SCSI tape drive with Adaptec adapter...

[Gregory Gulik]

Sorry for the delay in getting back to everyone on this.

Anyway, quick update, my SCSI tape drive doesn't work.  The original 
post was here:

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2004-August/msg05266.html

First, to answer the question below, yes, the CD-ROM drive and the tape 
drive are found by the SCSI card BIOS screen just fine.  If I use the 
built-in utilities the device comes up just fine as well.

Anyway, I tried several things and something isn't right.  My 
brother-in-law gave me his known working Adaptec 2940U card, same model 
as mine, just appears to be a newer revision.  I also have a different 
internal SCSI cable from him, this one with a terminator built-in to one 
end.

After rebooting Kudzu found something changed and had me unconfigure the 
old card and configure the new card.  Fine with me.

However when it finished booting I found the card wasn't really 
recognized.  The aic7xxxx driver had not been loaded.  WTF!

If I load it manually with "modprobe aic7xxx" it shows up in dmesg:

scsi3 : Adaptec AIC7XXX EISA/VLB/PCI SCSI HBA DRIVER, Rev 6.2.36
         <Adaptec 2940A Ultra SCSI adapter>
         aic7860: Ultra Single Channel A, SCSI Id=7, 3/253 SCBs

(scsi3:A:4): 5.000MB/s transfers (5.000MHz, offset 15)
   Vendor: CONNER    Model: CTT8000-S         Rev: 1.17
   Type:   Sequential-Access                  ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Attached scsi generic sg5 at scsi3, channel 0, id 4, lun 0,  type 1
st: Version 20040403, fixed bufsize 32768, s/g segs 256
Attached scsi tape st0 at scsi3, channel 0, id 4, lun 0
st0: try direct i/o: yes (alignment 512 B), max page reachable by HBA 
1048575


I did check termination.  I used to use SCSI a lot, but it's been a few 
year.  The SCSI card has auto termination built-in at it's end and I had 
the jumpers installed on the tape drive for Term Power and Term Act to 
be turned on.  I also tried this new cable with a big terminator pack 
attached to the end of the SCSI cable with the tape drive connected at 
the connector just before it.

Any other ideas???


Chris Ruprecht wrote:
> When the SCSI BIOS shows up on your boot screen, does it see the CD-ROM
> drive?
> If not, the most likely cause for it not beeing seen is that it is not
> working.
> Usually, you do not need a driver for SCSI devices - I have never needed
> one in my 11 years of Linux.
> Things to check:
> Does the CD-ROM drive have a unique SCSI-ID? This is settable with a few
> (3) jumpers and is binary encoded. No jumper -> SCSI-ID 0, 3 jumpers ->
> SCSI ID 7 - which is usually used by the Adaptor, so chose 0 - 6 only.
> 
> Do you have the SCSI termination right? The last device on the kable
> needs to be terminated or you have to add a terminator (not Arnold) to
> the last connector of the SCSI cable. You should also set the adaptor to
> be self terminating and make it the first/last device on the cable.
> Never have the adaptor sitting somewhere in the middle.
> 
> Best regards,
> Chris


-- 
Greg Gulik                                 http://www.gulik.org/greg/
greg @ gulik.org