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From: jcm@urania.harvard.edu (Jonathan McDowell)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.hardware,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: adaptec 2940. broken. details inside
Followup-To: comp.os.linux.hardware,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Date: 4 Jun 97 15:48:42 GMT
Organization: Harvard University University Information Systems
Lines: 32
Message-ID: <33958e5a.0@cfanews.harvard.edu>
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Steven Bjork (sbjork@filoli.com) wrote:
: Again, no one has emailed me or posted that the adaptecs are
: currently working in any of their linux or freebsd hosts under
: the conditions I mentioned--multiple scsi disks under heavy
: load, such as in a news server.
Steven: I just got an Adaptec 2940UW working on a system
with one internal 2Gb SCSI disk, an external SCSI dat drive
and three external SCSI disks (2Gb, 3Gb, 4Gb). However,
it doesn't get the sort of continuous load that your news
server would have.
When I first started out, the Adaptec died and hung during
boot, and sometimes didn't even see one of the disks at all.
I discovered (after mucho experiments) that for my system the
trick was to disable SCAM/PnP in the Adaptec setup menu,
and I also used the 'aic7xxx=no_reset' boot option and
disabled WIDE negotation for my external devices which are
all non-wide. The SCAM thing seems to be the crucial factor though.
Now it works fine, except that it won't boot Win95 anymore..
I have to reenable PnP for that and take off my external load,
which is a real pain. Of course, some might say that not
being able to boot Win95 is a bonus :-) (and if I could find
another way to print out those stupid Word documents people keep emailing
me, I would happily scrub it from the disk!).
Offered in the spirit of 'Yet Another A240 Anecdote',
Jonathan McDowell
jcm@urania.harvard.edu