[3197] in linux-scsi channel archive
Re: AHA1542CF suddenly stopped working! Help!
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jay Vassos-Libove)
Tue Feb 3 23:30:19 1998
Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 22:10:00 -0500 (EST)
From: Jay Vassos-Libove <libove@felines.org>
To: "Leonard N. Zubkoff" <lnz@dandelion.com>
cc: linux-scsi@vger.rutgers.edu, redhat-list@redhat.com
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.96.980203140313.746I-100000@panther.felines.org>
A further update -- Leonard was quite right; the card does not work with
anything that attempts to drive it directly: only with its own BIOS.
I attempted to load Windows NT 4.0 on the system, and it spent a
ridiculous amount of time trying to initialize the AHA154X driver. It did
then finish and say that it had found an AHA154X, but said that it did not
see any drives on the bus.
This, by the way, was with _another_ AHA1542 in place of the first one, so
it certainly is not the particular card.
This leaves me with an uncomfortable problem: Has my whole system wiped
out somehow? How could I test for that possibility? Since I changed
nothing in the system (remember, the memory upgrade was successfully
completed and tested prior to my shutting the system down again, when this
problem began), I fear that my system has failed somehow.
I guess I'm back to my initial request...
Heellllpppppp?!
-Jay
> Thanks to Leonard for teaching me about this. I had not realized that
> interrupts went unused if no explicit software driver was installed.
>
> The question that this raises in my mind is: why would this have changed?
> The SCSI card configuration is no different than it was before it stopped
> working. Similarly, the BIOS configuration is unchanged. The RAM upgrade
> was successfully completed and tested prior to the problem beginning. All
> cables and boards have been removed and reseated.
>
> I will re-check the BIOS settings -- PCI BIOSes are new to me.
>
> Leonard wrote:
> > This proves nothing so far. Accesses made through the BIOS, which includes
> > loading the boot loader and kernel, as well as DOS operation (possibly unless
> > you've loaded the ASPI manager) do not require interrupts to be operational.
> >
> > The most likely cause of the problems you've reported is interrupts not getting
> > from the host adapter to the Adaptec 1542 driver. Check the IRQ channel
> > assignment on the host adapter and make sure that IRQ channel is assigned to
> > "ISA" rather than "PCI" in the motherboard BIOS.
Jay Vassos-Libove libove@felines.org
+1 770 552 0543 home +1 404 705 2867 work
Roswell, GA 30075 U.S.A.
