This sounds like a very well known and enigmatic problem that started
somewhere in the 1.4's (1.4.1 or 1.4.2 i think, 1.4 worked) whereby the 
CMD (at least) mscp-scsi adaptors would cause panics frequently enough to
be unusable altogether. I know a number of people tried , but failed, to
figure out what on earth was causing it. A while ago i put 1.6.1 on one of
my vaxen, and it just worked. Being suspicious, i hammered that controller
hard for days straight, and it held up. i'd say that 1.6.1 at least , 
and probably 1.6 as well, no longer have this bug. 1.6 is better than 1.5
in almost any way, too. I was not a major fan of 1.5 and held back at 1.4
for a long time, only creeping to 1.5's if i ran into a device support
issue (and even stuffed from code from 1.5x drivers back into 1.4 so i
could keep running 1.4's on a couple occasions) but 1.6 i have to say
seems a lot nicer than 1.5.

my .02,
isildur

On Tue, 6 Apr 2004 ragge@ludd.luth.se wrote:

> > 
> > The thing in common: KA650 CPU,
> > the difference: CMD-220 vs. Dilog SQ739Q, but both MSCP-to-SCSI
> > 
> > Other equipment in "my" machine: M7516 (DELQA), M3106 and a 
> > Distec AD-converter. 
> > 
> > Someone pointed out, it might be a result of a new memory managment
> > system introduced by 1.4. Can this be confirmed by now? (I would not 
> > imagine, a bug like this would not be fixed to 1.6) Might 1.3.x mitigate
> > my problem? Or are there other alternatives to bring the taste
> > of Unix to the box? Is there anything else I can try? Did I miss 
> > something? What have I done, NetBSD has chosen not to be my friend?
> > 
> I have heard about this problem, but that it probably is because
> of buggy controllers.  I have a MV3900 (ka650) with a "normal" KDA50
> that I run regularily without problem.  
> 
> It does most likely not have anything to do with the memory management.
> 
> It would be good if someone with any of these MSCP-to-SCSI controllers
> could find the bug, myself I only has the original DEC controllers to
> deal with (and they work!).
> 
> -- Ragge
>