HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: hobbes@spacemanspiff.den.mmc.com (Stephen Camp)
Subject: Re: Adaptec + Fujitsu --> cold boot problem.  advice?
Organization: Denver, Colorado
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 15:40:17 GMT

In article <1992Jul22.152826@arapaho.ucsc.edu> louis@arapaho.ucsc.edu writes:
>In article <1992Jul21.210208.29074@den.mmc.com>, hobbes@spacemanspiff.den.mmc.com (Stephen Camp) writes:
>|> BTW...
>|> what have people's experiences been with the Maxtor line:  
>|> specifically the LXT-200s, LXT-213s, LXT-340s models...
>|> 
>|> I had 2 LXT-200s' that crapped out.  My current drive, an LXT-213s, is
>|> still going after 1 1/2 years... of course, since i have an electronic
>|> power filter (1.2 KVA) in front of a 520 VA UPS in front of my computer, 
>|> i never turn it off! :-)
>|> 
>|> steve camp
>|> hobbes@spacemanspiff.den.mmc.com
>
>I just recently purchased a 486 system from Gateway 2000 which came with the
>340M Maxtor.  The first one worked fine for about a week, then dropped off
>and wouldn't be found by the SCSI card anymore.  Sent it back for another, 
>which worked for a couple weeks, then started coming up with "sector not
>found" errors, even after re-low-level-formatting it.  The third drive
>wouldn't be found by the SCSI card when the drive arrived.  The fourth drive, 
>which looks like an older model (different label with older (c) date, first 
>three had same label), and has been running fine for about 2 weeks now.  I'm
>keeping my fingers crossed.
>
>All the people at Gateway said that they haven't heard of any problems with
>the drive, and that it's one of their most reliable drives.  After 3 bad
>drives I have to wonder if that's not some marketing or PR going on 
>somewhere.
>
>I tried calling Maxtor's 800 help line printed on the drive, but after
>manuvering a touch tone maze several times, I never did get any information
>or any clue as to how to talk to a real person.
>
>As to the original question, my experiences with Maxtor has been very BAD.  I
>don't know what the warrenty is on the drive (1 yr through Gateway), but I 
>would seriously think hard before buying one again.
>
>Louis
>


Newsgroups: comp.periphs.scsi
From: neese@adaptx1.UUCP (Roy Neese)
Subject: Re: AHA1542A problem
Organization: Adaptec Inc., Texas
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 20:33:09 GMT

In article <1992Jul21.001616.5201@ulrik.uio.no> toreh@bootes.sds.no (Tore Haraldsen) writes:
> In trying to install the bew freebie unix 386BSD (look into
> comp.unix.bsd for pointers) I have run into a problem with my Adaptec
> 1542A Rev.D w/version 3.07 proms.
> 
> The SCSI driver in the 386BSD release uses scatter/gather w/r functions
> (2, 4 aren't they). Is this not supported by a 1542A Rev.D adapter, or
> are there rom revisions around to cure the problems? Or am I out in the
> bushes, beating the wrong one?

There were a whole bunch of 1542A adapters shipped that did not support
scatter/gather.  This feature crept in about half through production,
but it required a hardware change to make it useful, so there is no
firmware upgrade to make olde 1542A adapters use scatter/gather.  As a
matter of fact, if you do upgrade the board, the firmware does the
hardware check and if it sees it is being run on an older 1542A, it
does not allow scatter/gather commands.  This is coming from memory as
the 1542A has been dead for a couple of years now.
---

			Roy Neese
			Adaptec Senior UNIX/SCSI Software Engineer
			UUCP:	convex!egsner!adaptex!neese
			Inet:	neese%adaptex@cirr.com
Newsgroups: comp.periphs.scsi
From: neese@adaptx1.UUCP (Roy Neese)
Subject: Re: AHA1542A problem
Organization: Adaptec Inc., Texas
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 20:34:27 GMT

