Subject: Re: More bad news :-(
To: Amancio Hasty Jr <hasty@netcom.com>
From: HD Associates <hd@world.std.com>
List: current-users
Date: 11/21/1993 08:37:41
> 
> Since I am having disk problems, I can't compile reliably.
> Just swap cables and my problem just got worse.
> 
> I tried just booting from my old netbsd-0.8 kernel and the system
> re-booted (no surprise here) ;however, I am really stuck.
> 
> I am going to talk to adaptec next week and see if they will take their
> adapter back and replace it with a newer rev level. I have an early
> version of the adaptec 1542c.
> 
> When I am ready again to give it a go, it should be a breeze to re-install
> the system because I have the distribution in the CDROM.

If the 1542C is working with any BSD then the board is probably not
your problem.  The "early rev 1542C problem" had to do with agressive
(and apparently pefectly legit) bus signals requiring SCSI-II
conforming cables.  I saw this and it went away with new cables.  Their
"fix" was to slow down the bus timing (or signal rise time or
something) by glueing resistors on the board.  They did have a firmware
fix for target mode operation, but few are tickling that bug.

I do have one guess - there was a problem with the driver
auto-configuring a bus speed that is faster than the motherboard can
really support.  If the boot up message claims to be using a different
bus speed setting for the two systems then try temporarily hacking in
the lower setting and see if that helps.

I don't have your original message.  Was your problem the "non-media
hardware failure" from the disk?  I don't see how you can get that with
one OS and not the other (using identical hardware, of course)- perhaps
you could try to give more of a clue as to when it happens.  My CDC
drive returns that error if you do I/O during its' thermal
recalibration.  I hacked in a retry on that error to get the disk to
work properly.

Peter

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