--- Johnny Lam <jlam@jgrind.org> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> 	I have a Dell PowerEdge 1550 on which I'm unable to
> install NetBSD
> 1.5.2.  The machine has two AIC-7899 SCSI adapters,
> and on the first is an
> UltraWide SCSI backplane (SCSI ID 6) that connects
> to three SCSI drives
> (SCSI IDs 1-3); the second adapter doesn't connect
> to anything.  During the
> boot of the install kernel on the 1.5.2 installation
> CD (from the ISO image
> from the NetBSD FTP server), the two SCSI adapters
> aren't attached properly.
> I've included a copy of the dmesg from the 1.5.2
> INSTALL kernel below.
> Note the two ahc* lines that return with an error
> that looks like:
> 
> 	ahc1 at pci3 dev 5 function 0: unable to map
> registers
> 
> The FreeBSD 4.4 installation CD and the MS Windows
> 2000 Server Installation
> CD are both able to boot and attach the three
> drives.
> 
> 	I've also included the dmesg from booting the
> installation floppies
> from the 20011111-1.5Y i386 snapshot.  That, too has
> some odd lines
> concerning the attaching of the three SCSI drives
> that look like:
> 
> 	probe(ahc1:0:0:1): invalid return code from
> adapter: 3
> 
> Can anyone help with, or even just explain why I'm
> getting these errors?
> I would really, really like to install NetBSD on
> this machine, as I've put
> a lot of time into NetBSD, and I want to use it to
> simplify my life as an
> admin.
> 
> 	Thanks,
> 
> 	-- Johnny Lam <jlam@jgrind.org>

Johnny, don't have much advice but I have a similar
experience. We got some Dell worstations that in the
end are laid out quite like a Poweredge. They have the
AIC-7880 and AIC-7890 (I believe) adapters built in.
The difference was, the adapters would be detected and
set up correctly (?), but we could not get a device
working that was attached to either of them. This
happened under NetBSD, FreeBSD, and Linux (ugh, but
that's what we had to use in the end...). The fix was
to throw in a good ol' Adaptec AHA2940UW and the
device worked fine. Why? Don't know... Didn't question
it, just rolled with the known good card.

Andy

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