dorman@chiton.ucsd.edu (Leroy M. Dorman) (01/08/91)
I have some questions about the compatibility of several SCSI devices.
I am trying to add a Maxtor RXT-800S optical disk to a unix system
running ISC 2.0.2 and am having some difficulties.
The configuration is:
ISC 2.0.2, VPIX, TCP/IP
Motherboard Intel isbc386ATZ (16 Mhz 386/80287 4Mb ram)
Adaptec AHA-1540 (PCB Assy 411306-00 Rev B
with ROMs 413702-00B, 411323-00 RevA, BIOS 413801-00 B)
On the SCSI bus is a Maxtor 8760S (760Mbyte) hard disk Serial 2965955
TLA 1098208 3 HDA 1015213 PCBA 1015815 4
The Maxtor 8760 is partitioned into a 25 Mbyte DOS partition and one large
unix partition. There is no other hard disk drive.
I am trying to install a Maxtor (Maxoptics now) RXT-800S optical (WORM)
disk on the SCSI bus.
(Maxtor RXT-800S Serial C2720511 TLA 1090800-11 Prom 620 6700k)
After installing optical disk software (which works thru the ISC driver)
from Sysnet Inc. 125 Blueberry Drive, Scotts Valley, CA I found that
the system wouldn't boot to the new kernel. It seemed to hang as it was
interrogating the SCSI bus to see what devices were there. After some
flailing around (including verifying that the TLA number of the optical
disk was high enough), suspicion centered on the AHA-1540. The story
I get is that there are/were some incompatibilities between early host
adapters and some SCSI devices about releasing the bus. I have a newer
host adapter (AHA-1542) that wasn't in use so I tried to install it. No
joy. After going through all the usual BIOS identifying stuff the BIOS
couldn't find the operating system (neither unix nor DOS). If, however,
I boot to a DOS floppy, DOS can see the files in the DOS partition on
the harddisk.
Sysnet thinks that the two host adapters use different head/track to
SCSI block mapping (the 16/64 change Roy Neese has talked about) and
that I need to reformat the harddisk. Naturally i'd druther not spend
the day(s) reformatting the disk and rebuilding the system unless I have
to (and I can use the optical disk).
Has anybody out there had any experience which bears on the questions:
(1) Will using the newer host adapter cure the hangup problem?
(2) Is there any way around reformatting the harddisk with the newer
host adapter?
(3) Is the older AHA-1540 upgradable?
--
LeRoy M. Dorman Scripps Institution of Oceanography, A-015
University of California, San Diego La Jolla, CA 92093-0215
(619) 534-2406 omnet: mpl.sio .OR. sio.obs fax: (619) 534-6849
internet: ldorman@ucsd.edu .OR. ucsd.edu!siolmd!dorman