aic7xxx problems with AHA2930CU

[Tony Mountifield]

Hi, I hope this is the correct place to post my query - if not, please could
someone point me at the right place?

I have a completely SCSI-based system which uses an AHA2930CU host adapter
on a SiS-based motherboard to drive two hard drives and a CD-ROM. It has
been running RedHat 6.2 with kernel 2.2.16 very happily for a long time.
This has aic7xxx 5.1.30/3.2.4.

In order to get USB support for my ADSL modem I decided to upgrade to RH
7.1. But the installer's aic7xxx wouldn'trun properly, giving many SCSI
errors, usually starting with Data Overrun errors due to an unexpected data
phase, and ending up complaining of CHECK condition during REQUEST SENSE.
This was aic7xxx 5.2.4/5.2.0.

I also tried the RawHide install disk and the one from Mandrake 8.0. Both
exhibited similar problems.

Using expert install and selecting aic7xxx_mod was no better.

The next thing I tried was installing the RedHat 6.2 update to kernel
2.2.19. This has aic7xxx 5.1.33/3.2.4. It also failed to boot, with the same
SCSI errors as described above.

I found Doug's SCSI driver page and downloaded the 5.1.33 patch. I
reverse-applied it to the 2.2.19 kernel tree to downgrade the aic7xxx from
5.1.33 to 5.1.31 and rebuilt the kernel. This kernel DID boot successfully
with no SCSI errors at all!

So something in the mega-update from 5.1.31 to 5.1.33 severely broke the
AHA2930CU card (AIC7860), at least on my system, and this brokenness has
persisted through the few later versions that I've tried.

How can I help solve this? Are the later 6.2.x drivers likely to be better?
Unfortunately, I won't have time to try things until next weekend.

Cheers,
Tony



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