In article <1992Jul21.102624.6802@ulrik.uio.no> toreh@bootes.sds.no (Tore Haraldsen) writes:
> In article <1992Jul21.001616.5201@ulrik.uio.no> toreh@bootes.sds.no (Tore Haraldsen) writes:
> >In trying to install the bew freebie unix 386BSD (look into
> >comp.unix.bsd for pointers) I have run into a problem with my Adaptec
> >1542A Rev.D w/version 3.07 proms.
> >
> >The SCSI driver in the 386BSD release uses scatter/gather w/r functions
> >(2, 4 aren't they). Is this not supported by a 1542A Rev.D adapter, or
> >are there rom revisions around to cure the problems? Or am I out in the
> >bushes, beating the wrong one?
> >
> >
> >-- Tore Haraldsen
> 
> (following up myself again..)
> The above refers to opcodes with scatter/gather functionality that
> returns residual length...

And these added features (residual lenght commands opcodes) did not show
up until the 1542B went into production.
---

			Roy Neese
			Adaptec Senior UNIX/SCSI Software Engineer
			UUCP:	convex!egsner!adaptex!neese
			Inet:	neese%adaptex@cirr.com
From: thad@public.BTR.COM (Thaddeus P. Floryan)
Newsgroups: comp.periphs.scsi
Subject: Re: So Maxtor Won't work on SUN Microsystems anymore?
Keywords: Maxtor,SunOs 4.1.2
Date: 29 Jul 92 07:53:01 GMT
Organization: BTR Public Access UNIX, Mountain View CA

In article <1992Jul26.184307.18792@ntg.com> dplatt@ntg.com (Dave Platt) writes:
>>Just talked to Maxtor tech support, and found out that SUN will not support
>>Maxtor drives in release 4.1.2!  Now this sounds a bit strange to me, I'm
>>going to call SUN and hear their side of the story before I get too
>>disappointed!  
>[...]
>Yes.  I have four of these drives on four SparcStation-2GX systems here
>at NTG.  I also have five XT-8760S Maxtors, and a bunch of smaller
>[...]
>It may be true that Sun does not _officially_ support these drives...
>[...]

Many HD vendors, and Maxtor is no exception, will provide system vendors
with customized ROMs on the HD for specific applications.  Attempted use
of such drives (often found on the new-but-surplussed or used market) on
OTHER than the originally-specified system can result in weird problems.

A few months ago I spoke with a person at Maxtor responsible for testing
and certifying such "custom mods" and coaxed her to speak at a users'
group meeting in Silicon Valley; alas, I was unable to attend that meeting,
but I have many of her comments about such mods.  Point being: it's important
to specify not only a drive MODEL but the ROM VERSION(s) when reporting
problems and seeking a solution.

Because of the possibility of end-users acquiring HDs from surplus and/or
other markets, I can fully understand the reluctance of Sun, H-P, SGI, etc.
"supporting" such drives that they themselves didn't provide the user.

Oftimes the custom mods cause no perturbations, but there ARE enough
"gotchas" to suggest the problem is more common than otherwise thought.
Some mods I've witnessed affect handling of SCSI RESET, some affect the
drive's response time upon power up, etc.

Also within the past month here we've been privy to the custom mods by
Tandberg for their Model TDC-3660 QIC-150 tape drive to suit IBM's specs
for the RS6000.

Caveat emptor.

Thad Floryan [ thad@btr.com (OR) {decwrl, mips, fernwood}!btr!thad ]
From: sjb5@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (STACY JOHN BEHRENS)
Newsgroups: comp.periphs.scsi
Subject: No Soap So Far.
Date: 27 Jul 92 17:18:50 GMT
Organization: Lehigh University

I would like to thank those of you who have helped so far, but unfortunately
the card resists all efforts.  I have tried installing the ASPI4DOS.SYS driver
for my Adaptec 1542B and when I reboot, it comes back telling me that my
command.com file is bad or missing.  It isn't.  I used the /D and /P330
switches.  Programs like Procomm work fine, but if I try something heavy on
the graphics like say the game Harpoon, it bombs.  (though not right away, it
waits until I start to do any really heavy disk access, i.e. loading the
actual game)  The whole system doesn't shut down in this case, but that is
probably just luck.  I have my card set up as follows:

SCSI address: 7
SCSI parity: enabled
DMA channel: 5
IRQ: 11
AT port address: 330h
AT BIOS address: DC000, enabled
BIOS wait state: 0, diabled
FD controller: enabled
DMA Transfer speed: 5.0 MB/sec
Auto Sense: Enabled

System BIOS is AMI Hi-Flex.  Hard drive is Quantum 170MB.  Have a 64k cache on
motherboard.  Anything I'm forgetting?

