Steinar Haug <sthaug@nethelp.no>

I'm a satisfied user of the ASUS PCI-SC200SCSI controller. This SCSI controller (or more correctly, hostadapter) is based on the NCR/Symbios 53c810chip, which has no BIOS. Because the SCSI controller itself hasno BIOS, you need a motherboard with the necessary NCR/Symbios BIOS inorder to boot from your SCSI disk. This SCSI controller is inexpensive,and is a good way to get started with SCSI without having to spend afortune on a SCSI controller.

Note that if you don't need to actually boot from your SCSI disk,for instance if you have an EIDE boot disk, you may still be able to use a53c810 based SCSI controller even if your motherboard doesn't have theNCR/Symbios BIOS. It depends on your OS and your drivers:

It seems that the drivers that NCR/Symbios provides for most OSes makecalls to the NCR/Symbios BIOS (even when the boot drive isn't connected tothe 53c810 controller), and thus won't work without the NCR/Symbios BIOS.
On the other hand, if you use one of the freely available Unixes, whichdon't depend on the NCR/Symbios provided drivers, it should work.I've never tried it myself, though.

TYAN has the NCR/Symbios BIOS available as a BIOS upgrade for the Titan III and the Tomcat I/II motherboards. Wedge Technology The WT586T2-IDO, WT586FX-IDO, WT586T3-IDO and WTPRO-IDO motherboards. Note that most motherboards with a flash BIOS can have the NCR/Symbios BIOS appended to the normal BIOS. ROG STRIX Z370-E GAMING. Intel Z370 ATX gaming motherboard with Aura Sync RGB LED lighting, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, DDR4 4000MHz support, dual M.2, SATA 6Gbps and a USB 3.1 Gen 2 front-panel header.

There is no single place with information about which motherboards havethe necessary NCR/Symbios BIOS built in. I created this page to helpcollect this information and make it available for others. You can helpby sending me email and telling meabout motherboards you know of that have the NCR/Symbios BIOS built in.

Here is the list of motherboards that I know of with the NCR/Symbios BIOS.

ABIT The S5T2 motherboard.
Amptron Somemotherboards. I know of DX9500 VIP, DX9700 VIP, 7910A, PM7900, PM8800and Pro-1000 so far.
ASUS All motherboards.
BCM Advanced Research The SQ600motherboard.
Biostar The 8500TAX, 8500TUC,8500TVR, 8500TVX, 8600TNC, 8600TTC and 8600TTX motherboards.
The Chaintech 586IFM motherboard.
Concord The COA-520,COA-525 and COA-530 motherboards.
DataExpert The EXP8661motherboard.
Datalink The PCI504 and PCI500CS motherboards.
DFI The G686IPA and G686IPBmotherboards.
EPoX My own noname Pentium motherboard,model P55-ET. This is probably made by EPoX, and is sold by for instanceSuperbyte.The motherboard manual doesn't mention the NCR/Symbios BIOS at all,but it works great with the SC200!
FreeTech The FCT586F61-PB,FCT586F62, 586F63, P5F65, P5F72, P5F76, P5F83 and Pro66-SP motherboards.
Genoa The TurboExpress 586-HX and586-VX motherboards.
GigaByte The GA-486AM, GA-586AP,GA-5486AL, GA-586ALS, GA-586ATS and GA-586HX motherboards.(Actually, probably all GigaByte motherboards, but this hasnot been verified yet.)
HSB Computer Labs The MB/MS4144PC100 motherboard.
Intel Some motherboards.Specifically, the Intel Premiere, Premiere II, Marl and Tucsonmotherboards.
J.Bond The PCI400C-A,PCI-500C-G, PCI-500-CH2, PCI-600A and PCI-600B motherboards.
Megastar The AI5TV and PI58KTXmotherboards.
Micronics Some motherboardsprobably have it; I need more details about which ones!
M-Technology (MTI) The R526 andR528 motherboards (probably also other M-Technology motherboards).
Octek Some motherboards; I needmore details about which ones! I know of Ocean Rhino 9. There is alsoa BIOS update for the Bison 3 with the NCR/Symbios BIOS.
PC Chips (Fugu Tech) The M507,M520, M525, M530, M535, M701 and M919 motherboards.
QDI The P5I430VX Explorer ATX,P5I430VX-250 Explorer and Explorer II, P5I437FX-250A Chariot and P5I437FXmotherboards.
Shuttle The HOT-555and HOT-557 motherboards.
SOYO The SY-4SAW2/W5, SY-5TE2/E5,SY-5TF2/F5, SY-5TH2/H5, SY-5TS2/S5, SY-5TX2/X5, SY-5VA2/A5, SY-5VX2/X5,SY-5AA2/A5, SY-6FA2/A5 and SY-6FB2/B5 motherboards.
TMC The PCI54PV, AD6NFE, AI6NF,AD6NF9, TD6NF and TI6NF motherboards.
Tekram Most of the motherboards,as far as I can see from the documentation on the Tekram site. The P5T30-A4,P5T30-B4, P5T30-B4E, P5T30-WS, P5MVP-A4, P5VP3-B3, P5V30-B4, P6B40-A4X,P6B40D-A5, P6E40-A4, P6E40-M3/MS3, P6F40-B5, P6F40K-A5, P6L40-A4, P6L40-A4Eand P6L40-A4X motherboards, certainly.
TYAN has the NCR/Symbios BIOSavailable as a BIOS upgrade for the Titan III and the Tomcat I/IImotherboards.
Wedge Technology The WT586T2-IDO,WT586FX-IDO, WT586T3-IDO and WTPRO-IDO motherboards.

