> > Should NetBSD be sending something like a bus reset to force all
> > drives to spin up, then do the probing?  Maybe sunos is doing that
> > sort of thing, and thus, can spin up the drives where NetBSD does not?
> 
> mabye, maybe not.... I think it should be adequate to just warn folks to
> always jumper their drives to spin on power up, but if the bus reset
> isn't too much of a pain (it's rather yucky if you have an Exabyte),
> then that's the safest thing to do.....

OK, I remember reading a tidbit to the extent that there was something
about DEC drives having slightly different roms in them, that would not
allow the jumpers to force motor-on-spinup.  I am wondering if I am
running into that situation on the drives in question?  IFF that is
the case, then there might need to be something like a reset just before
the probing is done, to force drives to spin.  On sun3's that might be
worth doing.  I remember my Exabyte going through miles of resetting
when I did an AIX load from it, one time.  How many Exabytes are we
likely to use on a Sun3?.....(:+\\...

If I am reading the code correctly in scsiconf.c, scsibus_config_interrupts
is calling scsi_probe_bus.  Where it should take 2 seconds to return
with the information, on my drives, the DEC ones that don't spin up on
NetBSD but do on SunOS, they sit for about 10-15 minutes, then return
a REQ error of some sort.  If a reset were sent out before the call
to probe, would that effectively force spin up of all drives?

> > I recall that when sunos boots, you can hear the tape resetting, several
> > times, possibly indicative of a bus reset.  I don't recall NetBSD doing
> > that, but I will have to check that to be sure.
> 
> Hmm... yes, if the tape drive does something after the second stage
> bootloader loads then it's almost certainly due to a bus reset.

Let me play with it some over the next few days and see if I can see
where it does this and if I can correctly generate a reset at the
right time to force things along.

Maybe it's my choice of using DEC drives, but around here, I get them
for peanuts in surplus, and they should be usable on sun3 gear with
NetBSD.   They format well as SUN0327, SUN0669, and SUN1.0G drives
under SunOS.  We ought to be able to make them run under NetBSD.

Thanks

Bob

P.S.  In the scsiconf.c file, there is a note:

 /* XXX: QIC-36 tape behind Emulex adapter.  Very Broken.  */

Anyone know more about what that really means?  I am wondering if
that has any bearing on some of my tape issues?