Oops! Advansys SCSI ok- had bad termination.

John P. Beale (beale@best.com)
Wed, 26 Nov 1997 00:12:25 -0800 (PST)

Folks:

I'll have to apologize here for casting aspersions on the Linux SCSI driver
for the Advansys SCSI card. My problems were apparently caused by incorrect
termination. I contacted Advansys tech support and they did reply quickly,
in part:

> The issue can be caused by marginal termination. Try disabling the Ultra
> Feature on the PCI card. Also try without the scanner connected.

serves me right for not reading the FAQ- specifically, the SCSI FAQ. Or the
Linux SCSI Howto, which says

2.1 General Flakiness.

If you experience random errors, the most likely causes are cabling and
termination problems. [...]

I disconnected my external scanner and was able to write and read back a
set of 969 files (386 meg total) on my internal SCSI tape drive with no
errors. (I had many errors with a 208 meg file set with it connected.) I then
set the Advansys to NOT use "Ultra" mode (I have the ABP940-U PCI Ultra
SCSI) in the boot setup utility, and again the SCSI tape drive had no
errors on 386 meg written and read.

Unfortunately, the scanner still locks up on large scans even when the
940-U is out of "ultra" mode, but it seems likely that cable termination is
the problem (the Advansys wants "active" termination and I'm using passive
on the external cable).

-john
beale@best.com

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