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Date:      Tue, 12 May 1998 01:59:02 -0500
From:      Tim Tsai <tim@futuresouth.com>
To:        Tom <tom@uniserve.com>
Cc:        am@f1.ru, Allen Smith <easmith@beatrice.rutgers.edu>, bofh@terranova.net, greg@uswest.net, freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: SCSI problems?
Message-ID:  <19980512015902.01831@futuresouth.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980511232027.9588E-100000@shell.uniserve.ca>; from Tom on Mon, May 11, 1998 at 11:31:34PM -0700
References:  <19980512011910.06503@futuresouth.com> <Pine.BSF.3.96.980511232027.9588E-100000@shell.uniserve.ca>

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> Never Adaptec cards seem to be getting more finicky
> though.  Under heavy load, I only get ahc crashes only about every 30 to
> 45 days.

  That's about right for us - actually as soon as we see the SCB TIMEOUT
messages we reboot the box that same night.  I haven't seen any such
messages since turning off the AHC_ options.  We are not having any
performance problems so reliability is more important.

> >   I think it's just part of working with FreeBSD.  At one time there were
> > problems with NCR cards - now there are problems with Adaptec.  Same with
> 
>   I don't think there every a time there were NCR problems.  My memory on
> ncr only goes back to 2.1.5 or so though.

  I seem to remember there were a few problems with stability with NCR
somewhere in the 2.1 branch (after 2.1.5 for sure, as that's where we
started on FreeBSD).  I could be wrong.

> > de0 cards, etc.  We have accepted this as a fact of life and try to work
> > within the constraints.  Unfortunately we can't treat every problem as
> > if we can just go out and buy new hardware and expect problems to disappear
> > (or to not appear in the future).
> 
>   Problems should not appear in existing working hardware.  I certainly
> don't see that here.  All the Adaptec cards that worked before, work now.
> The de driver has been a pain, because an almost completely new driver was
> imported, making some new cards work, and breaking some old cards.  The
> new strategy seems to be to avoid touching the de driver because it seems
> impossible not to break something that worked before.

  *should* is the keyword.  I believe the ahc problems have only surfaced
since 2.2.  All our ahc cards were bought at the same time around Jan.
1997 so they're most likely the same older revision.  They worked like
a champ until we upgraded to 2.2.x.  I seem to remember reading on the
mailing lists that others have noticed the same problem.

  We use Quantum Atlas II, IBM Ultrastar, and Quantum Fireball drives.
Fireball's are used as the OS drive (lately we only buy IBM's for that)
with IBM and Quantum Atlas as data drives.

  Tim

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