On Thu, 1 Apr 2004 othyro@freeshell.org wrote:

> I remember awhile ago when a model of the Symbios Dual Channel SCSI +
> ethernet combo cards would prevent NetBSD from booting with an error
> similar to "probe(siop..) command timeout". I was just wondering if this
> is still the case.
>
> http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-alpha/2001/07/28/0002.html

  As far as I know, this is still the case.  The problem appears to me to
be in the interrupt routing.  The first SCSI adapter works fine, but the
second SCSI adapter and the Ethernet device fail to interrupt.  The
failure with the Ethernet device won't hang the system, but initializing
the second SCSI adapter gets a timeout that is fatal.

  I've managed to work around it by booting the kernel into DDB, setting a
breakpoint in the chip driver match routine and bypassing the probe of the
second SCSI adapter.  I built a custom kernel that only had the one SCSI
adapter configured so that the system would boot without needing to get
around the problem using DDB.

  I tried a couple of things with the interrupts, but my knowledge of PCI
and interrupts is very limited.  I haven't had time to look at this since
then, but I still have access to the machine with this card and hope to
get back to it someday.

--
Michael L. Hitch			mhitch@montana.edu
Computer Consultant
Information Technology Center
Montana State University	Bozeman, MT	USA