*BSD News Article 58376


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From: se@ZPR.Uni-Koeln.DE (Stefan Esser)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: ncr 53c810 help, please
Date: 28 Dec 1995 15:08:24 GMT
Organization: Institute for Mathematics, University of Cologne, Germany
Lines: 52
Sender: se@Sysiphos (Stefan Esser)
Message-ID: <4bubt8$cba@news.rrz.uni-koeln.de>
References: <4btstq$18dk@te6000.otc.lsu.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sysiphos.mi.uni-koeln.de
To: elcan@phwave.phys.lsu.edu
Bcc: se

In article <4btstq$18dk@te6000.otc.lsu.edu>, elcan@phwave.phys.lsu.edu (philip elcan) writes:
|> First, I know that I shouldn't post a hardware question to this group. 
|> However, I know how popular the NCR 53c810 is in this community, so I was
|> hoping someone as new to this as I am stumbled across the problem I'm having
|> and can tell me what I'm doing wrong.
|> 
|> Here's my situation: I bought the NCR 53c810 to replace my Always 3000 in order
|> to run FreeBSD.  However, I can't get my machine to recognize the board.  At
|> boot-up, the bios doesn't so up like the board's docs say it should, then when
|> boot off of the boot.flp, it finds the board but reports it at irq ?? and says
|> "int register not assigned by bios."  The '810 is in a Triton motherboard with

Hmm, it says: "int register not assigned by bios" ???

So, why don't you just believe what it says, and assign 
an IRQ to the NCR ?

|> Award PnP extentions, and the mainboard manual says "system BIOS supports
|> NCR810 SCSI BIOS firmware."  Am I reading too much from that statement?

No. But without an interrupt assigned, the driver won't
work. Go into the PCI BIOS setup menu, and choose a free
IRQ to use by the NCR. Seems that your BIOS still is of 
the kind, that makes you assign IRQs to slots. Most new
BIOS versions will let you exclude those IRQs used for 
ISA devices from a list of free IRQ numbers, and will 
assign the remaining IRQs to all PCI chips found at POST.

|> Any pointers for someone that's been running round and round trying to get a
|> chance to run FreeBSD?

Well, this is a pointer of someone who did not run and 
run around, but knows how things are supposed to work :)

|> Oh, also, I read through the archives at www.freebsd.org.  There was an
|> article stressing to get active termination, but according to the description
|> in said article, I have passive termination on my board (221/231 on the
|> resistor packs).  What problems will this present, or am I looking at it now?

Active termination helps reduce noise on the cable ...

Just limit the length of your SCSI bus to the absolute
minimum. At 10MHz, I wouldn't even try to use more than 
1.5 meters (5 ft.) of cable without active termination, 
but I guess 1m (3 ft.) should work reliably in general.

Regards, STefan
-- 
 Stefan Esser, Zentrum fuer Paralleles Rechnen		Tel:	+49 221 4706021
 Universitaet zu Koeln, Weyertal 80, 50931 Koeln	FAX:	+49 221 4705160
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 http://www.zpr.uni-koeln.de/~se			  <se@ZPR.Uni-Koeln.DE>