*BSD News Article 58351


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From: dcmyers@access4.digex.net (David Myers)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: NCR810 SCSI help needed!
Date: 7 Jan 1996 00:46:08 -0500
Organization: Express Access Online Communications USA: 800-969-9090
Lines: 69
Message-ID: <4cnmn0$dk8@access4.digex.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: access4.digex.net




I picked up an NCR810-based SCSI controller the other day, and have been
struggling with it ever since.  At 68 bucks, maybe I don't have any right
to complain, but here's what's happening.  Any help would be greatly
appreciated.


Background: 

Pentium/75 system with 16 megs of RAM, 4 PCI slots.  Quantum Fireball one
gigabyte SCSI drive, NEC double-speed CDROM.  No IDE devices are present;
all I've got are the two SCSI devices and my trusty 1.44 floppy.  The
Fireball still has MacOS on it, so I'm working from floppy-only until it
gets formatted.  It's just me and DOS 6.22.  The motherboard says its BIOS
supports NCR810 and Adaptec SCSI devices.  Using the BIOS set-up program, I
tell it the main disk is SCSI.


The Card:

Cute little NCR810-based PCI card bought from Technoland in Santa Clara,
California.  "Made in Taiwan."  The card has almost *nothing* on it -- the
'810 chip, a 40 MHz crystal, a couple of jumpers, that's it.  The manual is
indecipherable, but I understand it supports PCI bus mastering,
scatter/gather, full SCSI-II, etc.  The sales guy tells me it doesn't work
on all systems, but can't give me any particulars.  The card says it must
be placed in the busmastering PCI slot, but my motherboard manual doesn't
tell me which one that is (I assume slot one).  The only jumper on the card
selects between "INTA", "INTB", "INTC", and "INTD".  I have no idea what
those mean.  I'm not a PC person.  It came set on INTA, but just to be
different, I put it on INTB.


The Symptoms:

Remember, I still have to format the SCSI disk.  Which means I've got to
install some SCSI drivers so DOS can see the thing.  So, I blindly copy
over the following files onto my boot floppy, but note with some suspicion
that they're copyright *1993* by NCR Corporation:

DOSCAM.SYS
CDROM.SYS
MSCDEX.EXE

I figured that these would act as the high-level DOS drivers, which would
work in conjunction with my motherboard's SCSI BIOS to let met get access
to the Fireball. Once the Fireball and the CDROM are on-line, I slip in the
FreeBSD CD and off I go.  Well, no.  I get a message saying that the NCR
BIOS would not load, because "SDMS BIOS not found."  Now, I don't know what
"SDMS BIOS" is, but my motherboard is supposed to be able to drive the '810
chip.  What happened?  I've got an indecipherable SCSI manual, an
indecipherable motherboard manual, and almost no PC knowledge.

I have no idea what to do next.  Do any of you?  My only goal is to get
FreeBSD running; I couldn't care less about this MS-DOS nonsense, and would
happily skip DOS-level formatting if it can somehow be avoided.  Thanks in
advance.

-David.




-- 
________________________________________
David C. Myers
dcmyers@access.digex.net