[H-GEN] scsi drive won't spin up

[Hilton Travis]

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Hi Tony,

On Wed, 2003-01-29 at 17:04, Tony Nugent wrote:

> On Wed Jan 29 2003 at 16:24, "James C. McPherson" wrote:
> 
> > > I have a scsi drive here (18Gb seagate barracuda) that I've tried
> > > connecting to an adaptec aha-2940UW controller card (which works
> > > fine, although it does not seem to have a bios on it).  When the
> > > aic7xxx driver tries to initialise the drive, it complains that it
> > > fails to spin up.  (I would try diagnostics on it, but without a
> > > bios on the card I can't easily do this).
> 
> > I'd be more suspicious of the card to start with. Do you have another scsi
> > card you can attach the two drives to in order to test them? If the drives
> > work fine on another controller then you've got an interesting aic7xxx.
> 
> No, I don't have another card here that can take 68-pin scsi.

I have a working motherboard here (actually, 2 of them) with 2940U2W
cards gaffed onto them.  :)  If you are up in Brissie soon, you are
welcome to bring the drives and play on these systems.  The only problem
is that these 2 systems are currently in use, so you cannot "borrow"
either of them.

> > Do you have the lastest driver and firmware patches installed for the
> > card? Is the aic7xxx driver the right one to use for this card (I wouldn't
> > have thought so...)
> 
> I should have been more clear... the card itself works just fine
> (and has for me for quite a while, a "hand-me-down").
> 
> The card is working right now with two scsi cdroms (one is a burner)
> and two other drives (another seagate and an ibm DFHS, both rather
> old and small but they do work).  From dmesg and the bootup
> messages...
> 
>   ahc_pci:0:14:0: Host Adapter Bios disabled.  Using default SCSI device parameters
>   scsi0 : Adaptec AIC7XXX EISA/VLB/PCI SCSI HBA DRIVER, Rev 6.2.8
>           <Adaptec 2940 Ultra SCSI adapter>
>           aic7880: Ultra Wide Channel A, SCSI Id=7, 16/253 SCBs
> 
> I'm not sure why it says that its bios is disabled.  If I cat
> /proc/scsi/aic7xxx/1 it says (in part)...
> 
>   Adaptec AIC7xxx driver version: 6.2.8
>   aic7880: Ultra Wide Channel A, SCSI Id=7, 16/253 SCBs
> 
>   No Serial EEPROM
>   [ ... lots of other technical stuff about negotiation settings ... ]
> 
> Should this card have a working bios on it?  If so, does anyone know
> how I can go about flashing one onto it?  (I guess I should check
> adaptec's web site... I'll do that).

I'd imagine it should as only their cheap cards didn't have BIOSes.  The
ones sold as CD-ROM/Scanner controllers.  This seems not to be one of
those cards.

I'm sure that there was an Adaptec util that would allow you to flash
one of their cards.

> The drive with the bad first sector came from a now-retired windows
> box (that's why I now have it).  The barracuda that won't spin up
> (also a hand-me-down) was supposed to be working just fine.
> 
> > hth,
> > James C. McPherson
> 
> Cheers
> Tony

-- 

Regards,

Hilton Travis                   Email: Hilton at QuarkAV.com
Manager                         Phone: +61-(0)7-3343-3889
Quark AudioVisual               Phone: +61-(0)419-792-394
Quark Computers
(Brisbane, Australia)            http://www.QuarkAV.com/

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