Thanks.

                                                    Stacy John Behrens
                                                    *===)-------------

                                                    
Newsgroups: comp.periphs.scsi
From: ketil@edb.tih.no (Ketil Albertsen,TIH)
Subject: BusTek programming
Reply-To: ketil@edb.tih.no
Organization: T I H / T I S I P 
Posting-Front-End: Winix Conference v 92.05.15  1.20 (running under MS-Windows)
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 15:14:22 GMT

I bought a BusTek 542B a year ago; I planned using it in my teaching at
the Technical College where I work. We teach the SCSI protocol in fairly 
great detail, but it is all theoretical yet, no practical experience with 
it except using through MS-DOS, and then you are certainly far away from 
the protocol! I was told that BusTek was one of the more "transparent" 
SCSI cards, that would allow me pass it arbitrary  commands that it would 
put onto the SCSI bus but take care of all timing, DMA access etc.

Maybe it is transparent, but then I must know *how*. The vendor has several 
times promised to get me programming specs, but failed. Now, I am referred 
to the distributor in Norway, but he refuse to provide info, and refuse to
give me the address of the BusTek company for me to contact them - "We are 
not allowed to provide their address to end users" (!!).(strangely enough, 
the manual delivered with the card neither included a phone number nor a 
mail address!)

So: Has anyone out there succeeded in obtaining programming info for 
BT-542B? How did you do it - have you got an address of someone capable 
of and willing to provide details? Or is it so that BusTek are afraid of
loosing their profits from selling new drivers if they allow CoSci students
to do programming exercizes on their hardware???

Another funny thing: I managed to blow the fuse on the card (I was careless
and didn't turn of power before plugging in an external disk), and those
fuses are not found in ordinary component shops here in Norway. Before this
distributor could help me to a new fuse, I had to specify the serial number
of the card, and he would call me back after validating the number. Huh?
Validating the serial number for providing a replacement fuse?? (He has not
called back yet, so I still don't know if I am wanted as a customer.)

Maybe I should buy myself another SCSI card of a different brand! 
Newsgroups: comp.periphs.scsi,comp.unix.sysv386,comp.unix.questions
From: gryphon@openage.openage.com (The Golden Gryphon)
Subject: Re: WHEN TO TURN OFF MY MACHINE?
Organization: Open Age, Inc.
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 22:32:37 GMT
Keywords: SWITCH, ON, OFF, :-)

dmatic@athena.mit.edu (Davor Matic) writes:



>I've been wondering for a long time when is a good idea to
>turn off my machine, and when should I leave it on.  For example,
>if I know I won't be using it for a week, I usually turn it off,
>but if I use it every day, I leave it on all the time.  What is 
>better for the hard disks?  What is the minimum idle time for a
>hard disk to be worth turning it off?  I have a 386-40, with 2
>SCSI disks (200 and 600 MBytes), running UNIX SVR4, X11R5, etc.

>Thanks!
>Davor

It depends on whether you want the machine to take a lightning hit?
Actually there is a great debat over this, and I'll cover it later if I
get enough requests.  I'm too tired.  

My advice...

	Turn it off.

