From owner-freebsd-scsi Sun Oct 3 3:35:33 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-scsi@freebsd.org Received: from front6.grolier.fr (front6.grolier.fr [194.158.96.56]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 462EC1538B for ; Sun, 3 Oct 1999 03:35:14 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from groudier@club-internet.fr) Received: from localhost (ppp-162-210.villette.club-internet.fr [195.36.162.210]) by front6.grolier.fr (8.9.3/No_Relay+No_Spam_MGC990224) with SMTP id MAA24031 for ; Sun, 3 Oct 1999 12:35:08 +0200 (MET DST) Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 12:56:22 +0200 (MET DST) From: Gerard Roudier X-Sender: groudier@localhost To: scsi@FreeBSD.org Subject: SYM driver 0.6.0 -> BETA Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE Sender: owner-freebsd-scsi@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Hello, I just made available sym driver release 0.6.0 at: ftp://ftp.tux.org/pub/roudier/drivers/freebsd/experimental/ Since I have completed successfully all the testings I had=20 planned, and based on the few number of problem reports I=20 received (all have hopefully been fixed), I have decided to=20 switch the sym driver status to BETA-RELEASE for the support=20 of SPI2 and i386 architecture. The testings of the C1010 support (Ultra-3 DT data transfer=20 support) is planned to be performed at LSILOGIC by Pamela Delaney=20 , since I haven't all needed hardware=20 resources for that testings, neither I have time enough for.=20 Pamela has added support for the C1010 to the Linux sym53c8xx=20 driver and her current sym53c8xx driver version is working=20 quite well with C1010 revision 0. I donnot have information=20 about the availibility of C1010 based controllers. Hopefully=20 this will happen at the beginning of Year 2000 or just before. The purpose of the sym_hipd driver for FreeBSD is to provide=20 the best possible support for 810A, 860, 825A, 875, 876, 885, 895,=20 895A, 896 and 1010 SYMBIOS/LSI PCI-SCSI controllers which is not=20 provided by the stock ncr driver. The old chips (810, 815, 825),=20 that are not supported by the sym_hipd driver can be reasonnably supported by the ncr driver that had been designed and implemented=20 at the time of the 810/815/825. I also have planned to propose=20 some minor enhancements and to rewrite some code related to=20 FreeBSD-CAM in the ncr driver. Performance comparisons between the ncr and the sym drivers may=20 allow to suspect bugs in a driver or to give clues about pathes =20 in the ncr driver that need to be improved. People who may want=20 to demonstrate that ncr is faster than sym are wasting their time=20 in my not so humble opinion. On the other hand, it would be interesting to have some results=20 addressing reliability and performances comparisons against=20 equivalent host adapters from other vendors (given reasonnable SIM). For now, I didn't received any result of this kind. Even if my crystal ball has told me about the reasons of this=20 lacking of reports, I would be glad to check how it has been right. ;-) Thanks in advance for the reports. G=E9rard. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-scsi" in the body of the message