Acard AEC-6890M User manual

PCI-to-SATA RAID Adapter
AEC-6890M
User’s Manual
Copyright © 2003 ACARD Technology Corp.
Release: August 2003
Version:1.0

Copyright and Trademarks
The information of the product in this manual is subject to change without prior
notice and does not represent a commitment on the part of the vendor, who as-
sumes no liability or responsibility for any errors that may appear in this manual.
ACARD and SCSIDE are the trademarks of ACARD Technology Corp. Microsoft
and the Windows Logo are the registered trademarks, and Windows is the trade-
mark of Microsoft Corporation. All brands and trademarks are the properties of their
respective owners.
This manual contains materials protected under International Copyright Laws. All
rights reserved. No part of this manual may be reproduced in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without the written per-
mission of the manufacturer and the author. All inquires should be addressed to
ACARD Technology Corp.

Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction .......................................4
1.1 Overview ................................................................ 4
1.2 Features ................................................................. 4
1.3 Specifications........................................................ 4
1.4 Package.................................................................. 5
Chapter 2 Hardware Installation........................6
2.1 Quick Installation .................................................. 6
2.2 HDD Compatibility ................................................ 7
2.3 Before Installation................................................. 7
2.4 Hardware Installation............................................ 9
2.5 DIP Switch Setting .............................................. 10
Chapter 3 System Installation .........................11
3.1 Install OS into HDD with the Adapter.................11
3.1.1 Install OS 9 into HDD with the Adapter........................ 11
3.1.2 Install OS X into HDD with the Adapter ....................... 13
3.1.3 Verify System Profiler .................................................... 14
3.2 Install the Adapter in Current OS ...................... 18
3.2.1 In OS 9 ............................................................................. 18
3.2.2 In OS X............................................................................. 20
3.2.3 Verify System Profiler .................................................... 21
3.3 AEC-6890M RAID Utility ..................................... 21
Chapter 4 Troubleshooting..............................26
Technical Support Form....................................27

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nPower requirement --- Voltage: 3.3V +/–2%
5V +/–2%
Current: 0.5A Max.
nEnvironment --- Operating temperature: 0oC to 70oC
Storage temperature: –20oC to 85oC
nHumidity --- 15% to 90%
nDimensions --- Width: 12.95cm
Height: 6.77cm
nConnectors --- Two 7-pin SATA connectors
1.3 Specifications
Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Overview
ACARD AEC-6890M is a 32-bit, 33MHz, 2-channel, high-performance PCI-to-SATA
RAID adapter. It supports RAID 0, 1 and normal modes. It also provides a window-
based RAID Utility for easy management of the RAID subsystem. AEC-6890M is fit
for Macintosh workstations and servers.
1.2 Features
nA PCI-to-SATA RAID controller.
nHas two independent SATA channels.
nSupports 32-bit, 33MHz PCI Bus Master (PCI 2.2 compliance).
nSupports data transfer rate of 133MB/s.
nSupports RAID 0, 1and normal modes.
nBootable from standard and RAID volume.
nDIP switch setting for RAID and normal modes.
nSupports Mac OS 8.5 , OS 9 and OS X.
nSupports G3 blue & white and G4 series Power Mac machines.

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1.4 Package
When you open the package, please examine the following items.
nAEC-6890M × 1
nInternal Serial ATA Cable ×2
nUser’s Manual × 1
nACARD Support CD × 1
nPower cord for Serial ATA hard drive (optional)
nY-splitter power cord for IDE hard drive and converter (for package with
AEC-7900 enclosure only)

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Chapter 2 Hardware Installation
You can install AEC-6890M and hard drives successfully to your Mac machine ac-
cording to subsection 2.1. Before installing the operating system, if the hard drives
connected to AEC-6890M contain important data, you had better back up.
2.1 Quick Installation
1. Open the Mac machine’s or Power Mac’s case (refer to Mac manual).
2. Choose an empty PCI slot to insert AEC-6890M.
3. Install hard drives into the Mac machine or Power Mac.
4. Connect AEC-6890M and the hard drives with serial ATA cables.
5. Close the Mac machine’s or Power Mac’s case.
In addition, before using the hard dirves, you should examine and initialize them in
Normal mode with the Disk Utility no matter what RAID mode you are going to set.
Thus, RAID can work normally.
The picture of AEC-6890M is shown on the next page.

