SCSI Card

[Javier Salazar_2]

I have a box running RH 6.2. I installed an Adaptec
AHA-1540 host adapter card. I believe this card is supported by Linux.
However I am not able to use the tape drive which is connected to the SCSI
card. This box is currently a dual box ( RH6.1 / Windows 98 2nd). I am able to
use the tape drive when I boot up in Windows.

When in Linux, I can type in 'dmesg' and I see that it found no hosts at boot
up time. Has anyone been able to get this card configured ? This is supposed
to be used initially for backups. However down the road I might want to hang
different hardware to it.

tia
Javier S.

[Chuck Slivkoff]

Are you loading the aha1542 kernel module?

The module parameters are documented in aha1452.c:

LILO/Module params:
aha1542=[,,[,]]

Where: is any of the valid AHA addresses
0x130, 0x134, 0x230, 0x234, 0x330,
0x334
is the time (in microsecs) that AHA
spends on the AT-bus when
transferring data. 1542A power-on
default is 11us, valid values are in
range: 2..15 (decimal)
is the time that AHA spends OFF THE
BUS after while it is transferring
data (not to monopolize the bus).
Power-on default is 4us, valid
range: 1..64 microseconds.
Default is jumper selected (1542A:
on the J1), but experimenter can
alter it with this. Valid values: 5,
6, 7, 8, 10 (MB/s)
Factory default is 5 MB/s.

[Bolek Mynarski]

First things first. When you do "dmesg" (or "less /var/log/dmesg"), do you see your SCSI host there, something like this:

"(scsi0) found at PCI 16/0
(scsi0) Narrow Channel, SCSI ID=7, 3/255 SCBs
(scsi0) Downloading sequencer code... 406 instructions downloaded
scsi0 : Adaptec AHA274x/284x/294x (EISA/VLB/PCI-Fast SCSI) 5.1.21/3.2.4

scsi1 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices"

Also, I assume that your tape drive is a true SCSI tape drive, right? If your card is found, make sure that your tape drive has the correct SCSI ID. In any case, if your SCSI card is seen by Linux, you should see something like this:

"Detected scsi tape st0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 4, lun 0"

In essence, if you don't see, that means that there are still connectivity issues and the only things to look at are SCSI module and SCSI ID on the card.

[Bolek Mynarski]

First things first. When you do "dmesg" (or "less /var/log/dmesg"), do you see your SCSI host there, something like this:

"(scsi0) found at PCI 16/0
(scsi0) Narrow Channel, SCSI ID=7, 3/255 SCBs
(scsi0) Downloading sequencer code... 406 instructions downloaded
scsi0 : Adaptec AHA274x/284x/294x (EISA/VLB/PCI-Fast SCSI) 5.1.21/3.2.4

scsi1 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices"

Also, I assume that your tape drive is a true SCSI tape drive, right? If your card is found, make sure that your tape drive has the correct SCSI ID. In any case, if your SCSI card is seen by Linux, you should see something like this:

"Detected scsi tape st0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 4, lun 0"

In essence, if you don't see, that means that there are still connectivity issues and the only things to look at are SCSI module and SCSI ID on the card.

[Thomas Zwatz]

hi,
you have to set up the machine so it will load the SCSI module when needed:

/etc/conf.modules

add a line
alias scsi_hostadapter aic7xxx

in your case you must replace the "aic7xxx" with the module for your SCSI Card (the one mentioned is for the 2940 which uses a different chipset), I could not figure out which one right now.

Thomas