dillema@acm.org happened to mention:
> 
> 
> Hello All,
> 
> I recently bought a second-hand ISA Adaptec SCSI-controller, and
> tried to get it to work with NetBSD on an Intel '486. Installation
> and configuration went fine, but when I attached a ZIP-drive to it
> and tried to mount it, it failed with `timeout messages' on the 
> console. I'm relatively new to the Intel architecture and especially
> to Intel combined with SCSI. I checked termination, which seems ok
> (I also tried all other illegal termination configs, without any
> improvement). Although this machine is running (more-or-less)
> NetBSD-current, I don't believe that's the problem.
> 
> I'd like to hear from people who use or have used such an adaptec
> card with NetBSD, and hear about their experiences. Is this card
> known to be problematic (with ZIP-drives, and how about HDD's???),
> in general or is the NetBSD-driver for this card troublesome etc...
> Could it be an IRQ-thing or... Anyway, I'd like to know which
> part of the system to investigate to get this thing to work.
> I'd like to know before I try a HDD on it (which I have to buy first).
> 
> There was a scary line somewhere in its manual, that stated that
> the card would refuse to function with old driver-software in
> order to protect your data against it (ARGH!). Could that be
> part of the problem, or is it just total nonsense and irrelevant.

I am facing just the same problem with my 1542CF, trying to talk to
scsi hard drives (I have tried 2 scsi drives, both known good, and
a scsi tape).  NetBSD detects the drives on boot/probe, but then
gets these timeouts later.

Let me know if you have a solution.

Here is my latest idea.  I am doing this on a Pentium motherboard
(does your 486 board have PCI slots??), and I may need to go into
the bios and allocate the interrupt numbers properly (most bios have
plug and play setup stuff, and you need to be sure the interrupt
number that the isa boards use are marked as "set aside for isa legacy"
or some such.  The reason I think it is an interrupt problem is that
the 1542 can talk to the devices fine on boot time (which is usually
non-interrupt), but have trouble later with the full kernel driver
(interrupt driven).  Just a hunch at this point.

Look at /var/log/messages and see what interrupt the aha1542 is set up
on, then check in the bios to make sure it is set up right.
I think mine reports it wants to use IRQ 15.

	Tom

-- 
	Tom Trebisky			Steward Observatory
	ttrebisky@as.arizona.edu	University of Arizona
	http://kofa.as.arizona.edu/	Tucson, Arizona 85721
					(520) 621-5135