Subject: Re: Problems with tosha on alpha
To: Andreas Johansson <ajo@wopr.campus.luth.se>
From: Curt Sampson <cjs@cynic.net>
List: port-alpha
Date: 01/24/2000 11:18:31
On Mon, 24 Jan 2000, Andreas Johansson wrote:

> I've had a similar problem with tosha, a NCR 53C875 and a Pioneer DVD-ROM.
> The problem was that the NCR sometimes got timeout at the start of a
> track. I simply changed the timeout in tosha from 2 seconds to 10 seconds,
> and I've never seen the problem since. It seems as if this has something
> to do with the spindown/spinup time of the Pioneer.

I've not had that problem, though another one did just pop up with my
Ricoh CD-RW on the NCR. When I try to tosha just the second track from
a certain disk, it gives a pile of errors, and I get this on the console:

    setclock: 0/1/24/15/12/41
    cd1(ncr0:6:0): 4.0 MB/s (250 ns, offset 8)
    cd0(ncr0:0:0): undecodable sense error for opcode 0x0, data= 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00

(This is after reading a few hundred K of the track.) If I tosha the
whole disk, this problem doesn't occur, nor does it occur when reading
from the Panasonic CD drive.

> By the way, the ncr driver couldn't handle these timeouts at all (current
> from october), and the ncr driver in newer current doesn't work properly
> for me. Disk transfers locks up for one or two seconds quite often, just
> ssh:ing into the machine takes about 10 seconds with current. When is the
> ncr driver going to be stable?

It has a lot to do with the disks on it, I find. But it's probably not
going to be stable until it gets rototilled or rewritten by someone
fairly competent. Jason has made noises about doing this a couple of
times, but he's always got a tonne of other stuff on his plate, too.

cjs
-- 
Curt Sampson  <cjs@cynic.net>   917 532 4208   De gustibus, aut bene aut nihil.
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