CAM DRIVER FOR ADAPTEC AIC-6360/152x CONTROLLER

CAM DRIVER FOR ADAPTEC AIC-6360/152x CONTROLLER

Post by Jose Lug » Sun, 02 Jan 2000 04:00:00



Greetings and Happy New Year.

Issue:
Need Adaptec 152x/AIC-6360 SCSI controller drivers for FreeBSD 3.3 install
from CD-ROM.

Description:
I am installing FreeBSD 3.3 on an older Compaq machine.  The machine has
'two' SCSI controllers.  The first an Adaptec AHA-1522A, to which are
connected a Seagate ST31200N hard drive and a Mountain Series 2100 tape
drive.  The second a Soundblaster 16 (with an AIC-6360L chip) with a Toshiba
XM-3301TA CD ROM drive attached.  The machine is currently running FreeBSD
2.2.2 (on a second physical IDE drive), sharing the configuration with WIN98
(on a primary IDE physical drive, the boot drive) by means of System
Commander.

I would like to reformat all drives (two IDE and the SCSI described above)
and install FreeBSD 3.3 from CD-ROM.  However, sysinstall does not 'see' my
CD-ROM (described above), and I am thus unable to perform the installation.
I am leeryof 'upgrading' the 2.2 installation, for fear of losing access to
the CD-ROM drive and issues posed by booting from the second physical drive.

I would be most grateful for pointers to the driver and feedback on this
issue.

Best regards,

Jos Lugo
Rowley, Massachusetts
USA

 
 
 

CAM DRIVER FOR ADAPTEC AIC-6360/152x CONTROLLER

Post by Blaz Zup » Mon, 03 Jan 2000 04:00:00



>Need Adaptec 152x/AIC-6360 SCSI controller drivers for FreeBSD 3.3 install
>from CD-ROM.

>Description:
>I am installing FreeBSD 3.3 on an older Compaq machine.  The machine has

FreeBSD 3.3 does not have the 152x driver, it was "lost" during the CAM
conversion. It was finally added back in for FreeBSD 3.4. Take a look at the
first item in the release notes under the heading KERNEL CHANGES:

        http://www.freebsd.org/releases/3.4R/notes.html

--

Medinet d.o.o., Linhartova 21, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia

 
 
 

CAM DRIVER FOR ADAPTEC AIC-6360/152x CONTROLLER

Post by Pau » Mon, 03 Jan 2000 04:00:00



Quote:>Need Adaptec 152x/AIC-6360 SCSI controller drivers for FreeBSD 3.3
>install from CD-ROM.

I had the same problem. Thanks to Annelise Anderson who pointed me to her
site where she had a SNAP version of 3.3 with support for that controller
it got solved. FTR, the new 3.4 version of FreeBSD has support for that
controller. FTR, it's not a very fast controller. In my gateway/router I
replaced it with a 1542C and performance went up in a BIG way. Anyhow,
her site, where you can get it is: ftp andrsn.stanford.edu, in the 3.3-
AICREL directory.

Happy Installing
--
  __
 /_/             Creator/Maintainer
/aul       "A Deamon's Guide To FreeBSD"
http://homes.acmecity.com/looneytunes/lunar/315/

 
 
 

CAM DRIVER FOR ADAPTEC AIC-6360/152x CONTROLLER

Post by Bill Vermilli » Mon, 03 Jan 2000 04:00:00




>>Need Adaptec 152x/AIC-6360 SCSI controller drivers for FreeBSD 3.3
>>install from CD-ROM.
>I had the same problem. Thanks to Annelise Anderson who pointed
>me to her site where she had a SNAP version of 3.3 with support
>for that controller it got solved. FTR, the new 3.4 version of
>FreeBSD has support for that controller. FTR, it's not a very fast
>controller. In my gateway/router I replaced it with a 1542C and
>performance went up in a BIG way. Anyhow, her site, where you can
>get it is: ftp andrsn.stanford.edu, in the 3.3- AICREL directory.