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2.2 HDD Compatibility
AEC-6890M is specially designed for DMA hard drives. It supports most SATA hard
drives of the following brands.
nSeagate
nMaxtor
nWestern Digital
2.3 Before Installation
Before the installation of AEC-6890M, you need to know the following three modes
in order to make the best use of the adapter. However, it is strongly recommended
to use hard drives of the same model and capacity so as to get the best efficiency
and stability.
LED Pins
Serial Port 2 Serial Port 1
The PCI-to-SATA RAID Adapter
AEC-6890M

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Mirroring Mode (RAID 1)
1. Mirroring means to save every piece of data into two hard drives at the same
time. The two hard drives contain the same data, therefore the efficiency of this
mode is not higher than that of a general hard drive. The main function is that
when one of the hard drives fails, another will keep working, and thus data won’t
be lost.
2. If the capacity of two hard drives is different, AEC-6890M will take the hard drive
of the smaller capacity as the standard. And the whole capacity you can use is
the samller hard drive.
3. RAID 1 requires two hard drives.
Normal Mode (NON-RAID)
1. If you set the DIP switch as normal mode, you will use AEC-6890M as an ordi-
nary SATA adapter.
2. AEC-6890M doesn’t support ATAPI devices such as CD/DVD-ROM.
Striping Mode (RAID 0)
1. Striping means to divide a piece of data into several small pieces of data with the
same size. The data is accessible from several hard drives at the same time.
This mode can greatly enhance the overall efficiency, but it doesn’t provide any
fault tolerance.
2. If hard drives are different in capacity, AEC-6890M will take the hard drive of the
smallest capacity as the standard, and multiply with the total number of hard
drives. The value will be the total capacity of striping array.
3. RAID 0 requires two hard drives.

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2.4 Hardware Installation
It is quite easy to connect the serial ATA cable and the power cord to SATA hard
drives, because they are foolproof. The methods are given below.
(1). Connect the serial ATA cable to AEC-6890M and the serial hard drive.
(2). Connect the power cord to the hard drive.
However, in order to let IDE hard drives usable, ACARD has designed an ATA-to-
SATA converter AEC-7900. The converter doesn’t need any driver. And its installa-
tion is quite easy.
(1). Connect one end of the serial ATA cable to AEC-6890M and another end to the
ATA-to-SATA converter.
(2). Connect the converter to the IDE hard drive, then connect them with a Y-splitter
power cord.

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Please follow the instructions below to get a suitable RAID DIP switch setting.
1. Normal Mode --- In this mode you should set DIP switch 1 and 2 as
OFF. The default is OFF. ON
1 2
2. Striping Mode (RAID 0) --- RAID 0 is 2 hard drives that store
striping data, but appears as a single volume in the computer. This
mode is formed by setting DIP switch 1 as OFF and 2 as ON.
2.5 DIP Switch Setting
RAID configurations must be set on AEC-6890M’s DIP switch. However, after in-
stalling hard drives to the serial ports, do not arbitrarily change the positions other-
wise the adapter may misunderstand and the data may be lost.
3. Mirroring Mode (RAID 1) --- RAID 1 is a pair of hard drives that
store mirroring data, and is regarded as a single volume. This mode
is formed by setting DIP switch 1 as ON and 2 as OFF.
NOTICE: The serial ATA cable is used to transfer data of very high
frequency. It is suggested not to connect and disconnect it often, for the
connector is easily damaged.
ON
1 2
ON
1 2
ON
1 2

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Chapter 3 System Installation
This chapter is going to tell you how to install and use the hard drives connected to
AEC-6890M in different operating systems (OS 9 , OS X) and applications. The
built-in driver in OS X 10.1 and 10.2 is not exclusively designed for AEC-6890M.
Therefore you should update the driver before installation. The installations of OS 9
and OS X are somewhat different.
3.1 Install OS into HDD with the Adapter
Here we will install OS 9 and OS X into the hard drive(s) connected with AEC-
6890M, the adapter. After installation, you can boot from the original hard drive or
the newly arrayed drives.
3.1.1 Install OS 9 into HDD with the Adapter
1. Be sure that the hardware is installed correctly.
2. Insert the OS 9 source CD into CD/DVD-ROM.
3. Power on and press “C”key.
4. Wait for the appearance of OS 9.
5. Double click “Utilities”.

