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Date:      Tue, 1 Jul 1997 20:20:22 -0700 (PDT)
From:      dan@math.berkeley.edu (Dan Strick)
To:        freebsd-scsi@FreeBSD.ORG
Cc:        dan@math.berkeley.edu, jdn@qiv.com
Subject:   Re: 2.2.2-RELEASE/Viper anomolies
Message-ID:  <199707020320.UAA04700@math.berkeley.edu>

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> Should all devices be parity enabled? -- or none?

All devices should be parity enabled.  In most cases, they always
generate SCSI bus parity and the "parity enable" option just causes
them to check it.  You should always try to check the configuration
of every SCSI device that you install on a system.  Vendors are
particularly indifferent about enabling parity checking because
they would rather that the end user lose an occasional bit than
complain about mysterious error messages from his SCSI system.

Not all models of sun checked SCSI bus parity under all releases of
SunOS, probably to accommodate old sun SCSI peripherals which were
still being sold with SS1s at the time the SS1s were first introduced.
It might be that your SCSI tape drive has always generated bad SCSI
parity and your SS1+ didn't care, though I think this less likely
than some new problem (e.g. an excessively long SCSI bus operating
at a faster speed), or perhaps the tape drive has problems with
synchronous SCSI bus transfers (something else that SS1s and SS1+s
didn't do by default on their motherboard SCSI bus).

> Would putting it on a controller by itself be a benifit?

I often do this with devices (such as a QIC tape drive) that are
likely to hog the SCSI bus because the manufacturer doesn't want
to spend more money on the SCSI interface than is necessary to
make *his* device run at its full speed.  I also like to keep my
SCSI busses short and splitting them up helps a lot.

Dan Strick
dan@math.berkeley.edu



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