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Date:      Tue, 05 Oct 1999 18:27:58 -0700
From:      Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>
To:        hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Request for hardware (drivers for Mylex, AMI, DELL, HP RAID  controllers)
Message-ID:  <199910060127.SAA02035@dingo.cdrom.com>

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In brief:  I'm developing drivers for the Mylex DAC960/1100 and AMI 
           MegaRAID/Dell PERC/HP whatever families of RAID controllers,
           and I need some more hardware to test with.  Details below.

Current status:

 - Mylex DAC960 driver works with P/PL/PD/PU controllers.  Support is 
   planned for the older EISA controllers (documentation pending), as
   well as for the newer PG/PJ, AcceleRAID and eXtremeRAID controllers
   (requires some fixes to the bootloader).

 - MegaRAID driver works with some members of the Express family
   (at least the 466, aka Dell PERC 2/SC).  I have a 418 on the way,
   but I need access to many other members of this family.

These drivers are all originals, written with information obtained from 
other drivers (esp. the Linux drivers for these controllers).  They 
will be committed to the FreeBSD source when they're a little more 
mature.

What I need:

In order to flesh out support for more of these controllers, I need to 
have them here in the lab.  I can probably do everything that needs to 
be done for a given controller in about a week, so if you can only lend 
one for a short time, that's OK.  Ideally, I'd like to be able to keep 
them indefinitely in order to test and evaluate them better, but I 
realise this isn't always practial.

Since there are other issues preventing me from working on the newer/
better Mylex controllers, I want to focus on the MegaRAID units for now.
If you have one or more of the following, and are able to send them to
me (in California) for at least a week, please let me know.

 - Dell PERC 2 (not SC)
 - AMI MegaRAID 
     o Enterprise 1500
     o Enterprise 1400 (or -H) aka 438
     o Enterprise 1300 aka 434
     o Enterprise 1200 aka 428
     o Express 300
 - Any HP-branded MegaRaid-compatible controller

Any hardware loaned will be handled correctly and returned to you at our
cost.  Please don't send me anything you're going to want back until
I've sorted out what's coming from whom and when, so that I don't
overcommit.

If you just want to send something straight off (always nice!), you can 
ship to:

 Mike Smith
 FreeBSD Test Labs
 4041 Pike Lane #F
 Concord, CA 94520
 USA

Future Plans:

 - I intend to try to get documentation from Infortrend on their current 
   range of controllers (also being sold by ASUS).  They have a Linux 
   driver, but only in binary form.

 - All of these drivers will be backported to the 3.x branch in time for 
   3.4.

And just as a teaser; on the Perc 2/SC that I have been using, under
-current, on a 4-way Xeon/400, I'm seeing over 20MB/sec sustained read/
write on a RAID-5 arry built on five Seagate Hawk ST15230WC's (ie. fast/
wide 5400rpm drives).

Thanks to:

 - Ulf Zimmerman for the Mylex controllers and disks he's lent so far.
 - Geoff Buckingham for sending the PERC 2/SC all the way from the UK.
 - Walnut Creek CDROM for letting me ignore almost everything else and 
   concentrate on this project.
 - The folks on #bsdcode for critique and therapy.

Acknowledgements:

 - AMI for releasing their MegaRAID driver for Linux, no matter how 
   terrible I think it is.
 - Leonard Zubkoff for the Mylex driver for Linux, which is amazingly
   hard to read but a wonderful source of information.
 - An unnamed supporter inside Mylex, who has been very helpful to date.

-- 
\\ Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. \\  Mike Smith
\\ Tell him he should learn how to fish himself,  \\  msmith@freebsd.org
\\ and he'll hate you for a lifetime.             \\  msmith@cdrom.com




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