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Date:      Tue, 4 Nov 1997 13:01:40 -0500 (EST)
From:      Neil Ludban <n-ludban@onu.edu>
To:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   How to limit SCSI speed?
Message-ID:  <Pine.A32.3.96.971104121914.16995A-100000@austin.onu.edu>

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Hello,

I tried adding an external SCSI Zip drive to my system and the kernel
would no longer load (it would very slowly get a few sectors, then give
up).  Suspecting bad termination or cable lengths, I looked up the specs
and found out that the cables are too long for my ultra-scsi2 hard drive. 
After changing the controller's BIOS to limit the disk to 5 or 10MB/s, the
kernel loaded OK, but then FreeBSD (2.2.5) re-probed everything and failed
to read the disk at full speed.  It gave a couple pages of failed command
errors, then hung.

So, is there any way to set the maximum speed the driver will negotiate?
The only thing I could find was SCSI_NCR_MAX_SYNC in the undocumented
section of LINT (the controller uses the ncr 53c875j chip).

Being able to configure the maximum speed at boot would probably be a good
idea, for diagnostics and to accomodate extra cable lengths when
temporarily adding external devices.  In my case, the ultra drive was a
good deal, but I don't need the extra bandwidth and don't want any of the
trouble of configuring an ultra chain.

	--Neil





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