LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Phil Nitschke <phil@caemrad.com.au>
  To  : linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au
  Date: 30 Jun 1999 21:35:56 +0930

Re: linux,open/freebsd, adaptec 1542cf scsi adapters, drives

>>>>> "CG" == Conrad Gittins <conrad@iweb.net.au> writes:

  CG> Hi, I have a system running soundly with an ide drive but I am
  CG> now trying to set up another computer with just a single scsi
  CG> drive.  The card is an adaptec 1542cf which the installation
  CG> kernel can't detect.  It looks for a western digital controller
  CG> but finds nothing.  Has anyone had success installing from
  CG> scratch on one of these drives?  So far only freebsd can find
  CG> the adapter (it has a range of different drivers on the boot
  CG> disk) but after installation it wont boot the drive.  It looks
  CG> at the boot sector and stops.  I've tried Debian but that can't
  CG> be fiddled, 

  <SNIP>

Hi Conrad,

I have not installed Debian/GNU Linux on a system with a SCSI card,
but I don't understand your comment that Debian "can't be fiddled".

Section 6.2 of the installation guide says to: 

   "place the Rescue Floppy in the primary floppy drive, and reset the
   system by pressing reset, or by turning the system off and on. As
   mentioned above, doing a ``hard reboot'' is recommended. The floppy
   disk should be accessed, and you should then see a screen that
   introduces the Rescue Floppy and ends with the boot: prompt."

At this point you are about to boot linux, so if there are special
arguments needed, they should be entered before hitting return.

The Linux BootPrompt-HowTo Section 6.2 talks about SCSI arguments:

   Adaptec aha154x (`aha1542=')

   These are the aha154x series cards. The aha1542 series cards have an
   i82077 floppy controller onboard, while the aha1540 series cards do
   not. These are busmastering cards, and have parameters to set the
   ``fairness'' that is used to share the bus with other devices. The
   boot argument looks like the following.

	   aha1542=iobase[,buson,busoff[,dmaspeed]]

   Valid iobase values are usually one of: 0x130, 0x134, 0x230, 0x234,
   0x330, 0x334. Clone cards may permit other values.

   The buson, busoff values refer to the number of microseconds that the
   card dominates the ISA bus. The defaults are 11us on, and 4us off, so
   that other cards (such as an ISA LANCE Ethernet card) have a chance to
   get access to the ISA bus.

   The dmaspeed value refers to the rate (in MB/s) at which the DMA
   (Direct Memory Access) transfers proceed at. The default is
   5MB/s. Newer revision cards allow you to select this value as part of
   the soft-configuration, older cards use jumpers. You can use values up
   to 10MB/s assuming that your motherboard is capable of handling
   it. Experiment with caution if using values over 5MB/s.

While the (unmaintained) SCSI-HOWTO says (sorry, not section 6.2 this time):

  2.1.  General Flakiness

  If you experience random errors, the most likely causes are cabling
  and termination problems.

  Some products, such as those built around the newer NCR chips, feature
  digital filtering and active signal negation, and aren't very
  sensitive to cabling problems.

  Others, such as the Adaptec 154xC, 154xCF, and 274x, are _extremely_
  sensitive and may fail with cables that work with other systems.

  I reiterate : some host adapters are _extremely_ sensitive to cabling
  and termination problems and therefore, cabling and termination should
  be the first things checked when there are problems.

(There are more than three Debian users who read this list  :-)  
But I recommend that they all subscribe to the debian-user mailing
list, which is very helpful with this sort of problem, and one of the
reasons why some people choose Debian (i.e. for its support).

-- 
Phil.

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