[373] in linux-scsi channel archive
Re: Motherboard problem
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Drew Eckhardt)
Fri Jul 14 21:27:09 1995
To: Felix Herrera Priano <fpriano@ull.es>
cc: linux-scsi@vger.rutgers.edu
In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 14 Jul 1995 07:54:25 -0300."
<474*/S=fpriano/O=ull/PRMD=iris/ADMD=mensatex/C=es/@MHS>
Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 13:31:03 -0600
From: Drew Eckhardt <drew@poohsticks.org>
In message <474*/S=fpriano/O=ull/PRMD=iris/ADMD=mensatex/C=es/@MHS>, fpriano@ul
l.es writes:
>Hi,
>
>Finally I decided to get the NCR53c810 controller instead of the AHA2940
>but I have a big problem:
>
>My Pentium 100Mhz motherboard (uses an SIS chipset and the Award 94 BIOS)
>does not recognize the NCR SCSI controller. We have change most of the
>BIOS parameters and we have enable/disable the built-in IDE controller
>that comes with the motherboard.
If you don't have mainboard BIOS support for the '810 included and
enabled, it won't work.
>I see my PCI-NCR53c810 uses the IRQ11 and it is no possible to change it
>to another one. Anyway after the memory test the computer hangs and it
>does not appear the NCR message.
>Do you know what's going on?
You probably have hardware (mainboard) problems.
>Maybe the SIS chipset is not compatible at all?
If you're using a non-Intel chipset PCI board, you're asking for trouble.
Intel was the driving force behind PCI. They have lots of money to throw
at problems. It took them at least three public releases to get the Saturn
chipset right. It stands to reason that people with less money who weren't
as involved with the PCI spec development will get more things wrong or
take longer to iron them out.
You might also have a broken PCI board - early Tseng ET4000W32P and
S3928P chips were broken.
>If I cannot solve the problem do I need to get a new motherboard or simply
>get the 2940?
An Adaptec 2940 is more likely to work with a broken mainboard than an
NCR board, since the NCR does a lot more busmastering operations (it
runs microcode from main memory instead of a small onchip RAM) and changes
direction more frequently, but if the mainboard is dicey, I would not want
to chance it.
