Here is the README for that driver. They give the address of a mailing list
and people who will help you use it with Linux. Please tell me if they suggest
any kernel work that we should do for this drive.
Thanks
Bruce
@(#)README 1.19 94/11/30 jda
AHA274x/284x/294x DRIVER
*** THIS SHOULD BE CONSIDERED BETA SOFTWARE ***
BACKGROUND & LIMITATIONS
For various reasons, we ended up with one of these cards under the
impression that support was soon forthcoming. In mid-May, I asked
Scott Ferris (the official person who's supposed to be writing this
driver) what documentation he used, _finally_ got it from Adaptec,
and started writing this driver. It is now at what I would consider
a stable state - it runs our news server and is battered by SCSI
requests 24 hours a day without dying. There are a few devices it
reportedly doesn't like working with - those are being sorted out. Due
to some unexpected equipment loans, I am able to support this at least
for the time being.
YOU MUST HAVE THE BIOS ENABLED OR THIS WILL NOT WORK. The BIOS extracts
some configuration information that I cannot get to portably yet, as
well as provides some self-tests which this driver does not attempt to
:q
> cat README.aic7xxx
@(#)README 1.19 94/11/30 jda
AHA274x/284x/294x DRIVER
*** THIS SHOULD BE CONSIDERED BETA SOFTWARE ***
BACKGROUND & LIMITATIONS
For various reasons, we ended up with one of these cards under the
impression that support was soon forthcoming. In mid-May, I asked
Scott Ferris (the official person who's supposed to be writing this
driver) what documentation he used, _finally_ got it from Adaptec,
and started writing this driver. It is now at what I would consider
a stable state - it runs our news server and is battered by SCSI
requests 24 hours a day without dying. There are a few devices it
reportedly doesn't like working with - those are being sorted out. Due
to some unexpected equipment loans, I am able to support this at least
for the time being.
YOU MUST HAVE THE BIOS ENABLED OR THIS WILL NOT WORK. The BIOS extracts
some configuration information that I cannot get to portably yet, as
well as provides some self-tests which this driver does not attempt to
duplicate.
Scott's driver development is stalled for now, and after discussions
with him, this is now officially out of "pre-alpha" status and into
beta until the remaining device problems can be resolved. The latest
patches can be obtained via anonymous ftp from ftp.cpsc.ucalgary.ca in
/pub/systems/linux/aha274x.
It supports EISA 274x, VL-bus 284x, and PCI 294x, either single or twin-bus
cards (but not the second SCSI bus of twin cards - see aha274x.c), and supports
disconnection, synchronous SCSI, and scatter-gather. Unlike previous
versions, abort() and reset() are now implemented, and both hosts.c and
aha274x.c should give a clean compile. Code is now present to detect parity
errors, but has not been tested. Wide cards are not yet supported.
I wrote this using a 1.0.9 kernel. Unfortunately, I'm getting tired of
#ifdef'ing everything to handle two or three different evolutionary steps
in the SCSI kernel code, so I've upgraded my system to 1.1.49, and will
only leave in code to support versions from about 1.1.45 onward.
Thanks to patches supplied by Mark Olson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, this driver
will now work with the 284x series (the VL-bus version of this card). The
294x (PCI-bus) support is based on patches sent to me by Mark Olson and
Alan Hourihane <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.
Under protest, this driver is subject to the GPL - see the file
COPYING for details.
Thanks to the following people for bug fixes/code improvements (also
thanks to the people who have sent me feedback):
"David F. Carlson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Jimen Ching <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Matt Day)
"Dean W. Gehnert" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Darcy Grant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Alan Hourihane <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Mike Isely)
Mike Jerger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Toshiyasu Morita)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Neal Norwitz)
Mark Olson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Michael A. Parker)
Thomas Scheunemann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Eric Youngdale <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Special thanks to Drew Eckhardt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> for
fielding my questions about synchronous negotiation. Steffen Moeller
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> sent me installation instructions which
were previously included in this README.
David Pirie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> was nice enough to loan me his
2842 card for a week so I could track down one bug, as well as his
CD-ROM drive later, and also thanks to Doug Fortune at Riley's Data Share
in Calgary, who arranged a long-term loan of a 2842 board for further work.
Many thanks to the fearless prerelease testers! Dean Gehnert has been
building Slackware boot disks for the driver, which are available from
ftp.cpsc.ucalgary.ca in /pub/systems/linux/aha274x/slackware_boot.
Carl Riches <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> has set up a mailing list
for aic7xxx driver development. To subscribe, send a message to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] with a message body of:
subscribe AIC7770-LIST <your name here, without the angle brackets>
Please direct questions and discussions to that list instead of me. When
sending bug reports, please include a description of your hardware, the
release numbers displayed by the driver at boot time, and as accurate a
facsimile of any error message you're mailing about.
John Aycock
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