Note that most motherboards with a flash BIOS can have the NCR/SymbiosBIOS appended to the normal BIOS. There is a description of how to dothis in the MR BIOS FAQ.

A great source of information about PCI SCSI controllers, including53c810 based ones, is Patrick Duffy'sPCISCSI controllers for OS/2 list. Equally useful and informative is thePCI Motherboards for OS/2 list; some of the motherboards mentionedabove are from this list. More up-to-date versions are available from http://www.os2forum.or.at/english/info/os2hardwareinfo/.The comp.periphs.scsi FAQ has a lot of useful information about SCSIin general.

There are certainly other controllers than the ASUS PCI-SC200 based onthe 53c810 chip. However, the ASUS controller is one of the bestknown, and is also of pretty good mechanical and electrical quality.One of the things to note is that it has active termination onboard. Well, had. I was a bit disappointed to see that thelast card I bought only had passive termination on board (a resistorpack).

Other manufacturers of controllers based on NCR/Symbios chips (notonly the 53c810) are Acculogic, GigaByte, Tyan, DTC, LDP, Tekram andNexstor. Eric Smith has a nice table showing various SCSI controllers based on the NCR/Symbios chips.

The 53c810 based controllers work extremely well with FreeBSD (my mainoperating system), and as far as I know they also work well with NetBSDand Linux. I've never tried it with DOS/Windows, so I'll let othersspeak about this. You may find the Symbios Windows 95 FAQ and the Windows NT FAQuseful.

Some people find it hard to believe that a 53c810 based controller, whichis significantly less expensive than for instance the Adaptec2940, can perform as well. Well, for me it does! I have done quite a bitof testing with the Adaptec 2940UW and the ASUS PCI-SC200 on a 4 GByteSeagate Barracuda, and I found no measurable difference. As always,your mileage may vary.

Some hard numbers: Reading from the raw device, I get 6.8 MByte/ssustained on the outer tracks of a Seagate Barracuda 4, and 5.76MByte/s sustained over the whole disk. This is measured with lmdd (partof lmbench),on a Pentium-133 running FreeBSD 2.2-960612-SNAP.

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That being said, the Adaptec 2940 has a SCSI BIOS (so the motherboarddoesn't need one), and it also has somewhat greater flexibility(software selectable termination, etc). The 2940UW has considerablyhigher bandwidth (40 MByte/s) than the SC200, so if you want many fastdisks on your SCSI chain, the 2940UW may be a better choice.

There are now several controllers available based on the NCR/Symbios53c875 chip, for instance the ASUS PCI-SC875and the Tekram DC-390U/DC-390F.This chip has a built-in SCSI BIOS, and

NCR Motherboards Driver