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  • Avid set up

    Posted by Marie Schafers on June 2, 2005 at 4:14 pm

    This is more of a engineering question. . i’m not sure if I am in the correct forum. I work at a small non-profit organization, so the equitment we use is not the newest quality. Our Avid system was working about a week ago and then we moved it’s location. We plugged everything back together in the same way as before, but for some reason now it isn’t working properly. When we connect the SCSI drives to the PC and try to boot the computer, it won’t start. The screen is just blank. I am not sure where we went wrong. I’m concerned we may have connected the SCSI drives in the wrong order. Any help would be great. Thanks!!

    Bill Stephan replied 21 years, 3 months ago 3 Members · 7 Replies
  • 7 Replies
  • Bill Stephan

    June 2, 2005 at 4:37 pm

    Marie,

    There is no wrong order to connecting SCSI drives. On the back of each, you will find a switch with a number. That is the SCSI address. Make sure each drive is set to a different number, and do not use address 7 — that belongs to the SCSI controller in the computer. If two drives have the same address number, that will cause a problem.

    If the above does not resolve your problem, maybe a drive was damaged during moving. Connect them one at a time, and restart the PC each time until you find the offending drive.

    I hope this helps.

    Bill Stephan
    Senior Editor/DVD Author
    USA Studios
    New York City

  • Marie Schafers

    June 2, 2005 at 4:49 pm

    Thanks for the suggestions. We did try doing all this. None of the drives have the same ID number and they we’re working one at a time either. Do you think that the SCSI PCI card could be damaged?

  • Marie Schafers

    June 2, 2005 at 4:50 pm

    Oh yeah, also, how do you find the SCSI ID’s on Mac 8.6? Thanks.

  • Bill Stephan

    June 2, 2005 at 5:07 pm

    I haven’t used Mac O/S 8 in a long time, but there should be an “About this Mac” entry in the Apple menu, which will show you the system configuration.

    If your hard drives are all working when connected one-at-a-time to the computer, then your SCSI card and drives are good. At what point does everything stop working? Maybe you have a bad SCSI cable. Look for bent pins on the connectors.

    Bill Stephan
    Senior Editor/DVD Author
    USA Studios
    New York City

  • Marie Schafers

    June 2, 2005 at 5:16 pm

    The computer will only boot when none of the drives are connected. When we connect any of them one-on-one, it won’t. I wouldn’t think that 3 drives would all break at the same time, so perhaps it is the PSI card? Two of the drives are Avid Quiet Drives and the other is a Medea drive. When we turn the Avid drives on, they yellow and green light are on, but the yellow one never turns off. Is this a sign that the drive is bad? Thanks.

  • Charley King

    June 2, 2005 at 7:24 pm

    The yellow light is showing it is attempting to run. When you only connected one drive, did you put the terminator on the extra connector?
    I have 8.6 Mac but my MAC is tied up at the moment. Maybe later if you haven’t found anything we can compare.

    Charlie

  • Bill Stephan

    June 2, 2005 at 7:39 pm

    If the yellow light on the drives stay lit all the time, then that is a problem. If it happens to all your drives, then the common elements are the SCSI board in the computer and the SCSI cable. Maybe the board is loose or not entirely seated in the slot, or possibly it got zapped by static electricity. Both can happen when moving electronic devices such as computers.

    Bill Stephan
    Senior Editor/DVD Author
    USA Studios
    New York City

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