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Xref: sserve comp.periphs.scsi:15393 comp.os.386bsd.questions:6941 comp.unix.osf.osf1:1418 Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!usc!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!hamblin.math.byu.edu!news.byu.edu!cwis.isu.edu!u.cc.utah.edu!cs.weber.edu!terry From: terry@cs.weber.edu (A Wizard of Earth C) Newsgroups: comp.periphs.scsi,comp.os.386bsd.questions,comp.unix.osf.osf1 Subject: Re: Driver for Adaptec 274xT Date: 17 Nov 1993 07:22:01 GMT Organization: Weber State University, Ogden, UT Lines: 103 Message-ID: <2ccjep$n5d@u.cc.utah.edu> References: <CGDFu3.477@tfs.com> <2c09tq$mji@homer.cs.mcgill.ca> <CGEzD8.GJH@tsoft.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.weber.edu Keywords: scsi adaptec driver In article <CGEzD8.GJH@tsoft.net> tedm@tsoft.net (Ted Matsumura) writes: [ ... Re: Adaptec technical support ... ] > >The tech. support there is now pretty good. I don't think any of their >competitors have 800 numbers, 20 line BBS's, fax back, etc. > First of all, a nit to pick: a BBS does me little good if I can't install an OS to run a comm program with... in any case, I'd prefer an xmosaic or telnet'able BBS to one I have to call, anyway. I like 800 support, but I'll pay for the call to get *good* support; to me, it is not an issue, and certainly not a purchase point unless all other things are equal ...and they are not! Let me relate my Adaptec problems: NetBSD had just come out, and since one of its goals was multiplatform support, I decided to finally break down and buy a >*yetch*< Intel based machine to use as a reference port and cross developement platform (prior to that time, I was installing on miscellaneous unused 386 and 486 hardware). I called Adaptech and asked them if their 1742 EISA controller could be configured to turn translation off. In retrospect, I should have asked "do you know what translation is" first... When my new system arrived and my shiny new AHA174x EISA controller was installed, I found that translation could *not* be turned off, at least with the EISA configuration disk provided, and that the EISA configuration disk provided did not match their manual. After several hours on the phone with support people, I was reassured that you could indeed turn translation off, but that the 3.0 EISA cinfiguration disk being shipped with their controllers couldn't do it, and they would ship me a 3.1 configuration disk overnight (which, "lo!", should also match my documentation). After waiting 2 weeks (in case it was shipped UPS ground on the Friday of the week I called -- I called on a Monday), I called back and asked for an EISA 3.1 configuration disk. Of course, no one knew what I was talking about. After another hour of my time (my time is worth a hell of a lot of money), they agreed to ship out the disk Fed Ex. To my astonishment, they actaully Fed Ex'ed the disk! ...only two days after they said they would! Anxiously, I ran the configuration and found out that I could indeed turn of disk translation ...by turning on *advanced* disk translation. A call back, and an hour later, they admitted that no, they could not turn off translation with the config disks, it must have been a misunderstanding on my part, and it was a stupid thing to want to do anyway. I explained that I wanted to boot a protected mode operating system that shared a disk with a DOS partition on it, and they said that there was no problem doing that. I patiently explained that, *yes* there was a problem doing that, and tried to explain *why* there was a problem... the following is a quote, exact as I can make it, from a suppoedly UNIX support person at Adaptec: "Look, I don't care! I don't have time to have you tell me how UNIX boots!" I replied that UNIX, without a great deal of additional hacking, would *not* boot on their controllers (yes, I had tried both SVR4.02 and SCO UNIX, in frustration!), and aked what we could do to resolve the problem... was there a way to turn the translation off by hacking the BIOS? I was more than willing to burn my own ROMs... "No, there's not; it should work fine with *any* UNIX!" A few more attempts... A few tries to get his manager on the phone... ...him hanging up on me. All in all, I think they are rude, arrogant, and totally unknowledgable. If they "don't have time" to let me tell them how UNIX boots for free, they ought to hire someone to tell them for big $$$ (given the number of Intel UNIX implementations, there's probably less than 100 of us), because they sure as hell don't know. To date and to my knowledge, the *BSD implementations are the only ones which can install correctly on translated drives without a lot of hacking, and it's still very cumbersome. Given the small number of UNIX and UNIX like OS's that support mounting DOS FS's, I suspect even if you could get installed on a translated drive, you would have a hell of a time mounting DOS FS's other than the first partition, and then you'd have to be lucky anyway and hit a translated/untranslated cylinder boundry (ever wonder why so many people recommend 0 and 1 as offsets?).. Unless there is an obvious change of attitude, I *will not* be doing buisness with Adaptec in the future, nor will anyone whose purchasing decisions I can influence by recounting my experiences.