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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msuinfo!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!jussieu.fr!univ-lyon1.fr!swidir.switch.ch!scsing.switch.ch!news.dfn.de!rrz.uni-koeln.de!RRZ.Uni-Koeln.DE!RRZ.Uni-Koeln.DE!news From: se@fileserv1.MI.Uni-Koeln.DE (Stefan Esser) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: Re: NCR controllers Date: 17 Aug 1994 22:05:04 GMT Organization: Institute of Nuclear Physics, University of Cologne, Germany Lines: 50 Distribution: world Message-ID: <32u1igINN12k2@rs1.rrz.Uni-Koeln.DE> References: <32smrq$si@agate.berkeley.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: fileserv1.mi.uni-koeln.de Keywords: PCI,SCSI,FreeBSD,NetBSD,NCR Bcc: wolf@dentaro.GUN.de In article <32smrq$si@agate.berkeley.edu>, dim@soda.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU (D. Gerasimatos) writes: |> I understand that the NCR 53c810 driver is now in the beta testing |> stage (and hence should be in NetBSD 1.0?), but are there/will |> there be any drivers for the FAST/WIDE NCR S1365 825 PCI controller? Since I've been involved in the development of that driver, I'll comment on that question: 1) The driver has been available for FreeBSD > 1.1 for some time now. A few bugs and problems were fixed, most related to some device not being up to SCSI-2. There seem to be problems with some 486 motherboards with write back cache (ie. the ASUS SP3G), but it works if write through is selected. This may be a chip set problem, since the driver seems to work with other systems with write back cache. 2) The driver can be found in the NetBSD-current source tree, so it might really make it into NetBSD-1.0 :). The Copyright note has been adapted to allow distribution as part of the free *BSD. 3) FAST WIDE support is easy to add, but the correct operation has to be verified. WIDE negotiation is similar in structure to the negotiation of synchronous transfers. But there are registers in the 825 where the last byte of a transfer may be left in certain situations, and it must be written to host memory by the host CPU, then. This part of the driver has to be checked under normal operation conditions and with forced errors, to verify correct operation. And that requires a 825 controller board and a WIDE drive (at least for the duration of the tests, ie. 2 or three weeks). 4) If somebody makes a controller and drive available to us for the purpose of testing WIDE transfers, then we'll start working immediately. We can't afford to buy a WIDE drive now, and we really don't need more disk capacity. 5) If somebody else wants to do the tests, we can make a driver version with WIDE transfer negotiation available. But we don't expect it to be complete on first try (there have been quite a few surprises working with the NCR chip :), so that person ought to be able to understand the driver code (not written in C, but in NCR SCRIPTS commands for the biggest part). -- Stefan Esser Internet: <se@MI.Uni-Koeln.DE> Mathematisches Institut Tel: +49 221 4706010 Universitaet zu Koeln FAX: +49 221 4705160 Weyertal 80 50931 Koeln