Subject: SOLVED- 4.5GB SCSI Disk/geometry woes on 1.4.2
To: 'port-i386@netbsd.org' <port-i386@netbsd.org>
From: Steve Paul <stevep@mccue.com>
List: port-i386
Date: 05/08/2000 15:37:52
Greetings,
Thought I'd share the solution to this rather annoying and
troublesome issue.
On Adaptec 2940UW controllers, it seems NetBSD will
-NOT- boot most any drive I've tried. This made no sense
as I have 2 other machines with identical hardware that work
and boot fine from UW drives. And I mean IDENTICAL
hardware, down to the mainboard, CPU, drives, controller..
everything.
The solution- the 2940UW BIOS revision. 2940UW's
that have the 2.20 revision BIOS will not work. This revision
works fine for everything- NT, Windows, DOS.. You can FDISK
and FORMAT and boot fine- but upon running NetBSD
the machine will hang on boot. My other two working NetBSD
boxes had pre 2.00 BIOS's. I'd still be pulling my hair out
if I didn't notice the BIOS numbers for that 3-4 seconds
during the Adaptec <CTRL-A> screen.
By downgrading/flashing the controller SCSI BIOS to 1.34,
the machine now boots perfectly. Adaptec has this flasher
on their site. Could someone comment the INSTALL.TXT or
hardware compatibility charts for the 2940UW for this finding?
Thanks!
-Steve