AHA2940 Going into endless loop

[Grahame Jordan]

Hi!

   I have an AHA2940 card with an IBM OEM   Model: DCHS04U.
The SCSI card and HDD perform OK most of the time but for my final
partition.

If I do a mke2fs -c /dev/sda8 it starts to create the file system and as
it is is checking for
bad blocks it goes into a reset cycle. Some exerps below.

I am wondering if this is Hardware related (HDD) or software related?
Anyway it freezes the machine and I need to reset.

Thanks

Output from dmesg
-------------------------------------------
aic7xxx: BurstLen = 8 DWDs, Latency Timer = 64 PCLKS
aic7xxx: AHA-2940 Ultra Rev B.
aic7xxx: devconfig = 0x1580.
aic7xxx: Reading SEEPROM...done.
aic7xxx: Extended translation enabled.
aic7xxx: Memory check yields 16 SCBs, paging not enabled.
aic7xxx: Enabling wide channel of AHA-2940 Ultra-Wide.
AHA-2940 Ultra-WIDE (PCI-bus), I/O 0xec00, Mem 0xfebff000:
    irq 9
    bus release time 40 bclks
    data fifo threshold 100%
    SCSI CHANNEL A:
        scsi id 7
        scsi selection timeout 256 ms
        scsi bus reset at power-on enabled
        scsi bus parity enabled
        scsi bus termination (low byte) enabled
        scsi bus termination (high byte) enabled
aic7xxx: Downloading sequencer code...done.
aic7xxx: Resetting the SCSI bus...done.
scsi0 : Adaptec AHA274x/284x/294x (EISA/VLB/PCI-Fast SCSI) 4.0/3.2/4.0
scsi : 1 host.
scsi0: Scanning channel A for devices.
scsi0: Received MSG_WDTR, Target 0, channel A needwdtr(0xffff).
scsi0: Target 0, channel A, using 16 bit transfers.
scsi0: Target 0, channel A, now synchronous at 10.0MHz, offset 8.
aic7xxx: Sending SDTR!!
  Vendor: IBM OEM   Model: DCHS04U           Rev: 2626
  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Detected scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
scsi : detected 1 SCSI disk total.
SCSI device sda: hdwr sector= 512 bytes. Sectors= 8888543 [4340 MB] [4.3
GB]
-------------------------------------------

The error messages
-------------------------------------------
SCSI host 0 channel 0 reset (pid 6024) timed out - trying harder
SCSI bus is being reset for host 0 channel 0
scsi: Target 0, Channel A, now synchronous at 10.00 MHz, offset 8
aic7xxx: Sending SDTR!!
aic7xxx: (reset) target/channel 0/0
aic7xxx (reset_device) target/channel -1/A, active_scb 1
aic7xxx (match_scb) comparing target/channel -1/A to scb 0/A
aic7xxx (reset_device) aborting SCB 0, TCL = 0/0/0
aic7xxx (match_scb) comparing target/channel -1/A to scb 0/A
aic7xxx (match_scb) comparing target/channel -1/A to scb 0/A
aic7xxx (reset_channel) Resetting Current Channel A
aic7xxx (reset_channel) Channel reset, sequencer restarted
aic7xxx (done_aborted_scbs) Aborting scb 0, TCL = 0/0/0
scsi: Target 0, Channel A, now synchronous at 10.00 MHz, offset 8
aic7xxx: Sending SDTR!!
scsi: Target 0, Channel A, now synchronous at 10.00 MHz, offset 8
aic7xxx: Sending SDTR!!
scsi: Target 0, Channel A, now synchronous at 10.00 MHz, offset 8
aic7xxx: Sending SDTR!!
scsi: Target 0, Channel A, now synchronous at 10.00 MHz, offset 8
aic7xxx: Sending SDTR!!
scsi: Target 0, Channel A, now synchronous at 10.00 MHz, offset 8
aic7xxx: Sending SDTR!!

and so on
-------------------------------------------

--
"Do or do not; There is no try"
Yoda