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From: Terry Lambert <terry@cs.weber.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.os.386bsd.misc,comp.os.386bsd.questions,comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: URGENT. PLEASE HELP with SCSI-controller-buy-decision
Date: 5 Oct 1995 04:14:58 GMT
Organization: Utah Valley State College, Orem, Utah
Lines: 171
Message-ID: <44vm42$gek@park.uvsc.edu>
References: <44mlok$1jb@news.rz.uni-passau.de> <44pb1g$pc0@news.rrz.uni-koeln.de> <MICHAELV.95Oct2204518@MindBender.HeadCandy.com> <812720883.10493@kiss.demon.co.uk>
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:7087 comp.unix.bsd.misc:262 comp.os.386bsd.misc:5734 comp.os.386bsd.questions:17629 comp.unix.bsd:16726
phil@zipmail.co.uk (Phil Taylor) wrote:
] I can only talk of my experience of Adaptec which. in the years that I
] have used their products has been EXCELLENT.
He did say they were well-made. That isn't the point. A well-made
8.3mm pistol can be a high quality product until you go to buy ammo
from someone other than the manufacturer.
A device driver is ammo.
] As I do not write free-un*x device drivers I cannot comment on that
] point but only six months ago I called Adaptec Tech Support in the US
] (I am in the UK) regarding a problem with an old 1542B, we found the
] problem to be in the BIOS rev and they sent me BOTH replacement PROM's
] and the card manual (including international FedEX carriage) F.O.C.
I can comment (and will).
The "don't buy Adaptec, they are free-UNIX hostile" chant stops
far short of the other potential alternative, which is boycott.
I think that people have been quite restrained on their hostility
toward Adaptec's secrecy policy on what is, to all intents and
purposes, nothing more than boot code. Nobody gives a damn about
the boot process, they only care how fast they run. Adaptec is
stupidly trying to protect essentially useless code, the result
of which is *not* increased sales because of the high quality of
their trade secrets.
At least Diamond has a valid technical reason for their policy; they
just have idiots implementing their ROM code so that the PAL input
tables for various video modes are not in a known location in the
video ROM, so protected mode drivers can't locate the tables without
knowing the PAL rev, at which time they might as well hard code the
inputs as look them up.
] ... but only six months ago I called Adaptec Tech Support in the US
] (I am in the UK) regarding a problem with an old 1542B, we found the
] problem to be in the BIOS rev and they sent me BOTH replacement PROM's
] and the card manual (including international FedEX carriage) F.O.C.
]
] Within a couple of days I had installed the PROM's and the customer
] was back up and running, it is that sort of support (and the
] performance) that causes me to choose Adaptec every time...
My support experience was not quite so rosy.
I bought a 1742B. The manual it came with did not match the
EISA configuration (the manual was newer than the disk, so you
don't jump to the conclusion that they upgraded the software on
me).
I figured out the setup anyway. But I was unable to turn off
translation, and there was not a documented way to read what the
translation was from a protected mode driver (there still isn't).
I called support, and they said "oh, yeah. We didn't junk the
disks we had already made up, so we shipped older disks with
newer manuals to about 600 people".
They claimed that the new disk could turn off the translation, and
said they'd fedex the disks to me that day.
When they arrived (three days later via UPS 2nd day air), the setup
was indeed different, but it only allowed me to change between
"translation" and "extended translation". I still couldn't turn
it off.
I called support again.
"Oh yeah, you can't turn it off".
You said three days ago you could with the new EISA config disk.
"I was wrong. You can't"
Why not?
"Nobody needs that"
I need it.
"No you don't"
Yes. I. Do.
"OK, smart guy, *why* do you *think* you need it?"
I'm running a protected mode OS (it was 386BSD), and it doesn't
use BIOS (the original Adaptec boot blocks were protected mode
as well) , so it doesn't know about translation, and the partition
table offsets are stored as translated C/H/S values.
"Hold on. Let me get my manager"
[ ... reexplained ... ]
"Don't do that"
Eventually, it got down to me having to explain the boot process
of protected mode operating systems (SVR4.0.2 used a protected mode
card specific boot as well, this is not an isolated "freeware-only"
problem).
Support people at disk controller companies should understand how
software they sell their controllers as compatible with boots,
don't you think? Considering their product is sold as a means
of implementing the boot (and subsequent disk access)?
Needless to say, it got down to him wanting me to rewrite the
boot code for both SVR4 (I had some minor influence in getting
this implemented in UnixWAre and subsequent SVR4 releases) and
386BSD (Julian later did this) along the lines of how they
expected the boot to work, and him telling me "I don't have time
to let you tell me how a protected mode OS boots".
Well, someone should have told them, since they sure as hell didn't
have any employees who knew. Maybe that has changed.
There were a number of problems in their designs for use of the
AIC-7770 as an embedded controller on the motherboard. UnixWare
required major driver changes to work with this, *despite* their
supposedly all-singing, all dancing "HIM" code (there was an
engineer of my acquaintence who lost his job over recommending
UnixWare when a fix for the HP systems using the AIC-7770 and
an Adaptec embedding design was not forthcoming in a reasonable
period of time).
The workaround is to put the OS with the protected mode boot blocks
on the disk without a DOS partition table and without the capability
to share the disk with other operating systems. Probably the
monrity case. Even NetWare requires a DOS partition to boot.
This is all, of course, only anecdotal, and based on my personal
experiences with the company. Your mileage may vary, but my
opinion is that it probably will not.
I can't blame them for following the road of highest ROI, but I
*can* blame them for pretending not to in their advertising and
support and sales staff promising something that they had no
intention of delivering. Their products are suitable for OS's
that by default use BIOS to access disks, or can be made to do
so, or that have translation values specifically coded in and
use the EISA BIOS (in the case of the 1742) to check for default
vs. extended translation. Basically, Microsoft OS's, which hold
little interest for me (I only infrequently do application
programming any more: it isn't very challenging).
] Lets face it though Michael, neither of us are going to change each
] others views which are both based on years of experience with specific
] products, but you are beginning to sound a bit like a Doom and Gloom
] merchant. The end is Nigh, Adaptec is the anti-christ :-)
Not quite. They are the Anti-Christ's Western Regional Marketing
Manager. 8-).
I don't hold a grudge. If they were to change their business
practices, I would probably buy from them in the future; as it
sits right now, I will buy from anyone but them when I make my
purchases.
Terry Lambert
terry@cs.weber.edu
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.