Return to BSD News archive
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!constellation!qns1.qns.com!news.sprintlink.net!hookup!swrinde!sdd.hp.com!decwrl!decwrl!olivea!ames!cnn.nas.nasa.gov!wilbur.nas.nasa.gov!tweten From: tweten@wilbur.nas.nasa.gov (Dave Tweten) Subject: Texel CD-ROM Problem, and Solution Message-ID: <CMLEEs.1tI@nas.nasa.gov> Sender: news@nas.nasa.gov (News Administrator) Nntp-Posting-Host: wilbur.nas.nasa.gov Organization: NAS Systems Division, NASA Ames Date: Sun, 13 Mar 1994 07:35:16 GMT Lines: 37 A couple of weeks ago, someone sent a question to this list asking about device timeouts while copying the FreeBSD CD-ROM from his Texel drive to a SCSI hard disk. Since I was in the midst of investigating a similar problem, I responded to him directly and promised to post my eventual results. The problem is now permanently solved, so it's time to post. Both the original poster and I had Texel 3024 drives (his was the 5024 - the external version). It seems both of our drives were at firmware release level 1.09. The drive would begin the copy (in my case, of the filesys/usr/src tree), and soon go permanently busy. It would also grab the SCSI bus, resulting in the device timeouts for the other devices on the bus. In fact, a SCSI bus reset was not enough to get it to let go. Only power cycling it would return the Texel to normal. It was okay if it was the only active device on its SCSI bus, so CD browsing would work, and I was even able to copy data from the CD to another synchronous SCSI device, a QIC tape, with no trouble. It seemed that asynchronous SCSI activity on the bus was required to trigger the problem and that the faster the asynchronous device the sooner the problem would show up. The initial solution to the problem to move the Texel to a SCSI bus with no asynchronous mode devices. I also called Texel (now Plextor, or something like that). They said that firmware version 1.09 couldn't handle multiprogramming operating systems, and that version 1.13 was required. It cost my credit card $12 plus shipping, tax, etc. A couple of days ago, the new ROM arrived, along with several pages of installation instructions and a replacement stick-on dust cover. The bottom line is it worked. Today, I test-configured my machine so the Texel was back on the bus with the asynchronous mode devices, and successfully copied the filesys/usr/src tree from the FreeBSD CD to an asynchronous mode disk. For those who are interested, Texel technical support can be reached at 408-980-1838. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dave Tweten tweten@nas.nasa.gov NASA Ames Research Center, M/S 258-5 (415) 604-4416 Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000 FAX: (415) 604-4377