Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1997 18:17:42 -0500 From: Arlie Davis <arlie@thepoint.net> To: "'Steve Passe'" <smp@csn.net>, "'Keith Mitchell'" <kmitch@weenix.guru.org> Cc: "'smp@freebsd.org'" <smp@freebsd.org> Subject: RE: Adaptec 3940UW and SMP Message-ID: <c=US%a=_%p=ThePoint_Interne%l=TIS_MAIL-970115231742Z-637@tis-mail.thepoint.net>
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It's time for me to join the fray on this one. We have seven servers, all identical. Each has a dual Pentium ASUS EISA/PCI motherboard (P54NP4, I think). Each server came with a 3c595 Fast Ethernet card and an Adaptec 3940 (dual-chain, but not wide). Each server runs Windows NT 3.51 (some 4.0 now). I had endless problems with these machines until I figured one thing out: The Adaptec 3940 BIOS (or perhaps the native system PCI BIOS) kind of "steals" IRQs from adjacent slots. These machines have Award BIOS. You must manually configure the IRQ for each slot. For example, if the PCI slots looked like this: slot IRQ device 1 5 Adaptec 3940 2 10 3Com 595 3 11 video card 4 15 empty then when the system booted, the 3940 would have allocated IRQs 5 AND 10 to itself. (If the 3940 were in slot four, it would steal the IRQ from slot 1.) No matter what slot I put the 3940 in, it steals the IRQ from the next slot. What's the use of a dual-channel card when I have to leave one PCI slot next to it empty?!?! This is really infuriating. Perhaps on a PCI/ISA PNP system, it would automatically be assigned two unused IRQs, but this never happened on my systems. So, just for fun, make sure that the slots around the 3940 are empty. Try the one above, then the one below, and see if your problems go away, or at least abate. If anyone has anything enlightening to say about this subject, I would love to know. I would especially like to know how to run the 3940s in my systems in such a way that I can still use the other slots. -- arlie P.S. The ASUS motherboard has neither on-board IDE, serial, nor parallel ports. The only thing on it is a mouse-port, hard-wired to IRQ 12. >-----Original Message----- >From: Steve Passe [SMTP:smp@csn.net] >Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 1997 12:12 PM >To: Keith Mitchell >Cc: smp@freebsd.org >Subject: Re: Adaptec 3940UW and SMP > >Hi, > >> In my system, I have the on-board IDE stuff disabled. I also have nothing >> on IRQ 5. Which leaves IRQs: 5, 14, and 15 totally unused. I have them >> marked for PCI/PNP use in my bios yet it still won't use them. >14 and 15 are sometimes internally routed from IDE controller to 8259 ICUs >within the same piece of silicon (ie BOTH are on same chipset, the >motherboard chipset) and the lines are NOT brought out of the chip. this >means the MB manufacturer cannot use them on the ISA bus. Why 5 is a problem >I have no theory. > >--- >> After discovering this, I removed one of the ethernet cards like you >> suggested. The result was it was still sharing (IRQ 10 this time). It >>didn't >> use IRQ 9 at all. So then I removed the other ethernet card. Now nothing >> was sharing an IRQ but the kernel still failed in the same way (not passing >> control over to init). > >time for another theory... > >-- >Steve Passe | powered by >smp@csn.net | FreeBSD > >-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- >Version: 2.6.2 > >mQCNAzHe7tEAAAEEAM274wAEEdP+grIrV6UtBt54FB5ufifFRA5ujzflrvlF8aoE >04it5BsUPFi3jJLfvOQeydbegexspPXL6kUejYt2OeptHuroIVW5+y2M2naTwqtX >WVGeBP6s2q/fPPAS+g+sNZCpVBTbuinKa/C4Q6HJ++M9AyzIq5EuvO0a8Rr9AAUR >tBlTdGV2ZSBQYXNzZSA8c21wQGNzbi5uZXQ+ >=ds99 >-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- >
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