4.7/4.8 problems w/AS800 and Qlogic ISP 1020/1040?

[Matt Wilbur]

Hi all,

I have an AlphaServer 800 5/400 running 4.5-STABLE, which I've recently
tried to upgrade to 4.7-STABLE (mid-march) and more recently to
4.8-RELEASE, using buildworld/etc.  I've waited this long because I had to
haul the beast out and verify cable connections, terminations, etc., to be
sure, but I'm positive the hardware's fine - it keeps working great when I
go back to 4.5-STABLE..

Upon booting into the 4.7-STABLE or 4.8-R kernel, I get this:
Waiting 15 seconds for SCSI devices to settle
isp0: Internal Firmware error on bus 0 @ RISC address 0x38dc
isp0: Unknown isp_async event 16
as well as gobs of: 
(probe0: isp0:0:1:0): isp0: watchdog timeout for handle 0x30
for all the IDs on the bus..

I also (both with 4.5-S and these newer kernels) get this on bootup:
isp0: <Qlogic ISP 1020/1040 PCI SCSI Adapter> port 0x10000-0x100ff mem
0x8186000
0-0x81860fff irq 0 at device 5.0 on pci0
isp0: interrupting at CIA irq 0
isp0: invalid NVRAM header

Not sure if it's important..
One in ten times the system has come up after these complaints, but I
don't have the guts to leave it running :)

Just for the record, the system is rock-solid running its older 4.5-stable
kernel (so I'm doubting any hardware scsi issues at this point), and I
dont think I'm flubbing anything in the "upgrade from source" method, we
maintain lots of FreeBSD systems this way - I'm just doing a buildworld, a
buildkernel, installkernel, then I reboot and find its toast
again, and move back to my old kernel and modules.

Any suggestions, comments, etc. would be greatly appreciated..  Or would
it make more sense to just submit a pr ?

thanks!
Matt