SCSI Drives & Apricot ESDI/SCSI Controller

The Apricot ESDI/SCSI controller has the ability to drive a maximum of 2 SCSI hard disks. During the POST sequence, the BIOS of this card searches for connected devices. If no devices are found within the drive ID area of 0 or 1, an error 10482 is displayed.

This error, as mentioned above, basically means that there is something wrong with the drive subsystem setup. This could either be a faulty card, faulty drive, or incorrect drive ID settings.

All Quantum SCSI drives are shipped with a default drive ID of 6. If the drive is fitted into a system by Apricot, the drive ID will be changed to 0. If,however, this drive is sourced from a 3rd party, this cannot be guaranteed and therefore requires inspection prior to fitting.

Three jumpers labelled A0, A1 and A2 control the drive ID. With no jumpers fitted, the drive ID would be 0. A0 is the least significant bit.

When the ESDI/SCSI controller is referenced, the ESDI/SCSI BIOS is shown as 'disabled'. This is due to the inclusion of the ESDI command set within the system BIOS.

When the system is powered up, it detects the presence of the ESDI/SCSI firmware and disables it. If the card was to be installed in a system that did not include the ESDI command set within its BIOS, it would remain enabled. Its inclusion in the ADF file is therefore for compatibility with IBM systems.