DFI NF4 SLI-DR sometimes skipping SCSI bios

[Jarnis]

Hmm. Not happy. Well, the NF4 SLI-DR I got works great, as does the X850XT - except that the motherboard has tendency to skip over the SCSI BIOS of my 19160 adaptec card. I see no pattern - sometimes it sees the bios, detects the drives fine and everything works. Sometimes it skips the bios (the card is still showing in the boot list of PCI devices) and as end result the system cannot boot from the SCSI drive. It may detect the BIOS of the card 3-4 times in a row, then suddenly not detect it 10 times in a row. Just hitting reset or CTRL+ALT+DEL always results in same as previous boot, so it starts to 'lose' the card only after cold start - and once it has 'lost' the card, it won't find it unless I try a cold start.

 

Unplugging all other drives (the 3 SATA and 4 PATA drives I have) makes no difference, so I'm quite sure it's not a power supply issue.

 

I've updated the adaptec BIOS to the latest there is (3.10.0) and the motherboard bios to the latest official (126 I think?). No change.

 

If I get the system to detect the bios and boot, then it works flawlessly for hours on end. It's just a problem with the board bootup apparently 'skipping' the adaptec SCSI BIOS randomly.

 

Any ideas? Some kind of compatibility issue with the board and the SCSI card? I've tried both PCI slots - the bottom slot seems to work better, tho this is based on very limited sample set (I tried half dozen boots with the card at upper PCI slot and it never found it, I switched it to bottom slot and it found it first time I tried. Then two boots later it again lost the card, only to find it after couple of cold start attempts)

 

And yes, 2GB works fine with the board at least as 333Mhz. I havent tried upping it to 400Mhz yet as I want the rest of the rig completely stable and everything working fine before I move from base settings to anything else.

 

Beyond this issue I'm pleased with the board. However, the FrontX front panel thingy was bit of a letdown. Too short cables for a full tower case (Especially the 'diagnostic led' bit - it barely reaches from the bottom corner of the board to the other corner, let alone to a 5.25" slot well above the board). Also I wonder what's the point of getting optical SPDIF out to the *front*. I want that to the back. Too bad there is no bracet where I could screw the spdif received (its dechable) so I could add it to the rear. Now I just have it hanging out of an open expansion slot, which is slightly ugly, but works. Also as far as I can see, the frontX has no USB connectors which I found to be bit odd, and again the firewire one had too short cable for my case. Then again I bought the box for the board so it wasn't a big deal.