> But when I logged in and fired up my X session, the CD player provoked
> trouble from the CD-ROM drive (<*> indicates a point at which a
> I no longer have online the corresponding source tree, but it was built
> on Oct 15th, which probably means an earlyish-October source tree, and
> it was definitely after the name change to 1.2G.
> 
> Anyone have any ideas?  Could this be related to the esp changes I was
> so happy about wrt my farm of 80 meg Quantums? :-)
> 

There was one change in ncr53c9x.c in the last couple of weeks dealing
with "non-ATN-selection-aware" scsi devices. The diff follows below.
You might try reverting it, though I don't think it's related to
what is happening to your CD device.

I've seen one CD player on a Sparcstation4 (a relatively modern one)
give sometimes on synchronous transfers. So far, the driver just
reverts to non-synchronous operation and carries after resetting the
SCSI bus.

-pk


1683,1687c1683,1693
<                                       printf("%s: select timeout/no "
<                                           "disconnect\n",
<                                           sc->sc_dev.dv_xname);
<                                       ecb->xs->error = XS_SELTIMEOUT;
<                                       goto finish;
---
>                                       /*
>                                        * The target did not respond with a
>                                        * message out phase - probably an old
>                                        * device that doesn't recognize ATN.
>                                        * Clear ATN and just continue, the
>                                        * target should be in the command
>                                        * phase.
>                                        * XXXX check for command phase?
>                                        */
>                                       NCRCMD(sc, NCRCMD_RSTATN);
>