Thursday, May 27, 2010

Adaptec 2940 AU PCI SCSI-2 host adapter and Windows Vista

SCSI's been around for awhile - it used to be that the Adapted 1540 was the standard host adapter, but then the ISA bus went away... Now we can find PCMCIA, expresscard and even USB SCSI host adapters... but if you have PCI on your system, and a 2940 host adapter that worked fine in XP, why change now that you're on Windows Vista?

If you boot Vista with the 2940 installed, you will find that it will not install a driver - the adapter will show up in the Device Manager under "Other devices" with the exclamation point triangle...

There is, however, a driver that will work already in Vista... To load it proceed as follows:

Open the "SCSI Controller Properties"
In the "General" tab click on "Update Driver..."
Then "Browse my computer for driver software"
Then "Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer"
Scroll down and select "Storage Controllers"
Click on "Next"
Select "Adapter" as the manufacturer and "Adaptec AIC-7870 PCI SCSI Controller (Emulated)"
Click on "Next"
Click on "Yes" in the "Update Driver Warning" dialog.

After a few seconds you should get the "Windows has successfully updated your driver software" dialog.
Click on "Close"

Now you have a driver - and access to your old SCSI-2 disks (and Polaroid Film Scanner)..

It would be nice if this also worked for Windows 7... But the driver isn't there..

Once of these days I may try to move the djsvs.sys file(s) from Vista to W7...