Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 23:28:54 -0700 (PDT) From: Howard Lew <digital@www2.shoppersnet.com> To: Gerard Roudier <groudier@club-internet.fr> Cc: Dan Busarow <dan@dpcsys.com>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-scsi@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: NCR 53c875 SCSI Problems Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980930230422.11893C-100000@www2.shoppersnet.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.95.980927083736.360D-100000@localhost>
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On Sun, 27 Sep 1998, Gerard Roudier wrote: > > On Sat, 26 Sep 1998, Howard Lew wrote: > > > On Sat, 26 Sep 1998, Howard Lew wrote: > > > > > On Sat, 26 Sep 1998, Dan Busarow wrote: > > > > > > > On Sat, 26 Sep 1998, Howard Lew wrote: > > > > > Somehow, the Seagate Hawk drive is having or causing the command failure > > > > > problem -- something that never occurred with the 810 when using freebsd. > > > > > > > > Try going into the SCSI setup on boot up and set the transfer speed > > > > to 20MB so it doesn't try wide negotiation. > > > > I tried setting the speed to 20MB and keeping it at 8 bit, but regardless > > > of what I do the FreeBSD bootup probe still says it is wide scsi and that > > > 16 bit is enabled. Right after that it starts all the command failed > > > messages. I flashed upgraded the bios and it didn't help. > > The FreeBSD ncr driver does not read the user-setup from NVRAM and it is > not possible to tell it about the BUS width at boot time. So, the WIDE > negotiation has every chance to occur with great success and, as a result, > will break any further data transfer between the controller and the > device. > Yes. This appears to be the problem. Because the driver doesn't seem to be able to correctly identify the bus width, I think it would be a better idea to read the NVRAM values if they are available. Otherwise, those of us (anyone really) using a SCSI hard drive that supports a WIDE bus but is running it on a NARROW bus connector on a NCR/Symbios 53c875 card may run into this same problem. Unfortunately, it is not a simple problem to fix unless you already have a FreeBSD system that is bootable off of another drive. If this is the case, the fix is trivial by modifying ncr.c But imagine a user trying to install FreeBSD and boot from boot.flp and failing each time when the controller isn't able to talk to the hard drive after switching to the WIDE bus. I think this is a serious enough problem to require a fix... > > > Is there a way to force the driver to use narrow mode? I know this hard > > > disk can do wide scsi, but I am using the 50 pin connector right now. Is > > > narrow the default? So if I comment out the code in the setwide in ncr.c > > > should that do the trick? > > You will get the desired effect by just masking the FE_WIDE bit in the > 'features' bitmap which is the main result of the chip probe code. > Look into ncr_attach(), the patch should be trivial and very short. > Thanks for the good tip. > > I did some more checking around and found out that Debian Linux also works > > fine with the Seagate Hawk/Diamond Fireport 40 combination. But FreeBSD, > > The Linux driver reads the user-setup from the controller NVRAM and apply > user desired controller and devices settings. It is also possible to send > it boot parameters. The 2nd method is only usefull for controllers that > donnot have NVRAM. > > At the time I have back-ported the Ultra1/2 SCSI support to the FreeBSD > ncr driver, the NVRAM code was available in the Linux ncr53c8xx driver, > but this code hasn't been candidate to the back-port, since SteFan was > working on a different implementation for FreeBSD. > hmmm... Stefan? If you are listenining, any ideas to a real fix? > > NetBSD, and OpenBSD all suffer from the same problem of being locked on > > "wide bus" when I am using the narrow connector. > > Same problem as FreeBSD. > > Regards, > Gerard. > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-scsi" in the body of the message
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