look here.

Edit : firmware file still resides on the adaptec site just not where most external sources on the internet say it is. I found it at http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/downloads/bios_fw/bios_fw_ver?productId=APD-39160&dn=PowerDomain+39160


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