Adaptec SCSI drivers

QNX Newsgroups (Archives) comp.os.qnx
1

Hello!

I have been trying to get a Adaptec SCSI card to work. I have a x86
platform,
that boots fine from floppy, and the devb-aha7 utility for Neutrino 2.0 says
it supports ‘Adaptec 2940’ cards. But when I plug my 2940 and run devb-aha7,
it says it sees no aha7 cards.

Any ideas?

I’d appreciate direct emails to:

Amit.Margalit@conexant.com

Thanks,

Amit

–
#include <Legal/disclaim.h>

I had a feeling once about mathematics – that I saw it all. Depth beyond
depth was revealed to me – the Byss and the Abyss. I saw – as one might
see the transit of Venus or even the Lord Mayor’s Show – a quantity passing
through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus. I saw exactly
why it happened and why tergiversation was inevitable – but it was after
dinner and I let it go.
– Winston Churchill

2

Adaptec has nasty habit on sticking “2940” label on anything they want.
Depending on chip being used, it might or might not be supported. Plus,
2940 is supported by aha8, not aha7 driver.

  • igor

Amit Margalit wrote:

Hello!

I have been trying to get a Adaptec SCSI card to work. I have a x86
platform,
that boots fine from floppy, and the devb-aha7 utility for Neutrino 2.0 says
it supports ‘Adaptec 2940’ cards. But when I plug my 2940 and run devb-aha7,
it says it sees no aha7 cards.

Any ideas?

I’d appreciate direct emails to:

Amit.Margalit@conexant.com

Thanks,

Amit

–
#include <Legal/disclaim.h

I had a feeling once about mathematics – that I saw it all. Depth beyond
depth was revealed to me – the Byss and the Abyss. I saw – as one might
see the transit of Venus or even the Lord Mayor’s Show – a quantity passing
through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus. I saw exactly
why it happened and why tergiversation was inevitable – but it was after
dinner and I let it go.
– Winston Churchill

–

Click here for Free Video!!
http://www.gohip.com/free_video/

3

Hello!

Well, I got aha8 to work on one of our systems, but now I moved it to our
main
machine, and I get trouble.

The SCSI adapter is a Adaptec 2940. AIC-7870 chip.

The machine is a Compaq Proliant 8500 server (yes, I know - not many people
need to run QNX Neutrino on such a server, but I do).
The Compaq is a 8-way SMP machine but only 1 CPU is installed.

The first problem is when the AIC-7870 is inserted in the secondary bus,
running devb-aha8 results in ‘No aha8 interfaces found’. This is probably
becuase of special access methods for the Host/PCI bridge on such a system.
However, the devn-speedo utility has no problem accessing a i82557 network
adapter on the other busses. This is a wee bit strange.

The second problem is when I start devb-aha8. Here’s the commandline I use:

devb-aha8 cam verbose blk automount=hd0t6:/dos0 &

This fires up 3 threads, one of which is constantly working. But no devices
are created and it generally doesn’t work. Also, to kill the threads I
must use kill -9, because nohting else works.

When I add ‘aha8 pci=0’ on the command line, I immediately get
‘Error Initializing XPT’. Same with any X for pci=X.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Amit

Igor Kovalenko wrote:

Adaptec has nasty habit on sticking “2940” label on anything they want.
Depending on chip being used, it might or might not be supported. Plus,
2940 is supported by aha8, not aha7 driver.

  • igor

Amit Margalit wrote:

Hello!

I have been trying to get a Adaptec SCSI card to work. I have a x86
platform,
that boots fine from floppy, and the devb-aha7 utility for Neutrino 2.0 says
it supports ‘Adaptec 2940’ cards. But when I plug my 2940 and run devb-aha7,
it says it sees no aha7 cards.

Any ideas?

I’d appreciate direct emails to:

Amit.Margalit@conexant.com

Thanks,

Amit

–
#include <Legal/disclaim.h

I had a feeling once about mathematics – that I saw it all. Depth beyond
depth was revealed to me – the Byss and the Abyss. I saw – as one might
see the transit of Venus or even the Lord Mayor’s Show – a quantity passing
through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus. I saw exactly
why it happened and why tergiversation was inevitable – but it was after
dinner and I let it go.
– Winston Churchill

–

Click here for Free Video!!
http://www.gohip.com/free_video/

–
#include <Legal/disclaim.h>

“Life sucks, but it’s better than the alternative.”
– Peter da Silva

4

Amit Margalit <Amit.Margalit@conexant.com> wrote:

The machine is a Compaq Proliant 8500 server

The first problem is when the AIC-7870 is inserted in the secondary bus,
running devb-aha8 results in ‘No aha8 interfaces found’. This is probably
becuase of special access methods for the Host/PCI bridge on such a system.