The 152x is a PIO controller - and the CPU has to do all the work.
The 154X series are DMA devices.  The former are OK for stupid SCSI
work in synchronous OS - eg MS world thingys - but the DMA's are
really the only ones that should be used in an asynchronous
multi-tasking world.

--

 
 
 

CAM DRIVER FOR ADAPTEC AIC-6360/152x CONTROLLER

Post by t.. » Fri, 07 Jan 2000 04:00:00



Quote:>The 152x is a PIO controller - and the CPU has to do all the work.
>The 154X series are DMA devices.  The former are OK for stupid SCSI
>work in synchronous OS - eg MS world thingys - but the DMA's are
>really the only ones that should be used in an asynchronous
>multi-tasking world.

Actually, the original 1542 cards did have jumpers for DMA but I don't think that
anyone ever used it in a driver.  Also, it's actually busmastering you want,
not DMA.

This is getting less and less important frankly.  With the newer 400Mhz machines
PIO mode doesn't extract the same penalty it used to.  And, if the driver is
well written then it will not stall the machine waiting for the hardware.

The big problem that has always been with the 6360 driver is that the 6360
chip is really stupid and it's processor doesn't do much work.  So the driver
has to in effect code a lot of what is in hardware in other controllers.  As a
result there is a lot more that can go wrong, if you look in the source of
the older driver you will see a lot of "This part not implemented yet" also
the error handling in the driver was horrible.

Despite it's malignment, PIO mode does solve a LOT of problems with cheaper
hardware.  If you have ever worked with stuff like the busmastering Lance
ISA network cards or the DMA-mode Ultrastor ISA cards you will know what
I'm talking about.  This is probably why Adaptec never wrote a DMA driver for
the 6360 despite the jumpers.

Ted

 
 
 

CAM DRIVER FOR ADAPTEC AIC-6360/152x CONTROLLER

Post by Bill Vermilli » Fri, 07 Jan 2000 04:00:00




>>The 152x is a PIO controller - and the CPU has to do all the work.
>>The 154X series are DMA devices.  The former are OK for stupid SCSI
>>work in synchronous OS - eg MS world thingys - but the DMA's are
>>really the only ones that should be used in an asynchronous
>>multi-tasking world.
>Actually, the original 1542 cards did have jumpers for DMA but
>I don't think that anyone ever used it in a driver. Also, it's
>actually busmastering you want, not DMA.

But it was the 1520/1522 that were PIO.  I never used the 154x in
BSD - but in many other Unix OSes.  I don't have a pure 1542 (aka
A) but the later versions had switches and nothing related to DMA
on them.

Quote:>This is getting less and less important frankly. With the newer
>400Mhz machines PIO mode doesn't extract the same penalty it used
>to. And, if the driver is well written then it will not stall the
>machine waiting for the hardware.

It doesn't make a lot of sense to me to use an ISA card with an
8MHz bus in today's world.  I stopped using the Adpatec's when
shortly after BusTek (later called BusLogic, then bought my Myles,
and then bought by IBM) introduced the first EISA SCSI card - the
742, and then came out with an entire Adapatec work-alike line that
ran typically about 15% faster than the Adaptecs.   I also liked
the fact that one-drive worked across their entire line.

Quote:>Despite it's malignment, PIO mode does solve a LOT of problems
>with cheaper hardware. If you have ever worked with stuff like the
>busmastering Lance ISA network cards or the DMA-mode Ultrastor ISA
>cards you will know what I'm talking about. This is probably why
>Adaptec never wrote a DMA driver for the 6360 despite the jumpers.

I've only really been using BSD for about 3 years now - after my
first look in the 2.1.6 era. Prior to that it was always commercial
Unix systems, always with SCSI (after about 1988 - with some ESDI -
of course MFM prior to that) and always DMA in the SCSI arena. So
I am ignorant of older practices. The PIO was such a pig on older
machines that I've avoided it ever since. Granted that the higher
speed systems of today mean that PIO doesn't kill the system like
it used to.  Some of the systems I worked with were considered
'big' when they had 512K of memory and a 25 MB HD for 6 users.

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