Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 17:38:07 -0400 (EDT) From: "Robert G. Brown" <rgb@phy.duke.edu> To: Doug Ledford <dledford@dialnet.net> Cc: aic7xxx Mailing List <AIC7xxx@FreeBSD.ORG>, "Atalla, Mauro J." <mjatalla@MIT.EDU>, Juergen Hammelmann <juergen@tunix.mathematik.uni-stuttgart.de>, Lutz Vieweg <lkv@isg.de>, Chen Chi Ming Hubert <cmh_chen@MIT.EDU>, Tom Leidy <ogre@ptd.net> Subject: Re: Dell 410 Workstations and Asus Motherboard systems Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.980722170935.13786K-100000@ganesh.phy.duke.edu> In-Reply-To: <35B61488.982A2D5B@dialnet.net>
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On Wed, 22 Jul 1998, Doug Ledford wrote: > Does someone want to fill me in on exactly what connectors there are on this > motherboard and what Dell claims can and can't be hooked up to these > things? Also, the Adaptec SCSI BIOS for the 7890 chipset, what are the list > termination options in that BIOS? Is it just manual configured, or is it > Auto-Term, or what? I will do my best for the Dell Poweredge 2300/400 (non-hot-pluggable). It has an onboard 7890 and 7860 controller; the 7860 appeared to be normal enough to be "working" with 5.0.18/19, but all I have on it is a CD-ROM drive and I didn't try to use the drive after booting. It has a 2x2 non-hot-pluggable SCSI backplane board connected by a Ultra2/LVD ribbon to the onboard connector. The backplane board is itself terminated, so termination should be disabled on all attached drives. It appears (from looking at the BIOS) that termination is enabled on the host adapter. Dell recommends using only U2/LVD drives, as mixing in Ultra drives will "work" but only at Ultra speeds. The drives can be 1.6" or 1" drives. Actually Dell has this nifty little snapin bar -- the drives snap onto the backplane. The beast is clearly designed to be a server. There is no IDE controller at all on the motherboard, for example, and it has 6 PCI slots (and no AGP slot). I doubt that it matters, but the Ultra/Narrow 7860 controller appears to assume that the (only) physics device on the end of its normal 50 pin ribbon is terminated. Presumably the Ultra controller is also terminated (I'll check in a moment). The only options I see in the BIOS are to either enable or disable termination on the controller. Given that it is a single ended controller, I'm not sure why they have the disable option (so somebody can "break" their system?;-). In the device configuration utility (v2.01.05 Dell 001) all the SCSI ID's are set by default to: Initiate Sync Negotiation Yes Maximum Sync Transfer Rate 80.0 (MB/Sec) Enable Disconnection Yes Initiate Wide Negotiation Yes (Options that have no effect if BIOS disabled -- it appears to be enabled) Send Start Unit Command Yes BIOS Multiple LUN Support No Include in BIOS Scan Yes All 16 device ID's on the page are identical. This is the default configuration, I believe. In the advanced configuration section, everything is enabled (Reset SCSI bus at IC Initialization, Extended BIOS translation, Host Adapter BIOS, ...). On my system, the IRQ is 10, the ioport is 0xec00 (at the moment). The adapter has SCSI Parity checking enabled. > Now, the same question for the Asus motherboard with the 7890 built in. I > suspect both are doing the same thing. > > The reason I ask these questions is that I keep seeing messages from these > machines that talk about enabling the SE_low and SE_high byte terminations, > but it never mentions the LVD terminators. Did Dell hook up the LVD > terminators to the SE terminator pins or something (and also set the > detection logic to use the SE bits instead of the LVD bits)? IS this on > systems where Auto-Term is set, or is the termination set manually in the > Adaptec BIOS? If it's set manually, what does it say it's set to? What's > the deal with these things? I have a feeling that termination problems may > be a large part of the issue with the freezes during Inquiry commands. If > someone wants to do a quick test for me, they can do the following: > > In the aic7xxx.c file, at line 6961, add a new line so that the code there > looks like this: > > external_present = 1; > enableSE_high = enableSE_low = enableLVD_high = enableLVD_low = TRUE; > } I'll try it tomorrow. Gotta go today. rgb > > Let me know if that makes any difference on these Dell machines and on the > Asus motherboards. > > -- > > Doug Ledford <dledford@dialnet.net> > Opinions expressed are my own, but > they should be everybody's. > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe aic7xxx" in the body of the message > Robert G. Brown http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/ Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305 Durham, N.C. 27708-0305 Phone: 1-919-660-2567 Fax: 919-660-2525 email:rgb@phy.duke.edu To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe aic7xxx" in the body of the message
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