-- 
The Golden Gryphon 				gryphon@openage.COM
Solve a man's problem and he has 1 less.        No incumbents in 92.
Teach a man to think, and all his problems are less.
Openage - The Premier SCO UNIX integrator in the Washington D.C. area
From: terry@spcvxb.spc.edu (Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr.)
Newsgroups: comp.periphs.scsi
Subject: Re: Panic, WD chip availability
Date: 31 Jul 92 12:12:33 GMT
Organization: St. Peter's College, US

In article <4902@unixhub.SLAC.Stanford.EDU>, ralph@falcon.SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Ralph Becker-Szendy) writes:
> Disclaimer: I have built SCSI-boards for my cp/m system with both
> chips. And I probably have some hard feeling towards the WD chip,
> which made life hell for me for a few weekends. And I probably have a
> specially soft spot for the NCR chip, which was like seeing the light
> at the end of the SCSI tunnel for me. So take everything I see with a
> grain of salt. Plus, my employer probably wouldn't know what a SCSI
> chip is if he (she? it?) found one floating in the coffee cup.

  [This is probably going to sound like one of those "when I was a kid we
had to walk fifty miles to school in 10 feet of snow - and that was in the
summertime" stories 8-]

  Back when I was doing hardware design, there weren't any chips. The bus
had just been renamed to SCSI from SASI. I designed boards that used dis-
crete logic for controllers. I still have two around here somewhere - a
"dumb" board that did S-100 bus DMA but had nothing fancier than 74xx on
it, and a version which we called the "protocol assist" version, which had
a Z80 and 16Kb of static RAM and which implemented dual-ported memory and
command queueing.

  I didn't find dealing with the SCSI bus that hard... Of course, the big
problem in those days was that no to SASI drives behaved the same. These
days there's synchronous mode and other complex features, so the LSI chips
that implement portions of the controller are handy. However, you can still
do it with loose TTL if you want/have to.

	Terry Kennedy		Operations Manager, Academic Computing
	terry@spcvxa.bitnet	St. Peter's College, Jersey City, NJ USA
	terry@spcvxa.spc.edu	+1 201 915 9381
Newsgroups: comp.periphs.scsi
From: mpl@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (michael.p.lindner)
Subject: SCSI vs. SCSI II Question
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 16:51:33 GMT
Keywords: SCSI

Apologies if this is a FAQ, but I haven't seen a FAQ posting for this
group (in fact, I don't normally read this group).  I am considering
purchasing a PC, and would like to use SCSI.  I've seen machines which
advertise SCSI controllers, and SCSI 2 controllers.  I know the SCSI 2
is faster, but how much?  What other differences are there?  Can I run
SCSI 2 periphs on SCSI?  Can I run SCSI periphs on SCSI 2?  What is a
reasonable price difference for controllers and peripherals?  Any
recommendations?  Please e-mail, as I don't subscribe to this group.

By the way, before you tell me SCSI is a waste for my DOS/ISA PC, let me
mention I plan to get a UNIX/EISA PC.

Thanks in advance,

Mike Lindner
mikel@attmail.att.com
From: it1@ra.msstate.edu (Tim Tsai)
Newsgroups: comp.periphs.scsi
Subject: Re: OS/2 2.0 and ALWAYS SCSI controller
Date: 28 Jul 92 21:22:34 GMT
Organization: Mississippi State University

john@mcgort.COM (John McGortey) writes:
>  Suprise! It works with no drivers required. As per the Customer Service
>agent (RON) at always. P.S. it will also support up to 7 disk drives under
>DOS 5.0 with no drivers. Performance is good too.

  Note that performance is good under DOS, but not necessarily OS/2.  I
don't have any useful benchmarking software to use under OS/2, but
from all accounts the INT13 driver slow things down quite a bit.
Newsgroups: comp.periphs.scsi
From: gting@fraser.sfu.ca (Gabriel Sii Kuok Ting)
Subject: Re: AHA1542 && SBPro conflict
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 08:03:29 GMT

vax@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Vax) writes:

>Once again, I have the same problem I did before - someone please help!
>(I called adaptec 2 weeks ago, still no response, not even a call!)
>I am postponing a substantial purchase of scsi secondary store because
>there seems to be a conflict between a AHA1542B and an Sound Blaster Pro,
>particularly in data-intensive writes to the digital audio output port.
>Changing interrupts, slot locations, port addresses, and DMA channels
>(they both use DMA) did not help.  I have a 386DX-33 (intel), and a 'virgin'
>system setup (no TSRs, minimal drivers), tried MS-DOS 5.0 and NDOS, nothing
>seems to change it.  Is there something else that could be conflicting?
>How can they interfere like that?  Which card is to blame?
>I only have a tape drive on the SCSI bus, and it seems to work find
>(with the exception of an aspiwrite -14 error or something when appending
>to a tar archive) and teh SBPro works flawlessly when the AHA1542B is 
>removed.  I would try each device under coherent, but I don't have drivers
>for them yet... sorry, I hate asking for DOS help... but someone PLEASE
>give me a hint!??!?!?			Thanks

