From owner-freebsd-scsi Tue May 7 17:10:40 1996 Return-Path: owner-freebsd-scsi Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id RAA27897 for freebsd-scsi-outgoing; Tue, 7 May 1996 17:10:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from paloalto.access.hp.com (daemon@paloalto.access.hp.com [15.254.56.2]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with ESMTP id RAA27889 for ; Tue, 7 May 1996 17:10:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from srmail.sr.hp.com by paloalto.access.hp.com with ESMTP (1.37.109.16/15.5+ECS 3.3) id AA011754231; Tue, 7 May 1996 17:10:31 -0700 Received: from hpnmhjw.sr.hp.com by srmail.sr.hp.com with ESMTP (1.37.109.16/15.5+ECS 3.3) id AA152644230; Tue, 7 May 1996 17:10:30 -0700 Received: from mina.sr.hp.com by hpnmhjw.sr.hp.com with SMTP (1.37.109.16/15.5+ECS 3.3) id AA076014229; Tue, 7 May 1996 17:10:29 -0700 Message-Id: <199605080010.AA076014229@hpnmhjw.sr.hp.com> To: Tom Proett Cc: scsi@freebsd.org Subject: Re: quantum atlas vs adaptec In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 07 May 1996 14:33:33 PDT." <199605072133.OAA27433@tailspin.nas.nasa.gov> Date: Tue, 07 May 1996 17:10:28 -0700 From: Darryl Okahata Sender: owner-freebsd-scsi@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > I started from DOS and ran fdisk fine. Then I tried format. All went > well until the end when it was going to write the label. At this point, > the system froze with the drive and adaptor busy lights on solid. > I tried doing a few things with the drive and almost everything resulted > in a freeze. I contacted Quantum and they said there was a timing problem > between the atlas and the adaptec 1742 and gave me a firmware upgrade for > the disk. It completed with no error but the freeze still happens. > Trying to access the disk from FreeBSD results in a freeze as well. Perhaps the Quantum is responding to SCSI commands too quickly for the adapter to handle? The 1742 is pretty old. To the end of this message, I've appended a copy of some posts that appeared on comp.periphs.scsi some time back (these supposedly do apply to Atlas drives). In particular, see item #2 of the first message. -- Darryl Okahata Internet: darrylo@sr.hp.com DISCLAIMER: this message is the author's personal opinion and does not constitute the support, opinion, or policy of Hewlett-Packard, or of the little green men that have been following him all day. =============================================================================== From: Ralf-Peter Rohbeck Newsgroups: comp.periphs.scsi Subject: Re: Can't Low-Level Quantum Capella Date: 29 Jan 1996 13:40:48 GMT Organization: Quantum Germany NNTP-Posting-Host: rprmac.qntm.com Per Vaihinen wrote: >I also had lots of problems with this drive! We changed one unit 5 times >and eventually they shipped the last one again because they got it to >work with Adaptec AHA2940. We got the same error message when we tried >to low-level format with SCSISelect. But it worked! The reason we >returned the drive so many times was that it was 6-8 times slower than >normal drives in formatting and it didn't work on a AHA-1542CF BIOS2.02. Hi. I don't know if you saw my earlier post on this. But the Capella works well with Adaptecs - if you know how to do it. Sorry if your source didn't have the necessary tech support to get it fixed. To summarize: 1. The format problem is Adaptec's fault. They try to do a MODE SELECT on a mode page that the Capella doesn't have and bail out on the returned nonzero status. Several external programs are available that do the FORMAT right. 2. The synchronous transfer problems: Also Adaptec's fault. By default, the Capella runs at full steam. Unfortunately, on hardware cache hits, it returns data so quickly that the host adapter loses the first few bytes, which hangs the transmission. There is a bit in the mode pages to delay read cache hits by some 15 us so the drive doesn't overrun the host adapter. It can be set with e.g. DSP tools which is available on the Net (ftp://ftp.rahul.net/pub/lps/hard-disk). Set page 25h byte 5 bit 3 (08h). 3. The formatting time: Ok, it takes a lot longer than other vendors' drives. But how often do you format a drive? And what do you think this says about the effort put into certifying each block? 4. Problems with Fireballs? Not that I know of. The Fireball is the most successful product we ever made. The high production numbers lead to proportionally increased numbers of failures at equal reliabilty, obviously. And the Fireball is a little more reliable than e.g. Lightning. 5. Empire: Admitted, the reliabilty of some Empire lots has been less than expected. But still, this is bad luck. The failure rates are a few percent per year at most. FWIW, all of the above applies to Atlas drives as well and will probably also apply to Atlas II. Cheers, Ralf-Peter ======================================================================== Ralf-Peter Rohbeck rrohbeck@qntm.com Quantum GmbH-Application Engineering-Central Europe (+49) 69-950767-18 Berner Str. 28, 60437 Frankfurt, Germany fax (+49) 69-950767-91 #include "disclaimer.h" tech support hotline (+49) 69-950767-26 =============================================================================== From: Ralf-Peter Rohbeck Newsgroups: comp.periphs.scsi Subject: Re: Can't Low-Level Quantum Capella Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 15:22:05 +0100 Organization: Quantum Germany Reply-To: rrohbeck@qntm.com Hi, Wallace Moore wrote: > say, why it doesn't offer relative addressing or linked commands? > My older Micropolis does, incidentally. Are these SCSI drive > capabilities irrelevant, or do they have real value? Or, again, Nobody really required them so far so we didn't implement them. There might a use for linking in multi initiator systems, but I never saw anyone using relative addressing in disk drives. > Note that I merely accepted Mr. Rohbeck's assertion that the > Adaptec mode page (the one that supposedly causes Quantum-drive > low-level formats to abort) is a "dummy." That does not count as > convincing proof. So, while we're (myself alone, possibly) > pondering why certain other drive-makers manage to handle that > "dummy" page effortlessly and without complaint, maybe you could You got me wrong. This page serves a real purpose, but only in Quantum drives designed in Milpitas, with the "Quantum West" SCSI architecture. It allows a quicker low level format by setting certain parameters. The drives designed in Shrewsbury ("Quantum East", i.e. ex Avastor/DEC) have a completely different architecture which doesn't offer that feature. Now that these drives are called "QUANTUM" instead of "DEC" in the INQUIRY data, Adaptec's BIOS tries to set that mode page and fails. To avoid that, we'd have to implement a dummy mode page in the Quantum East SCSI firmware. There is a quick and dirty fix by changing the INQUIRY vendor name from "QUANTUM" to "Quantum" (using different firmware) so the Adaptec BIOS doesn't recognize it any more. But I don't like that. The SCSI spec says that Quantum's vendor id is "QUANTUM" and doesn't say if it should or shouldn't be case sensitive. So, we'd have to bet that all applications that need to recognize the vendor name do a case insensitive compare - except for Adaptec. But, in any case: 1. You don't have to low level format any modern drive. It's a waste of time. 2. If you still want to, you can use the format program from the EZ-SCSI package or our DSP tools. Cheers, Ralf-Peter -- ======================================================================== Ralf-Peter Rohbeck rrohbeck@qntm.com Quantum GmbH-Application Engineering-Central Europe (+49) 69-950767-18 Berner Str. 28, 60437 Frankfurt, Germany fax (+49) 69-950767-91 #include "disclaimer.h" tech support hotline (+49) 69-950767-26