FAQ's FOR 4.xx BIOS AND DRIVERS For Host Bus Adapters That Use An SYM53C8xx SCSI Processor 1. I have a SCSI Host Bus Adapter (HBA) that has an NCR 53C810 chip on it, Can I use the Symbios Logic bios flash utility to upgrade the SDMS bios on the motherboard? NO! Do not attempt to flash the system bios with our utility. The only authorized bios upgrades are through the system manufacturer. The Symbios Logic flash utility is designed to work on HBA's that have an onboard flash rom for bios support. 2. I have an 810 controller and the manufacturer of the motherboard does not have an upgrade to support the 4.x bios, can I use the new drivers. Yes, the 4.x drivers are designed to be backward compatable to SDMS version 3.04.00. You cannot use the 3.x drivers (doscam, minicam, etc) with the versions 4.x SDMS bios. We cannot guarantee that the 4.x drivers will work with every version of 3.x bios. 3. Will the 4.x bios provide any performance enhancements for my HBA. Yes, It does improve bootup time for removeable media devices, and provide synchronous and wide disk drive access without the need for device drivers. It will not provide fast20 support unless the scsi processor and hard drive support this feature. Even if the Operating system says this is turned on. 4. Is There any configuration utility for the new bios? Yes, but none of the older HBA's will support the utility feature. 5. Is there an upgraded Doscam driver? No, Doscam (and Minicam) have been replaced with the Aspi8xx.sys driver. 6. When do I need to install the Aspi8xx.sys driver? Although the system will boot without drivers, (the SDMS bios will work with a scsi hard drive only in the system) Aspi8xx.sys provides an interface to popular aspi applications. All of the other 4.x device drivers work through aspi8xx.sys. This is true for winaspi support, and 32 bit file and disk access as well. 7. When do I need Symdisk and Symcd? Symdisk is needed for support for any removeable-media drives and for data transfers in non-512 byte sectors.(this includes cdrom burners.) Symcd is needed for all scsi cdroms attached to the scsi cable. For cdrom drive letter assignment you need the MSCDEX driver in the autoexec.bat file. 8. What is the reason for winaspi.dll and winaspi.386. Although aspi8xx.sys supports the aspi interface it does not support aspi calls from an Windows application. The winaspi drivers handle and improve Windows performance. 9. I would like to run Windows95, Windows NT xx on my system, what device drivers do I need? The device driver for Win95, Windows NT3.51, and 4.0 is bundled in each individual operating system. Both will work with the 4.xx bios. 10. I would like to run OS2/Warp Networked in an Novell network. Will this work with the 4.xx bios? Yes, There are 4.xx drivers that support both OS2 and Novell 3.12 and 4.0. These drivers can be downloaded from our web site or BBS. 11. Can I operate my tape backup application from Windows 3.11? Yes using the 4.xx drivers provides you with an winaspi interface which will allow you to operate from Window 3.11. It is part of the install.exe 12. Does the 4.xx bios provide 32 bit file and disk access in Windows 3.11? No. This is related to the device drivers, If your system allows the use of the 4.xx drivers than you can get 32-bit file and disk access provided there are no IDE hard drives and the first 2 scsi hard drives support this feature. Please read the file newdos.txt that is part of the dos40.zip package before installing the new device drivers.