Sounds a lot like what I'm facing now. Only difference is that I have a 
WD-7000 FASST SCSI card and a plain old SB 1.5. Certain games will lock up
while running off my d: drive (the SCSI one) but if I put them in drive c:
(IDE), it works fine (without removing the SCSI card). 

Anyone out in netland managed to solve this puzzle yet? HHHEEEEELLLPPP!!!!!
Thanks.

>-- 

>VAX#N8 vax@ccwf.utexas.edu
>"I promise I won't draw any more cows" - me
From: sjb5@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (STACY JOHN BEHRENS)
Newsgroups: comp.periphs.scsi
Subject: I give up
Date: 29 Jul 92 02:37:50 GMT
Organization: Lehigh University

After trying everything imaginable to get this stupid card to work, I am
giving up.  The card appears to be fine but just incompatable in some basic
way with my machine.  I am going to send it (an Adaptec 1542B)  back to the
place I bought it and try another brand.  I could not get my disk to format
properly and many errors kept being introduced because I had to disable parity
checking to get it to run at all.  I know that the disk is fine because it
works in another machine.  Since I am an OS/2 user, I would like
reccomendations among the following cards:

Corel LS2000  (Corel's new 16-bit card.  Runs about $300)
UltraStor 14F
Future Domain TMC1660 (or TMC1680)

My hard drive is a 170mb Quantum ProDrive.

I would like good and bad points about each, most importantly, installation,
compatibility, and performance.  If you have a favorite, tell me why.  My
motive in this is to make the best choice possible.

If it helps, I run a:
40Mhz 386 w/ 64K cache
8megs RAM
AMI Hi-Flex BIOS
Paradise Pro VGA card

Thanks.  Email or posts are fine.

                                                    Stacy John Behrens
                                                    *===)-------------
From: terry@spcvxb.spc.edu (Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr.)
Newsgroups: comp.periphs.scsi
Subject: Re: Adaptec 1542b.  HEEELLLLPPPPPP!
Date: 30 Jul 92 09:36:11 GMT
Organization: St. Peter's College, US

In article <1992Jul29.205507.21143@adaptx1.UUCP>, neese@adaptx1.UUCP (Roy Neese) writes:
> Have you tried the bus master test located at dc00:9?  If this fails,
> then the motherboard will not support an ISA bus master board.

  There are bus mastering problems that the ROM-based test won't find, by the
way. I'm using a 1542B in a no-name "Vega" 486/33 with Symphony chipset with
no problems. However, using the same 1542B in an original (discrete logic)
AMI 386/25, as well as an Everex M series 386/33, causes the machine to hang
with the ISA bus locked at any speed (CPU or Adaptec DMA rate). This is odd,
as Everex sells the 1542B as their preferred SCSI controller. However, it
locks up tight. It's a bit hard to reproduce under DOS, but with Netware you
get a rapid crash when disk activity heats up. I've also tried this with a
wide variety of SCSI drives - same problem.

  The same thing happens with the BusTek (at least I think it's a BusTek -
it's the Storage Dimensions DC16xx), so it's not exclusively an Adaptec
problem. This does make me think bus mastering on a bus as sloppily specified
as ISA may be risky, though.

