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From: damour@sol.ral.rpi.edu (Kevin Damour)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.aux
Subject: Re: SCSI timeouts under A/UX
Message-ID: <Y?2^'Y&@rpi.edu>
Date: 14 Jan 91 18:01:45 GMT
References: <1361@ucl-cs.uucp>
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute - CIRSSE, Troy, NY
Lines: 45
In-Reply-To: J.Purchase@cs.ucl.ac.uk's message of 13 Jan 91 21:30:53 GMT
Nntp-Posting-Host: ral.rpi.edu

In article <1361@ucl-cs.uucp> J.Purchase@cs.ucl.ac.uk (Jan Purchase) writes:

   Hello,

   I run A/UX 2.0 from an external Quantum 120Mb hard disk and I am
   encountering SCSI timeouts (about 6 per day) from this drive. Can anyone out
   there give me a clue as to *why* this is happening?

   My / and /usr partitions are on the external, which has SCSI id 4; the
   internal houses the /users partition. Every now and then the Mac (a 5Mb
   IIcx) freezes for 10 seconds during which the external drive's access light
   is on for 5 seconds and then off for the next 5. Finally an error message:

		   Disk write c4d0s0 Error: SCSI timeout
		   Logical block 808, physical blocks 78038-78045
		   Disk write c4d0s0 retry #2 successful

   appears at the console and processing continues as normal. The drive number
   varies (often it is c4d0s2, i.e. /usr; or c4d0s1, i.e. swap), as do the
   logical and physical block numbers. However, the retry count is always 2 and
   the problem is always a write error. The error does not perturb A/UX (apart
   from the delay), but under the Finder some Mac applications quit immediately
   on receipt of the error.

   The same drive has been used under MacOS for some 4 months previously with
   no ill effects or errors. A thorough going over with SCSI Evaluator reveals
   no fault - has anyone else encountered this problem? Any ideas?

   Grateful for any help,

   Jan.


I had a similar problem with lots of timeouts on my newly purchased
Quantum 170Mbyte drive.  It worked great under MAC OS but installation
of AUX with a CD-ROM produced many SCSI error messages.  The company
from whom I purchased it helped me track down the problem to the
revision on the ROM!!  I had a revision in the 40's and the latest
release was in the 50's.  Once I had the new ROMs installation went
perfect.

   Hope this helps,
      Kevin Damour
      RPI NASA-CIRSSE
      damour@ral.rpi.edu