Dear folks, I have to come clean here and say I've probably fouled it up.

I have just bought an adaptec 39160 PCI scsi controller and 34Gb drive and installed it on my computer.

(Previously working fine booting debian 5 from an ide drive)

When i Booted it up a utility thing ran which said 'detecting array' and it found the drive and its size etc.

Unfortunately it didn't go any further to allow my system to boot, so I rebooted and pressed CTRL + A to enter the adaptec scsi config. I changed something in there to make the disk non bootable (i Think) and rebooted the system.

It now hangs at :

'Detecting Array .....'

and does not show the drive details or the CTRL + A option to enter the utilities.

So the only option I have had is to remove the adaptec controller ( and the system boots fine)

the mother board is an Abit an8 ultra - probably about 4 years old and cpu is amd 64

I guess i have broken it and my remedy would be to reset the default options on the adaptec controller, but you can probably guess I have v. limited knowledge and have not used scsi before.

Any help gratefully received.

Greeb

Hello Greeb,

What I would do first it's to remove the SCSI drive from the controller and see if you can boot.
If you are able to boot without the disk connected to the card then the problem relies in either your cable or your hard drive (maybe just need to be reseated).

When an scsi card hangs in a loop at boot trying to identify devices means something is not working in the SCSI chain, make sure your cable it's terminated at the end.

Good luck!

-Axelsallright