	Terry Kennedy		Operations Manager, Academic Computing
	terry@spcvxa.bitnet	St. Peter's College, Jersey City, NJ USA
	terry@spcvxa.spc.edu	+1 201 915 9381
From: gkendall@ncr-mpd.FtCollins.NCR.COM (Guy Kendall)
Newsgroups: comp.periphs.scsi
Subject: Re: SCSI Bus Analyzers ???
Keywords: SCSI Bus Analyzer
Date: 27 Jul 92 18:24:47 GMT
Reply-To: gkendall@ncr-mpd.FtCollins.NCR.COM (Guy Kendall)
Organization: NCR Microelectronic Products Division

In article <45542@shamash.cdc.com> sjc@pooky.udev.cdc.com (Steven J Craig) writes:
>I am starting to look for a decent SCSI Bus Analyzer.  I have tried several
>times to get in contact with my local Adaptec 'Guy' and have had little
>luck.  They have two newer analyzers (SDS-310F and SDS-318FD)  

We use a little attachment to our regular HP logic analyzer that makes it
a SCSI bus analyzer. It can give you a trace of the signals transitioning,
as well as a listing of the states. It is a very nice piece of 
equiptment. I couldn't imagine debugging SCSI drivers or boards without
one. I have many traces from other SCSI analyzers sent to me and I have
never seen one that does what the HP does. I don't have the model number
(I could go look if you can't find it out) handy, but your HP salesperson
should be able to tell you about it, or possibly someone here can help.



-- 
Guy W. Kendall - Applications Engineer            Guy.Kendall@ColoSpgs.NCR.COM
NCR Microelectronic Products Division               Voice: 719-596-5795 x465
1635 Aeroplaza Drive                                  Fax: 719-570-6045
Colorado Springs, CO 80916                            BBS: 719-596-1649
From: hobbes@spacemanspiff.den.mmc.com (Stephen Camp)
Newsgroups: comp.periphs.scsi
Subject: Re: Adaptec + Fujitsu --> cold boot problem.  advice?
Date: 21 Jul 92 21:02:08 GMT
Organization: Denver, Colorado

In article <1992Jul18.175512.29196@athena.cs.uga.edu> hal@pollux.cs.uga.edu (Hal N. Brooks) writes:
>I recently purchased an Adaptec 1542B and a Fujitsu M2624FA SCSI-2
>drive.  In general, they work well, but here's the problem:
>
...stuff deleted...
>
>When I first turn the machine on after it's had time to cool
>down, the host adapter reports that it's detected the first
>(and only) drive, the PC's bios puts a message on the screen
>(which is normal), and then the system hangs for several
>minutes (with the red diagnostic light on the 1542 lit) until
>finally the message "A disk read error occurred.  Insert a
>system diskette and restart."  OK, fair enough.  The first
>time or two I believed the disk had been corrupted by my
>installation of OS/2 boot manager, DOS 5.0, and OS/2 2.0,
>with another partition reserved for Linux, so I re-installed
>everything.  But then I discovered that if I left the machine on
>for 15 minutes or so, and tried booting again, it would work.
>Actually, it wasn't quite so straight forward ... sometimes boot
>manager would come up offering to boot some strange undecipherable
>system name, but then on the next try it would work, then if booting
>OS/2 it would sometimes have a read error of its own, but eventually
>everything would work.  Once the machine is booted, I experience
>no I/O errors.


you'd leave it on for 20 minutes, then it'd boot, right?

my Maxtor LXT-200s did that for about 2-4 weeks before it totally 
crapped out and died.  (boy, what a hassle that was to try to get
a warranty replacement through Hamilton Avnet in less than 6 weeks.
i think i managed to get it in 3-4.  what a pain.  then the replacement
started acting funny a few months later...)

anyways, i'm curious to hear if your drive lives a long life or not.
someone suggested a 'cold solder joint' which didn't come to life
until the drive warmed up.  does this sound plausible to anyone else?

BTW...
what have people's experiences been with the Maxtor line:  
specifically the LXT-200s, LXT-213s, LXT-340s models...

I had 2 LXT-200s' that crapped out.  My current drive, an LXT-213s, is
still going after 1 1/2 years... of course, since i have an electronic
power filter (1.2 KVA) in front of a 520 VA UPS in front of my computer, 
i never turn it off! :-)

steve camp
hobbes@spacemanspiff.den.mmc.com
Newsgroups: comp.periphs.scsi