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To: "Erik A. Pearson" <epearson@olac.berkeley.edu>
cc: questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: FreeBSD & Adaptec 1542CP 
Date: Tue, 05 Nov 96 13:09:24 -0800
From: Randall Raemon <delta1@netcom.com>
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In message <Pine.WNT.3.95.961105085637.-398923A-100000@ep.olac.Berkeley.EDU> 
"Erik A. Pearson" writes 

> With encouragement from you and others, I persisted and got the card to
> work, but the secret is elusive and occurred after turning off ROM and
> video shadowing in the system bios and a few other options on the 1542CP
> that are DOS specific, and attemting the installation a few more times.
> However, after installation the card is failing again! 

I remember reading somewhere that there should not be any shadow BIOS enabled
for anything, as FBSD (and other Unii) do their own memory mapping. Case in
point is that I have an SVGA card that hangs my machine because it has some
extra memory requirements (rebuilding the kernel for iosize helped, but didn't
solve it.)

> The CDROM drive stops and starts every 10 seconds or so when FreeBSD is
> trying to access it.

Hardware IRQ conflict? IO ports double mapped? Sounds like something starts
and then gets a timeout.

> Any further tips? Other than this, the installation was a dream and the
> system is up and running smoothly.
> 
> System is:
>   386-40, no math coprocessor
>   8M RAM
>   SVGA
>   IDE HD (300M)
>   Adaptec 1542CP
>   MediaVision MV500 CDROM (2x)
>   Logitech serial mouse
>   NE1000 NIC
  
This is an almost clone of my typical machine, only I have my disk SCSI based
rather than IDE based, and the CDROM is an external floating box. The 1542x
board has some smarts to it. I'd try turning it "off" by disabling any boot
capability on the board. Here are the on-board settings I use:

   under the "SCSI Deive Configuration" menu
       take the defaults on the board.

   under the "Advanced Configuration Options" menu
       Reset on Power On - enabled
       PnP SCAM - disabled
       PnP IRQ 9 - disabled
       Host adapter BIOS - enabled  (disble to block boot capability)
       Extended BIOS translation - disbaled
       Removeable disks - boot time only
       Dynamic scan - enabled
       BIOS two drives - disabled
       BIOS Int 13 - enabled
       BIOS bootable CDROM - disabled
       Immediate Seek - enabled
       Display CTL-A - enabled

The DIP switch setting are default values except for the PnP disable on sw1.
If you're not using the 1542 as your floppy controller, then set sw5 to "off"
to disable the floppy port.

Just to be on the paranoid side, I'd disable the excess device drivers at boot
time (I'm presuming you're running GENERIC kernel). At the boot: prompt, type
in "wd(0,a)/kernel -c" to get the userconfig prompt.

Have fun...

--  
Randall Raemon
delta1@netcom.com