Maybe so, but here’s a short curious story I have to tell. A year or
so ago, a customer of mine had me search out a RAID IDE card. I found
such a card from PROMISE. Really a RAID 0, 1, and 10. I tested
the card, and it worked fine with Fsys.eide.

A while later my customer complained that he could get neither
of these cards to work in his Compaq computers. I didn’t
understand why until a few months later I talked with
someone more knowledgable. The answer was simple.
Compaq’s PCI is not compatible. I guess a more
truthful statement would be that it is not PCI,
since something outside a standard is not really
part of the standard, is it?

I have no idea whether the 2940 has this problem or
not, but I thought that you might find this
interesting.

5

Verify that Adaptec actually appears on PCI bus (pci -v). If not, you’ll
have to work with QSSL to fix the pci-bios server. If it is there, then
the problem is with aha8 driver.

  • igor

Amit Margalit wrote:

Hello!

Well, I got aha8 to work on one of our systems, but now I moved it to our
main
machine, and I get trouble.

The SCSI adapter is a Adaptec 2940. AIC-7870 chip.

The machine is a Compaq Proliant 8500 server (yes, I know - not many people
need to run QNX Neutrino on such a server, but I do).
The Compaq is a 8-way SMP machine but only 1 CPU is installed.

The first problem is when the AIC-7870 is inserted in the secondary bus,
running devb-aha8 results in ‘No aha8 interfaces found’. This is probably
becuase of special access methods for the Host/PCI bridge on such a system.
However, the devn-speedo utility has no problem accessing a i82557 network
adapter on the other busses. This is a wee bit strange.

The second problem is when I start devb-aha8. Here’s the commandline I use:

devb-aha8 cam verbose blk automount=hd0t6:/dos0 &

This fires up 3 threads, one of which is constantly working. But no devices
are created and it generally doesn’t work. Also, to kill the threads I
must use kill -9, because nohting else works.

When I add ‘aha8 pci=0’ on the command line, I immediately get
‘Error Initializing XPT’. Same with any X for pci=X.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Amit

Igor Kovalenko wrote:

Adaptec has nasty habit on sticking “2940” label on anything they want.
Depending on chip being used, it might or might not be supported. Plus,
2940 is supported by aha8, not aha7 driver.

  • igor

Amit Margalit wrote:

Hello!

I have been trying to get a Adaptec SCSI card to work. I have a x86
platform,
that boots fine from floppy, and the devb-aha7 utility for Neutrino 2.0 says
it supports ‘Adaptec 2940’ cards. But when I plug my 2940 and run devb-aha7,
it says it sees no aha7 cards.

Any ideas?

I’d appreciate direct emails to:

Amit.Margalit@conexant.com

Thanks,

Amit

–
#include <Legal/disclaim.h

I had a feeling once about mathematics – that I saw it all. Depth beyond
depth was revealed to me – the Byss and the Abyss. I saw – as one might
see the transit of Venus or even the Lord Mayor’s Show – a quantity passing
through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus. I saw exactly
why it happened and why tergiversation was inevitable – but it was after
dinner and I let it go.
– Winston Churchill

–

Click here for Free Video!!
http://www.gohip.com/free_video/

–
#include <Legal/disclaim.h

“Life sucks, but it’s better than the alternative.”
– Peter da Silva

6

I think that your allowed to provide extensions to the PCI standard as long
as you deliver eveything that PCI promisses and don’t violate any of it’s
promisses.

Mitchell Schoenbrun <maschoen@tsoft.com> wrote in message
news:spi0a46gkn9136@corp.supernews.com…

. . . . I guess a more
truthful statement would be that it is not PCI,
since something outside a standard is not really
part of the standard, is it?

7

Bill at Sierra Design <BC@sierradesign.com> wrote:

I think that your allowed to provide extensions to the PCI standard as long
as you deliver eveything that PCI promisses and don’t violate any of it’s
promisses.

So would an IDE interface card that works in all other standard PCI
slots, but which doesn’t work in a Compaq because of differences
meet or fail this standard?

Mitchell Schoenbrun --------- maschoen@pobox.com

8

Hi!

Thanks for the input. We have known this to be a major problem with Compaq.
The problem in itself is not non-compliance with PCI standard. It is that
the Compaq hardware has its own interpretation of the standard implemented.
We have been struggling with Compaq about interrupt lines, until they
directed
us to a tiny subsection of the PCI spec saying that all 4 int pins may be
tied
together. So they did.

Thanks again, but I am sure this is not the problem. I have VxWorks booting
on the same machine, accessing the same Adaptec card with no problem.
Moreover, I have a SYMBIOS / NCR 53c810 SCSI, which also works fine with
VxWorks but completely hangs Neutrino when I run devb-ncr8 for it.

