Scuzzy SCSI

[James Bond]

I just upgraded to an adaptec AHA2940 card. It works great, except, sometimes, SuSE 7.0 won't recognize the drive hooked to it. Then, I get all sorts of problems. The machine starts in repair mode. It is somewhat random, as, it was working fine all today and just now it wasn't. The card is working fine b/c I can see the splash screen when it starts up. Do I need to compile the card drivers into the kernel? Why would it be so random, the age of the motherboard in the machine.

Grr, this thing is getting me really angry now. I had to take my main drive to a lab to rapair it on one of the linux machines in there. It wouldn't even boot the installer off of a floppy.

thanks
-jb

[diskman]

2940 Settings for UNIX..

Hit Control A at boot to get into 2940 Bios.. Now we are gonna go from my memory here...

Advanced Options. Disable Greater than 1 GB translation for starters (OLD Dos 5 setting that really messes with UNIX and Win 9x if left on).

Basically disable everything on that screen EXCEPT for CONTROL-A/ RESET SCSI / USE INT13 /Handle Removable Disks as FIXED DISKS.

Make sure Termination is set to AUTO on the main screen and your HD is the last SCSI item on the cable and its TERMINATED.

Sorry I don't have a card in front of me to go thru it step by step but those are the major ones..

Do you have IDE Drives too? CD-ROM/HD? If your SCSI drive is your MAIN boot drive than make sure to compile aic7xxx/SCSI HD/CDROM support IN the kernel and NOT modular. Make the IDE modular instead or it will flake out sometimes if it can't load the SCSI modules correctly.

Have you ever low level formatted that drive with that card? It is recommended that you low level format the SCSI drives with the card it is going to be hooked to before you install an OS on it. A low level verify is needed too. (The format will ERASE all data on the drive).

If you are still having Problems email me and I will get a card hooked up as I have been using the 2940 cards for 5 years now in UNIX and Linux and help ya get it fixed.

diskman_1@yahoo.com

[James Bond]

wow, thanks. It actually booted up the next couple of times I tried it, so, I am just not going to shut it down for a while right now. I put the monitor back in storage [aka, my closet] so, I won't try this right now, but, will probably take care of it the next time I move the computer.

The SCSI is not the boot drive, as, I originally thought that the computer's bios could not handle it. I still don't think it can, and, the 4 GB IDE is working great.

I never low level formatted it, I thought about it, but, it is running fine, and, I don't really want to copy everything off, format it, put ext2 back on it, then copy everything back on. It will probably stay working fine until the summer when I will get a chance to do this. I have saved a copy of what you wrote.

thanks again
-JB

[Mithix]

Wow. Debugging with authority. :D