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6. Double click “Drive Setup”.
7. Choose the hard drive connected to AEC-6890M, then click “Initialize”. For de-
tailed information of “Drive Setup”, please refer to Mac OS manual.
8. Quit “Drive Setup Utility”and start to install OS 9 into the hard drive(s) or array.
9. Then install RAID Utility (refer to 3.3) to monitor RAID volume and hard drives.

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3.1.2 Install OS X into HDD with the Adapter
1. Be sure that the hardware is installed correctly.
2. Insert the OS X source CD into CD/DVD-ROM.
3. Power on, press “option”key, and choose to boot from CD/DVD-ROM.
4. Before installation,click “Installer”on the top selection row.
5. Click “Open Disk Utility”.
6. Choose the hard drive you want to initialize, and click “Partition”to decide the
number of partitions you need.
NOTICE: Do not skip step 3 otherwise AEC-6890M may wrongly detect
the RAID mode. However, if you’re an OS X 10.3 user, you can just
press “C”key to boot from CD/DVD-ROM.

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8. Quit “Disk Utility”and start the OS X installation.
9. Update the driver of AEC-6890M to the newest version, which is in the ACARD
support CD. Or download the driver from http://www.acard.com.
10. Install RAID Utility (refer to 3.3) to monitor RAID volume and hard drives.
3.1.3 Verify System Profiler
For Mac OS 9
After you initialize the hard drive successfully, a new
“Untitled”hard drive icon will appear on the Mac window.
Of course you can give the hard drive a name.
7. After partitioning or erasing the volume, you can click “First Aid”to verify the disk
partition into which you are about to install OS X.
NOTICE: If you’re an OS X 10.3 user, you don’t need to update, because
the newest version of driver is already built in the OS.

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2. Under “Apple System Profiler”click “Devices and Volumes”to read the status of
devices. And choose “PCI”to find the SCSI card and hard drives. (Owing to the
same chipset in 6890M and 6880M, 6890M is regarded as 6880M. In fact, apart
from the different display, 6890M’s functions are all right.)
You can find the information of AEC-6890M under the Apple Logo. Please follow
the instructions below to read the system information.
1. Click Apple Logo and choose “Apple System Profiler”.

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For Mac OS X 10.3
Basically if you have installed the hard drive and AEC-6890M successfully, and
have partitioned or erased the hard drive, one or more hard drive icons will appear
on the desktop. You can use the built-in Disk Utility to verify or repair the hard drive
when it has something wrong.
You can find the information of AEC-6890M under the Apple Logo. Please click
“About This Mac”and then “More Info”.
Another way of finding the system information is described below.
1. Click “Finder”at the bottom of the Mac OS screen.

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2. Click “Applications”on the tool row.
3. Under “Applications”click “Utilities”.
4. Under “Utilities”click “Apple System Profiler”.
5. Under “Apple System Profiler”click “Devices and Volumes”to read the detailed
information of AEC-6890M and disk array. (Owing to the same chipset in 6890M
and 6880M, 6890M is regarded as 6880M. In fact, apart from the different dis-
play, 6890M’s functions are all right.)

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3.2 Install the Adapter in Current OS
We are going to install AEC-6890M in the current OS 9 and OS X 10.3.
3.2.1 In OS 9
1. Be sure that the hardware is installed correctly.
2. Decide the RAID mode you need and set it by DIP switch.
3. Power on.
4. Double click “Utilities”under OnBoard\Applications.
6. Click “Extensions”to see the version of AEC-6890M’s driver.

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5. Double click “Drive Setup”.
6. Choose the newly installed hard drive, and click “Initialize”.
7. You can see the initialized or partitioned volume on the desktop.
8. Then install RAID Utility (refer to 3.3) to monitor RAID volume and hard drives.

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6. Initialize the newly installed hard drive by clicking “Partition”.
3.2.2 In OS X
1. Be sure that the hardware is installed correctly.
2. Decide the RAID mode you need and set it by DIP switch.
3. Power on.
4. Update the driver of AEC-6890M to the newest version, which is in the ACARD
support CD. Or download the driver from http://www.acard.com. (If you’re an OS
X 10.3 user, you can skip this step.)
5. Double click “Disk Utility”under OnBoard\Applications\Utilities. (OnBoard repre-
sents the OnBoard Mac hard drive.)