AIC 78928 on compaq AP550

[Paul Davis]

I have a Compaq AP550 with an aic 78928 scsi controller.  I was
able to install RH 6.0, but couldn't get the system to boot from
the SCSI drive.  I had to copy initrd.img to /boot/ and point
lilo at that to get the system to boot off the SCSI drive.

I was able to get the upgrade to RH 6.2 to run only by using a
device driver diskette from the image on the website, but the
resulting system wouldn't boot from the SCSI drive *or* from the
6.2 boot diskette created by the upgrade.  I could only boot the
6.2 system by using the 6.0 boot diskette.  The trick of moving
initrd.img to /boot didn't work due to kernel incompatibilities.

With the driver from 6.0 I see:
  "Downloading sequencer code... 374 instructions downloaded
    .
    .
    .
  <4>(scsi0:0:0:0) Parity error during Message-Out phase.
  <4>scsi : aborting command due to timeout : pid 0, scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
   Test Unit Ready 00 00 00 00 00
  <4>SCSI host 0 abort (pid 0) timed out - resetting
  <4>SCSI bus is being reset for host 0 channel 0.
  <4>SCSI host 0 channel 0 reset (pid 0) timed out - trying harder
  <4>SCSI bus is being reset for host 0 channel 0.
  <6>(scsi0:0:0:0) Synchronous at 80.0 Mbyte/sec, offset 127.

I don't remember the exact number, but the new driver downloads
more than 374 instructions.  I see the same parity error, but
then an endless retry -- i.e. I never see "trying harder" and
never break out of the loop.

Looks like both drivers get the same error, but the one from the 
RH 6.0 install "tries harder" and manages to use the drive where 
the new driver loops endlessly.

And I thought that by using the dd option, the upgrade would 
automatically install the new driver, but this seems not to have 
been the case.  Bottom line is that I can't get the 6.2 install 
to boot from the SCSI -- not no way, not no how.
Any ideas?

p.s.  This isn't critical.  There are several other intractable
driver problems so I'll probably have to abandon this machine
anyway.  In particular, I can't seem to get the driver for
the Intel 82559 Fast Ethernet card to build with the new (RH
6.2) kernel.  I was able to build the new NIC driver on the
6.0 system (the card would periodically hang with the original
driver).  I've tried loading a new driver for the sound-card, but
all attempts to use the sound-card still report device busy or
unavailable with both RH 6.0 and 6.2.

p.p.s. Had an inordinate amount of trouble getting the driver 
off the web site.  Netscape 4.7 never did manage, but Netscape 
4.51 did.  Is there an ftp alternative?
-- 
Paul Davis INTP
pdavis at bmc.com
Phone (713)918-1550




To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo at FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe aic7xxx" in the body of the message