Date: Fri, 28 Nov 1997 09:46:21 -0500 (EST) From: Bill Vermillion <bill@bilver.oau.org> To: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Adaptec 2940 and FreeBSD 2.2.2-RELEASE Message-ID: <199711281446.JAA28643@bilver.magicnet.net> In-Reply-To: <347EA271.2F1CF0FB@cablenet.net> from Damian Hamill at "Nov 28, 97 10:52:33 am"
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Recently Damian Hamill said: > Bill Vermillion wrote: > > I had so much trouble getting the 2940's to work when I was > > installing an SCO system for a client 2 years ago, I have made > > every effort to avoid them and only use BusLogic. > Your problems may be more to do with things like bus length than choice > of controller. I doubt that was the problem. This was in the early days of the 2940, and in one instance there were problems between the Adaptec and the motherboard BIOS. I just gave up on Adaptec. >I used to specify Buslogic by default but now I go for > 3940s. When I need the multiples busses like the 3940 - I'd go with the DPT. But I've never anything but BL in the 3 or 4 FreeBSD boxes I've used. >I've got news servers running 2.2.2 that have 3940s fitted and > they have been running without any problem, in fact the only problem I > have had recently was with the one machine that had a Buslogic > controller, so I've just replaced it with another 3940. What BL controller? > When we were building the machines we found that we had to get the bus > length as short as possible so we had special 0.5m cables made up. For > those of you having problems answer these questions; Good cables are a must. However .5m cables (if you have multiple targets) is definately not SCSI spec, which is .3m between targets and .1m stub. > 1) do you have external devices on the bus (with a 1m cable) > 2) are you running the bus in Ultra SCSI mode > If the answer to both of these is yes then you are looking for trouble. > Add the lengths of ALL the bits of cable on any one SCSI bus and if this > is > 1.5m then don't run in Ultra SCSI mode. This is why I've just > swapped out a Buslogic for the 3940. The machine in question has 2 > external devices and the 3940 allows me to split them across the 2 > busses, in doing so I can keep the two bus lengths to a minimum and run > the busses at high speed. > I think the very VERY last thing I would do if I had problems would be > to change to another OS. I've tried a few of them and I've come to the > conclusion that FreeBSD is the most versatile and stable platform for an > ISP. I'd never recommend changing OS'es to solve a hardware problem. I've been around Unix too long for that (1983 or so - someday I'll understand it). I've been working with the FreeBSD for under 6 months and so far it's the best Unix I've seen for easy of install, reliability, etc. We moved all the mail to the FreeBSD for the ISP that I do some work for (a small placd that does some specialized stuff - no dialup user accounts) and I suspect that we will be using FreeBSD for everything in the future that we can. There is one program that we use that is supported only on Sun, SGI (we have a pair of Challenge S), and NT. BSDI is in their future plans so that may work with the FreeBSD. Bill -- bill@bilver.magicnet.net | bill@bilver.com
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