From owner-freebsd-hardware Mon Nov 11 04:56:00 1996 Return-Path: owner-hardware Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id EAA12304 for hardware-outgoing; Mon, 11 Nov 1996 04:56:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from mccomm.nl (root@gatekeeper.mccomm.nl [193.67.87.1]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id EAA12299 for ; Mon, 11 Nov 1996 04:55:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from hpserver.mccomm.nl (hpserver [193.67.87.13]) by mccomm.nl (8.7.6/8.7.3) with SMTP id OAA00202; Mon, 11 Nov 1996 14:54:10 +0100 Message-Id: <199611111354.OAA00202@mccomm.nl> Received: by hpserver.mccomm.nl (1.38.193.5/16.2) id AA20081; Mon, 11 Nov 1996 13:54:49 +0100 From: Rob Schofield Subject: Re: After changing to an AHA2940 I can't boot the kernel. To: Harlan.Stenn@pfcs.com Date: Mon, 11 Nov 96 13:54:49 MET Cc: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <6755.847706992@mumps.pfcs.com>; from "Harlan Stenn" at Nov 11, 96 5:09 am Mailer: Elm [revision: 70.85.2.1] Sender: owner-hardware@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Harlan Sez: > (I really hate PC hardware) ;^D You and half the planet... > OK, I upgraded my system. The old config was: > > 486/DX2-66, EISA, AHA1740, NEC2000 clone, 16550 SIO card, video ^^^^^^^ > The new config: > > OPTi PCI P90, AHA2940, same NE2000 clone, SIO, and video cards. ^^^^^^^ Ooops, I can see this coming... > The new config *seems* to work OK (I can boot the DOS partition). I To be honest, you can't just "transplant" the kernel you had in the old system, because there are significant device differences. > The 2940 correctly sees all of my SCSI devices. It will do, and it will even operate under DOS (as you note above, as Adaptec cards all come up as a 1540 in standard/ISA mode), but... > When I try to boot FreeBSD-2.1.5 I get *maybe* couple of seconds of the > "spinner" and then the system just stops. Sometimes I get the > "text=xxx" prompt and a couple of seconds of "spinner", sometimes I > don't even get the "text=xxx" stuff. The spinner is stopping when the driver goes over into EISA Enhanced mode from 1540 standard ISA. The AHA 2940 does *not emulate* the AHA 1740 in enhanced mode. It uses a different mailbox scheme and other stuff. You cannot assume that enhanced mode drivers for the 1740 will work with the 2940, as it is also a different bus architecture! When the driver tries to go into EISA enhanced mode, there's no hardware there to support it... The 2740 EISA board *also* does not emulate the 1740 in enhanced mode, which gives no simple software upgrade even if you'd stuck with EISA. For the 2940 (PCI) architecture, there isn't much in common. You really have to change the driver, and in this case with PCI architecture you'll have to move drivers anyway. Hmm... This is all very well, but what do you have to do to get off the ground? Well, since you can boot DOS from the Hard disk/DOS slice, then the controller IS functional, all you need to do is change your BSD kernel to use a different device driver for the new disk controller card. You should be able to boot from the install floppy and use the -c (change) option from the boot: prompt. This will allow you to disable the 1740 driver and select the 2940 driver. When you're booted, you can get to your kernel config file, edit it to put in the correct device driver for the 2940 and do a re-build/re-boot of the kernel. > If I plug the SCSI disk cable from the "new" configuration into a box > containing the "old" motherboard and the 1740, everything works just > fine. That's right, because the driver installed in the kernel is working with the correct disk controller hardware. > Suggestions on how I can get this beast working again would be most > appreciated! Hope this helps - I had the same agony with the upgrade path between controller cards a while ago now, and in the end I had to spend about an hour on the phone to Adaptec to an engineer to discover the compatibility path between various different driver cards. It turns out that they made a design decision to spilt away from the old 1540/1740 architecture in order to get better performance out of the 2740 EISA card. This just means you have to upgrade your drivers and whizzo! you're in business. Rob -- Witticisms are hard to define on Monday mornings... schofiel@xs4all.nl http://www.xs4all.nl/~schofiel rschof@mccomm.nl