jesup@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (Randell Jesup) (04/27/91)
[ This should get that one guy who keeps griping about his pair ]
[ of hard drives locking up to quiet down. -Dan ]
The following announcement has been approved for release by everyone
and their first cousin in Commodore. It's a copy of a service bulletin
issues by the Commodore US sales company. NOTE: this is ONLY a notice
regarding Commodore Business Machines (Commodore International's US sales
company). Other Commodore sales and service organizations may have different
policies (and in fact their service organizations may or may not know of
the fix yet).
Also please note: your local dealer or service center may not have
received this notice yet in the quarterly service bulletins (they go out
in a few days, I'm told), and will almost certainly have to order the
ROMs/disk in order to update 2091's. It _is_ posted on the CBM service
center bulletin board.
To determine revision of WD chip: it's the large chip beside the
internal SCSI connector. Usually on the second line there's a -xx. 'xx'
is the revision number. The notice only affects -04 and -08 revisions
(commonly labelled wd33c93a or wd33c93proto), not the -02 revision (commonly
labelled the wd33c93 or wd33c93pl).
Randell
unofficial statement ends, official statement begins...
__________________________________________________________________________
32/3-3.1 A2091 HDC - New Rom Rev 6.6 corrects Dual SCSI problem on
PCB's with WD SCSI Controller type A, Revisions 04/08.**
A2091 Hard Drive Controller cards which lock up the
system when accessing two or more SCSI devices can
be upgraded, under warranty, by replacing both Roms
at locations U12 and U13 on the A2091.
** - If Reselection is turned ON.
Part Number Description Location
_______________________________________________________
390722-02 IC ROM Rev 6.6 ODD U12
390721-02 IC ROM Rev 6.6 EVEN U13
317806-04 DISKETTE, A2091 INSTALL V1.30
_______________________________________________________
IMPORTANT NOTE: Only units which have an "A" type Western Digital
SCSI controller WD33C93A, revision 04 or 08 (CBM PN# 390206-03)
are effected by this upgrade. Rev 6.6 roms should not be
installed in 2091s with WD33C93 revision 02 chips. The 02
revision supports reselection with previous ROM revisions.
The new V1.30 Install Disk for the A2091 Hard drive
controller card features the new icon "ReselectOn"
which can be used in conjunction with the new V6.6 ROM's
to support multiple SCSI devices.
This ReselectOn program allows the user to change the
setting of the Reselect bit on the rigid disk block
of the SCSI drive to "ON" without having to reformat
the whole drive. With the reselect bit turned "ON",
the hard drive will release the SCSI controller,
when not in use, allowing the controller to access
other SCSI devices. Performance is greatly improved.
With the reselect bit set to "OFF", the drive will
not release the SCSI controller so it ( the controller )
can service other devices.
Earlier versions of the A2091 ROM's did not fully
support the use of multiple SCSI devices, therefore
all factory configured drives were formatted with the
reselect turned "OFF". The only way to change the
reselect setting prior to the "ReselectOn" program
was by going into HDToolbox, changing the drive
configuration setting and then reformatting the
drive. Now you can simply double-click on the
"ReselectOn" icon.
To use multiple SCSI devices with the A2091 controller,
you must first upgrade the hardware with V6.6 ROM's.
Next you double-click on the "ReselectOn" icon located
on the V1.30 A2091 Install Disk. The program will prompt
you with a couple of questions and when the program
has run it will display the message "Rigid disk block
update complete".
Note: Running the ReselectOn program will not affect the
data on the hard drive, however Commodore recommends
a complete hard drive backup as a precaution before
any attempt is made to reconfigure the system.
The HDToolbox utility does not read the current
settings of the hard drive as it was formatted,
and therefore cannot be used to determine the
current state of the reselect bit either before
or after using ReselectOn.
___________________________________________________________________________
--
Randell Jesup, Keeper of AmigaDos, Commodore Engineering.
{uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!jesup, jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com BIX: rjesup
Disclaimer: Nothing I say is anything other than my personal opinion.
Thus spake the Master Ninjei: "To program a million-line operating system
is easy, to change a man's temperament is more difficult."
(From "The Zen of Programming") ;-)
--
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