[660] in linux-scsi channel archive
Re: 53c825 dies w/o ftape's buffers? huh?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Michael Adas)
Thu Oct 5 02:16:56 1995
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 22:50:02 -0500 (CDT)
From: Michael Adas <mja@telecom.wisc.edu>
To: linux-scsi@vger.rutgers.edu
In-Reply-To: <199510041948.UAA00191@imladris>
On Wed, 4 Oct 1995, Kai Harrekilde-Petersen wrote:
> Michael Adas writes:
> > Boot messages that looked relevant to me:
> > (trimmed for brevity)
> > ----working kernel, with ftape----
> > ftape: allocated 3 buffers aligned at: 001e8000
> > scsi-ncr53c7,8xx : at PCI bus 0, device 10, funtion 0
> > scsi-ncr53c7,8xx : NCR53c825 at memory 0xfbfdf000, io 0xe400, irq 12
> > scsi0 : NCR code relocated to 0x2002f0
>
> > ----non-working kernel, removing ftape was the only change----
> > scsi-ncr53c7,8xx : at PCI bus 0, device 10, funtion 0
> > scsi-ncr53c7,8xx : NCR53c825 at memory 0xfbfdf000, io 0xe400, irq 12
> > scsi0 : NCR code relocated to 0x1e3750
>
> Sounds like you've got some buggy hardware ...
>
> Sadly to say there are some SVGA cards and ethernet cards that do not
> decode their addresses correct. This typically happens when the ftape
> buffers are in the range 0x1a0000 to 0x1c0000. Somehow, the DMA write
> cycles get clobbered and every other byte written gets a bad value
The way this is written implies (to me) that using ftape can cause
problems with some errant hardware. My machine dies when i *dont'*
include ftape. I don't have one of the these nasty drives, but my
machine doesn't work unless I turn on CONFIG_FTAPE. This is annoying
in that the only thing CONFIG_FTAPE does is allocate an extra 96k on
bootup.
I have only pci stuff in this machine with the sole exception being
an SMC EtherEZ, which I haven't set for smc-ultra compatability mode
yet, so linux just ignores it. I'll pop it out, I guess, and try
again. My pci Diamond card has been good to me, but we all know
diamond has little "quirks" from time to time.
In the mean time, I guess CONFIG_FTAPE makes the whole shebang work,
and it only robs me of 96k. I'm about to go to 24 or 32 meg, so 96k
isn't a huge concern; but it'd be nice to find out if the NCR card can
be coerced into working without CONFIG_FTAPE. Any comments Drew?
--
= Michael Adas - DoIT Installation & Repair
= Office (608) 262-1880 Fax (608) 262-0123
