*BSD News Article 54849


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From: blau@mail.rogers.com (Benjamin Lau)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Help: Adaptec 2940 Not Found
Date: Sun, 12 Nov 1995 00:08:16 GMT
Organization: Rogers Communications Inc.
Lines: 97
Message-ID: <483dik$4qq@mail.Rogers.Com>
References: <47rfn7$qoo@mail.Rogers.Com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: 142.146.58.8
X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.0.82

I'd like to waste a little bit of the net's bandwidth to thank all the
people who had responded and helped to solve my problem. Hope you
don't mind :-)

The problem is not solved...and now it's suspected to be a problem of
Compaq's compatibility. When FBSD is booted from the install floppy,
the default/generic kernel does not detect the PCI bus, ie. "pci0" is
not seen at all.

I tried everything people suggested, including resetting everything
back to their defaults and downloaded the latest 2.1 snapshot, the
same problem persists.

So, I now turn to, yes, Compaq again, but different server model which
has both EISA and PCI buses. The result...without using any PCI card,
and disabled all the built-in PCI interfaces, replaced with EISA
interfaces, everything works fine.

Here's the new configuration I'm using and it works, except X11R6
because, again, Compaq doesn't say exactly what kind of video
controller they use on these "servers" (Prosignia 300/500 series):

- Prosignia 300/500
- Adaptec 2740 EISA SCSI-2
- Seagate Hawk 2G

I don't think we need to run any X application on these machines
(we'll have a total of 7)...so it's ok.


Thanks for all the support.


Ben

-----------------
blau@mail.rogers.com (Benjamin Lau) wrote:

>I've seen a couple of people saying that they had problem with Adaptec
>2940 PCI SCSI card (I believe what I have is just a regular 2940, not
>the 2940W), but I couldn't find anyone responding with the solution.
>So I assumed the problem could be resolved.

>I'm experiencing the same problem, and I hope that if you have made it
>to work, could you please tell me?

>I'm using a Compaq Deskpro Pentium 133Mhz with 64MB RAM, and 2 Adaptec
>2940 PCI (with BIOS version 1.11) cards with no luck. I also have an
>internal EIDE 1GB drive which I am not planning to use. My intention
>is to make FreeBSD 2.0.5 (dated June 95) to run only on the 3 internal
>and external 2GB (Seagate) SCSI drives.

>This is what I did:

>1. Configure the cards not to use shared IRQ, from Compaq's PCI setup.
>2. Record all Mem I/O, IRQ etc settings on paper.
>3. Set the card to load BIOS.
>4. Boot FreeBSD from the install floppy (which is made from the CD).

>The first problem is that it didn't detect any adaptec SCSI card at
>all.


>So, I took out one of the cards, repeated the above steps except that
>this time I rebooted with the -c (UserConfig) option, when it asked
>for boot option.

>I manually changed the settings on the device "ahc1" which I believe
>that refers to the Adaptec, such as IRQ, IOMEM etc.

>Then, try a "probe ahc1" and the system hung with some fatal errors on
>the screen.

>Then I rebooted again, with -c, changed the settings and went on to
>"quit" and continue the install process...

>Same problem, it does not see any Adaptec card at all, and of course
>it doesn't see the external CD-ROM drive...

>I quickly went through all the documents again, and again got the same
>feeling before I purchased all these...that the 2940 IS SUPPORTED!!!!

>Am I missing something? 

>Thanks in advance.


>Ben

>PS. Could you please reply by email 'cause this system is a proof of
>concept that FreeBSD is a good system to go with than spending extra
>$$$ to get some Sun boxes?