Subject: Re: SCSI card question
To: Antti Kantee <pooka@iki.fi>
From: Dave Huang <khym@bga.com>
List: port-i386
Date: 07/04/1999 15:11:46
On Sun, 4 Jul 1999, Antti Kantee wrote:
> I've been thinking of getting an affordable scsi card of the following
> specification: Asus SC875 Symbios 53c875 Ultra SCSI-3 Wide PCI. This is to
> be the controller for my main NetBSD hard drive (suggestions welcome as to
> which drive to buy).
> 
> Does anyone have any experience of this card?

I've had one in my system for a year or so, with two Quantum Viking
4.5GB drives hooked up to it. The card itself is nice; automatic
termination, activity LED and a good BIOS configuration utility.
However, some people have a lot of trouble with the NetBSD driver for
it. I guess I've been pretty lucky; I haven't had any major problems
with the driver since the NetBSD 1.2 or so days (a "major problem" being
a constant stream of "assertion failure" errors that leaves the machine
useless). I believe turning off tagged command queuing will fix that
problem, although it may reduce performance. (add "options
SCSI_NCR_DFLT_TAGS=1" to your kernel configuration to turn off tags).
Also, add "options SCSI_NCR_SYMBIOS_COMPAT" to make the activity LED
work.

(Mildly related note, although off-topic for this mailing list: I've got
a SYM8751SP (I think that's the number... Symbios' 53c875 card) in my
Alpha, and nothing I do seems to make the activity LED work. A partial
problem is that I don't know which is the cathode end of the connector,
but there aren't that many choices; trial and error has always worked
for me :) Anyone have any ideas?)
-- 
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INet: khym@bga.com   |   they raise a paw / the bat, the cat /
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