Amit

Mitchell Schoenbrun wrote:

Amit Margalit <> Amit.Margalit@conexant.com> > wrote:

The machine is a Compaq Proliant 8500 server

The first problem is when the AIC-7870 is inserted in the secondary bus,
running devb-aha8 results in ‘No aha8 interfaces found’. This is probably
becuase of special access methods for the Host/PCI bridge on such a system.

Maybe so, but here’s a short curious story I have to tell. A year or
so ago, a customer of mine had me search out a RAID IDE card. I found
such a card from PROMISE. Really a RAID 0, 1, and 10. I tested
the card, and it worked fine with Fsys.eide.

A while later my customer complained that he could get neither
of these cards to work in his Compaq computers. I didn’t
understand why until a few months later I talked with
someone more knowledgable. The answer was simple.
Compaq’s PCI is not compatible. I guess a more
truthful statement would be that it is not PCI,
since something outside a standard is not really
part of the standard, is it?

I have no idea whether the 2940 has this problem or
not, but I thought that you might find this
interesting.

–
#include <Legal/disclaim.h>

What is tolerance? – it is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed
of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other’s folly –
that is the first law of nature.

  • Voltaire
9

Hello!

Thanks, I will try this. But offhand, it does appear because if it didn’t I
would get ‘No aha8 interfaces found’, right?

Amit

Igor Kovalenko wrote:

Verify that Adaptec actually appears on PCI bus (pci -v). If not, you’ll
have to work with QSSL to fix the pci-bios server. If it is there, then
the problem is with aha8 driver.

  • igor

Amit Margalit wrote:

Hello!

Well, I got aha8 to work on one of our systems, but now I moved it to our
main
machine, and I get trouble.

The SCSI adapter is a Adaptec 2940. AIC-7870 chip.

The machine is a Compaq Proliant 8500 server (yes, I know - not many people
need to run QNX Neutrino on such a server, but I do).
The Compaq is a 8-way SMP machine but only 1 CPU is installed.

The first problem is when the AIC-7870 is inserted in the secondary bus,
running devb-aha8 results in ‘No aha8 interfaces found’. This is probably
becuase of special access methods for the Host/PCI bridge on such a system.
However, the devn-speedo utility has no problem accessing a i82557 network
adapter on the other busses. This is a wee bit strange.

The second problem is when I start devb-aha8. Here’s the commandline I use:

devb-aha8 cam verbose blk automount=hd0t6:/dos0 &

This fires up 3 threads, one of which is constantly working. But no devices
are created and it generally doesn’t work. Also, to kill the threads I
must use kill -9, because nohting else works.

When I add ‘aha8 pci=0’ on the command line, I immediately get
‘Error Initializing XPT’. Same with any X for pci=X.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Amit

Igor Kovalenko wrote:

Adaptec has nasty habit on sticking “2940” label on anything they want.
Depending on chip being used, it might or might not be supported. Plus,
2940 is supported by aha8, not aha7 driver.

  • igor

Amit Margalit wrote:

Hello!

I have been trying to get a Adaptec SCSI card to work. I have a x86
platform,
that boots fine from floppy, and the devb-aha7 utility for Neutrino 2.0 says
it supports ‘Adaptec 2940’ cards. But when I plug my 2940 and run devb-aha7,
it says it sees no aha7 cards.

Any ideas?

I’d appreciate direct emails to:

Amit.Margalit@conexant.com

Thanks,

Amit

–
#include <Legal/disclaim.h

I had a feeling once about mathematics – that I saw it all. Depth beyond
depth was revealed to me – the Byss and the Abyss. I saw – as one might
see the transit of Venus or even the Lord Mayor’s Show – a quantity passing
through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus. I saw exactly
why it happened and why tergiversation was inevitable – but it was after
dinner and I let it go.
– Winston Churchill

–

Click here for Free Video!!
http://www.gohip.com/free_video/

–
#include <Legal/disclaim.h

“Life sucks, but it’s better than the alternative.”
– Peter da Silva

–
#include <Legal/disclaim.h>

What is tolerance? – it is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed
of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other’s folly –
that is the first law of nature.

  • Voltaire
10

I’m agreeing with your original statement (at least what I think you were
saying), that Compaq has failed the standard.

Mitchell Schoenbrun <maschoen@tsoft.com> wrote in message
news:spjnpigmr5j18@corp.supernews.com…

Bill at Sierra Design <> BC@sierradesign.com> > wrote:
I think that your allowed to provide extensions to the PCI standard as
long
as you deliver eveything that PCI promisses and don’t violate any of
it’s
promisses.

So would an IDE interface card that works in all other standard PCI
slots, but which doesn’t work in a Compaq because of differences
meet or fail this standard?

Mitchell Schoenbrun --------- > maschoen@pobox.com