Scott Burns wrote:

> 
> I am getting a little desperate now.  If I don't get
> this thing working in the next week or so management
> is going to say put NT on it as they don't want  $ 12K
> sitting around doing nothing ;-( I can always start with
> a single controller but I would really like to use the
> second one with two drives per controller.
> 

If it's possible that the fact that one of the cards
is using IRQ5 is messing it up, perhaps you could reserve
IRQ5 for an ISA device in your PNP BIOS.  Although no
ISA device would be using it, this should prompt the PCI
card(s) to avoid using it.  You might also have to choose
"reset configuration data" or whatever your BIOS calls
it, so devices would be told to negotiate anew for which
IRQ's they use.

You say each card works fine by itself---could this be
a PCI slot problem?  Some types of cards want to be a
"bus master" and on certain motherboards only certain
slots support this.  Maybe you could try a different
slot or pair of slots.  Or, maybe the two cards are
fighting each other for control of the bus and locking
it up.  Perhaps there is a setting in the "Control-A"
Adaptec BIOS setup at boot time which could resolve this.

-Alex (:-)
 alex@santa.asf.alaska.edu