jchin@wimsey.bc.ca (Joseph Chin) (05/07/91)
Okay ... after struggling with this problem for months to no avail, I have finally decided to turn to the SCSI pros on this group for some advice on the SCSI problem: I have a Micropolis 1588-15 660MB (formatted, 1024-byte sectors) SCSI hard drive which has been working beautifully on its own in my NeXT Cube system since last September. The NeXT has a 68040 processor, 24MB, and runs NeXT Operating System 2.0. Everything was fine and dandy until I got a SCSI flatbed scanner which is attached to the external SCSI port, and terminated externally. The scanner and cable (and terminator) work fine on another similarly equipped NeXT system, but on my NeXT, whenever I try to scan something, I would get the following error messages on the Console (where system error messages spew out): "sd0: Incomplete disk transfer, bytes transferred = 2000, resid = ...". The Console would be flooded with lines of the error messages until the scan has been completed or cancelled. I also tried to hook up an external SCSI floppy drive (PLI SuperFloppy 2.88) which has worked flawlessly on another NeXT computer. When the system is powered up with the floppy drive attached, the above error messages would flood the screen (system is boot up in "verbose" mode so I can see everything) and the boot process would have to be terminated! I have contacted NeXT, HSD (the scanner manufacturer), and Micropolis about the problem. After numerous tests (and yes, I have tried all termination options I could think of, including some really creative ones), we have narrowed the source of the problem to the Micropolis drive. Micropolis has sent me a firmware upgrade which didn't make any different. Another firmware upgrade is on its way, but I am still quite pessimistic. At this point, I must mention that NeXT, HSD, and Micropolis have been extremely helpful, and in many cases, took the extra step to help me solve the problem. I told Jiro Nakamura (a SCSI engineer/programmer who works for Cannon) about my problem, and he speculated that the Micropolis drive may be "dropping" the bus before a transfer has been completed. Does anyone have any idea or suggestion? At this point, I will try almost anything! :-( Joe jchin@van-bc.wimsey.bc.ca ps. Thanks to Jiro for his help too ... -- ************************************************************** * "Kill the body and the head will die" (Hunter S. Thompson) * * NeXT --> The ultimate electronic publishing platform! * ********** Joseph Chin --> jchin@van-bc.wimsey.bc.ca *********