Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!know!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!rutgers!cbmvax!andy
From: andy@cbmvax.commodore.com (Andy Finkel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: New GVP Controller
Message-ID: <14665@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 26 Sep 90 15:49:56 GMT
References: <12322@ogicse.ogi.edu>
Reply-To: andy@cbmvax.commodore.com (Andy Finkel)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 54

In article <12322@ogicse.ogi.edu> jmeissen@ogicse.cse.ogi.edu (John Meissen) writes:
>HOWEVER, there is something I just can't understand. My C= controller
>used to autoconfigure and mount the 3 partitions in about 4 seconds
>(maybe less, but close enough). The GVP controller, though, takes
>=>38<= seconds to do the same thing! It sits there with the disk light
>blinking and the heads thrashing around for over half a minute!
>
>Anybody got a clue as to what's going on?
>
>
>John Meissen .............................. Oregon Advanced Computing Institute


I can think of three possibilities:   I can't really tell which it
is from the info supplied, so I'll list all three...

1) There are some drives that take a long time (>30 seconds) to become
   active enough to actually respond to SCSI commands.  On the 2091
   we put in a jumper on the board which, if set, extends the time
   the controller spends waiting for each drive.

   Perhaps your GVP card has a similar jumper and its set ?  Otherwise
   they may have played it safe, and did a worst case wait
   for each SCSI unit.  If this is the case, you may be able to speed
   the boot process up a bit by changing the unit number to the one they
   scan first.


2) For some reason, your drive may be validating during each boot.
   It the screen has opened and the disk light is flashing, 
   break out of the startup-sequence and use the c:Info command
   to check on the drive state.

3) their startup-sequence may be doing a lot more than the one
   you used to use

4) If the validator isn't the problem, and the GVP supports
   a Rigid Disk Block, and the flashing happens before the
   initial CLI opens, perhaps it is having trouble reading in
    the Rigid Disk Block.

Or is could be for other reasons, of course.

>jmeissen@oacis.org        (Internet)        (503) 690-1209  - work

			andy
-- 
andy finkel		{uunet|rutgers|amiga}!cbmvax!andy
Commodore-Amiga, Inc.

"If you don't open the manual, all features are undocumented."

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