Date: Thu, 02 Jul 1998 08:12:36 -0400 From: "Brian J. McGovern" <mcgovern@spoon.beta.com> To: TMM@infothuis.nl Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Can't install due to cdrom player used for install Message-ID: <199807021212.IAA20796@spoon.beta.com>
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I've had similar problems with almost every SCSI CDROM install I've ever done. >From my experience, it appears that almost every SCSI CD ROM will bomb itself out when you use the default configurations on the 2940UW, which in turn seems to cause the bus to reset, which hoses up (or at least slows down) all the other devices on the chain. The 'fix' I've found is to go in to the Adaptec BIOS (usually CTRL-A on boot), and crank down the settings for the affected SCSI devices. Turn off wide negotiation, sync negotiation, and the ability to disconnect, and then crank the SYNC speed down as low as it will go on all of your CDROM devices. This will _usually_ give you a working configuration, although in my last round of installs on a Pentium II, I also had to drop the sync speeds from 20MB/s to 16MB/s on my UW drives, because it was still causing the SCSI bus to reset frequently. Anyhow, once you've got your system running at a 'minimal speed', you can experiment with ramping up some of the other settings (such as disconnect and SYNC negotiation) until you get the fastest, stable drive configuration you can. I've yet to see a SCSI CD rom that survives Ultrawide negotiation being turned on. And this isn't just a 'FreeBSD' problem. I've locked up Win 95, NT, and DOS so many times due to the SCSI bus going out to lunch that I almost returned five machines before I realized what it was. Luckily, the Yamaha CD-RW drive I ordered has a handful of LEDs on it that cycle through about half a dozen colors and patterns to let you know whats going on. "SCSI BUS RESET" was one of them. Had 'em popping up about every 15 seconds... It'd take about 5 seconds to reset, 5-8 seconds for the OS to realize the drive was back and to retry, and it'd do 3-4 seconds of I/O before it'd reset again. You think they'd have figured out how to fix that by now :) -Brian To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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