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Date: Sat, 16 Dec 1995 05:31:03 +1100
From: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
Message-Id: <199512151831.FAA25465@godzilla.zeta.org.au>
To: d_burr@ix.netcom.com, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: question about
Cc: freebsd-scsi@FreeBSD.ORG
Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Precedence: bulk

>Why does FreeBSD print "not ready", etc. for my CD-ROM, as evidenced by 
>the following extract from dmesg:

Because the CD-ROM drive isn't ready :-).

>...
>(aha0:2:0): "TOSHIBA CD-ROM XM-3501TA 2694" type 5 removable SCSI 2
>cd0(aha0:2:0): CD-ROM 
>cd0(aha0:2:0): NOT READY asc:4,1
>cd0(aha0:2:0):  Logical unit is in process of becoming ready
>can't get the size

>I'm just curious why these messages are displayed, if they are an 
>indication of something about to break, or if it's just one of those 
>little quirks that people live with.

The driver resets the device (and/or the SCSI bus?) and some devices
take a looong time to become ready.  The device driver only waits a
long time for SCSI devices to become ready.  This is controlled by

	options SCSI_DELAY=nnn		# nnn is 15 for GENERIC

in the kernel config file.  I use 8, which is this smallest value
that avoids the above error message here.  The drive LED indicator
showed reliably when the drive was ready.

Bruce