*BSD News Article 38846


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From: rmk@rmkhome.com (Rick Kelly)
Subject: Re: FreeBSD and Adaptec 1542CF SCSI
Organization: The Man With Ten Cats
References: <3b2u2e$27u@scoob.xap.com> <Roy-2711942134250001@adept.cts.com>
Message-ID: <9412012201.35@rmkhome.com>
Reply-To: rmk@rmkhome.com (Rick Kelly)
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 1994 03:01:40 GMT
Lines: 42

Roy Lovejoy (Roy@AdeptSolutions.com) wrote:
: In article <3b2u2e$27u@scoob.xap.com>, nb@xap.com (Nathan Bradshaw) wrote:
: > My roommate installed 2.0 RELEASE yesterday on his new Pentium 90 VLB/PCI
: > 16Mb with an ISA Adaptec 1542cf and a Conner 1.2Gb disk.  Overnight it
: > bombed out with an error much like:
 
: > sd0: aha0: aha154x debug: timeout (again)  retrying: (frozen?)
 
: > ...repeated again and again forever.  It boots fine and if left alone will
: > have this condition again after a couple hours.

: Nathan:

: This isn't really regarding FreeBSD, although I have a Dell 486 running
: NeXT Step, but IT has an Adaptec 1542c card. I get the same message(s) if
: the SCSI chain is too long. I think that the spec's say something like 6-9
: feet, but the adaptec card likes < 4. That's really not too much,
: considering most SCSI <-> SCSI cables are 3 feet. 

: My advice is to get those 18" cables and keep your SCSI connections AS
: SHORT AS POSSIBLE.

: That has *ALWAYS* solved the AHA timeouts for me.

I have 2 systems here.  One is a NetBSD system and the other is Coherent.

The Coherent box is a 486DX33 with 16 megs of memory and an Adaptec 1542cf
with about 9 feet of SCSI cable.  It is a news, mail, and development box
that grinds away 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with nary a timeout from
the Adaptec.  I have the Coherent driver sources, and the SCSI driver doesn't
seem to do any special dance with a 1542cf.

Maybe it's a termination problem or some SCSI peripheral is wedging the
SCSI bus.

I have used the 154xA and 154xB controllers with 15 foot, flat, unshielded
SCSI cables without the problems above.


-- 

Rick Kelly  rmk@rmkhome.com  rmk@bedford.progress.com  rmk@tencats.tiac.net