No drives detected -- Adaptec 6805

Vandroiy

Distinguished
Jul 14, 2011
15
0
18,510
I finally got my hands on an Adaptec 6805 to replace a controller that went haywire on me... but it always claims to see no drives! I tried two different SATA fanout cables (one SAS to four SATA) with a few Samsung HD753LJ behind... nothing. It boots, it lets me press "detect drives" and shows empty lists or "no disks" errors only.

Is there anything I should know? This is the first time I'm using one of these expensive, full-hardware RAID controllers. Maybe I'm doing some stupid mistake?
 

Vandroiy

Distinguished
Jul 14, 2011
15
0
18,510
I noticed two things by now:

- When I first looked at the advanced settings, the time zone offset was set to something absurd -- 38 minutes and there was a strange ASCII-Symbol around. A Reset to factory default removed that, it did not return.

- The DOS-based firmware verification tool shows a correct checksum, but also says "Image miscompare at offset 0x005fff80". Re-flashing does not change that. Verification after flash shows no error. Looks like a 2-Byte checksum -- chance of that failing should be 65536:1, no? Am I really unlucky? Is the verification tool broken? Or is this just a fucked up UI giving me misleading information?
 

Vandroiy

Distinguished
Jul 14, 2011
15
0
18,510
Turns out, independent of the other issues, I was using cables that are broken by design.

ALL the cables I got were "digitus" cables, probably with the connectors confused. Adaptec and another controller expert both hinted me to it; some people just make cables that aren't normal -- and don't tell you when they sell 'em.