I must say, after I saw this post, I tried out the latest driver for my own
purposes.
This really improved the performance of my dual PIII-866 w/512MB Ram and
AIC7899 scsi.
I have a couple of cheetah drives that I am writing data that I get off of
an ATM card.(about 12-14 MB/sec rate).
This has significantly lowered the number of dropped packets on the ATM
read.
I would suggest, if at all possible, putting this in the 2.4.2 kernel.
Nathan
-----Original Message-----
From: Chip Salzenberg [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2001 9:20 PM
To: Matthew Jacob
Cc: Wakko Warner; Alan Cox; J . A . Magallon; linux-kernel
Subject: Re: aic7xxx (and sym53c8xx) plans
According to Matthew Jacob:
> See http://www.freebsd.org/~gibbs/linux.
Here at VA we're already using Jason's driver -- it works on the Intel
STL2 motherboard, while Doug's driver doesn't (or didn't, a month ago).
While we're discussing SCSI drivers, I'd also like to put in a good
word for the Sym-2 Symbios/NCR drivers from Gerard Roudier:
ftp://ftp.tux.org/roudier/drivers/portable/sym-2.1.x/
Joe-Bob says: "Check it out."
--
Chip Salzenberg - a.k.a. - <[email protected]>
"Give me immortality, or give me death!" // Firesign Theatre
[Nathan Black]
> This really improved the performance of my dual PIII-866 w/512MB Ram
> and AIC7899 scsi.
[...]
> I would suggest, if at all possible, putting this in the 2.4.2
> kernel.
Have you any idea the breadth of cards and chips that aic7xxx supports?
Sure, Justin's driver does great with your shiny new 7899, but can you
verify that it also drives the 8-year-old EISA AHA-2740 I still have
sitting around (actually retired to the parts pile, but that's beside
the point, I'm sure some still exist in the wild)? How about the VLB
card I have in my 486 at home?
IMHO there is no way Linus should consider replacing aic7xxx with 6.1
in a stable kernel. Not until it has gotten as much testing on as much
obscure hardware as the old driver, which is not going to happen soon.
Breaking existing working setups in 2.4.x is not an option. Possible
solution: let the two drivers coexist, like ncr53c8xx vs sym53c8xx or
tulip vs old_tulip.
Peter
>Have you any idea the breadth of cards and chips that aic7xxx supports?
>Sure, Justin's driver does great with your shiny new 7899, but can you
>verify that it also drives the 8-year-old EISA AHA-2740 I still have
>sitting around (actually retired to the parts pile, but that's beside
>the point, I'm sure some still exist in the wild)? How about the VLB
>card I have in my 486 at home?
I use a Dual Pentium-90 with PCI/EISA slots to test a 2742T and a 2740W.
I haven't tested a 284X card for some time just for lack of a VLB machine
(I have a card), but since it uses the aic7770 just like the 274X does,
I'd be very surprised if it didn't just work.
Version 6.1.2 of the driver has been tested on a G3 PowerMac, a Compaq
Blazer IA64 machine, and about 14 different PC motherboards. We have an
AS1200 on the way from Compaq too so we can test EISA and PCI support on
the Alpha. I've verified the driver's functionality on 25 different cards
thus far covering the full range of chips from aic7770->aic7899. Lots of
people here at Adaptec look at me funny when I pull a PC from the scrap-heap,
or pull an old, discontinued card from an unused marketing display for use
in my lab, but I'm well aware of how these cards get used in 386sx
routers/firewalls etc, and those configurations will be supported.
--
Justin
[Justin Gibbs]
> I've verified the driver's functionality on 25 different cards thus
> far covering the full range of chips from aic7770->aic7899.
That's very good to hear. I know the temptation of only testing on new
hardware; that's why I was concerned.
> Lots of people here at Adaptec look at me funny when I pull a PC from
> the scrap-heap, or pull an old, discontinued card from an unused
> marketing display for use in my lab
Heh. (:
BTW, is there really enough common ground between the whole series of
AIC chips to justify a single huge driver? I know they ship three
separate NT drivers to cover this range..
Peter
On Mon, 19 Feb 2001, Peter Samuelson wrote:
> [Justin Gibbs]
> > I've verified the driver's functionality on 25 different cards thus
> > far covering the full range of chips from aic7770->aic7899.
>
> That's very good to hear. I know the temptation of only testing on new
> hardware; that's why I was concerned.
>
> > Lots of people here at Adaptec look at me funny when I pull a PC from
> > the scrap-heap, or pull an old, discontinued card from an unused
> > marketing display for use in my lab
>
> Heh. (:
>
> BTW, is there really enough common ground between the whole series of
> AIC chips to justify a single huge driver? I know they ship three
> separate NT drivers to cover this range..
LSILOGIC also ship 3 drivers to cover the 53C810 - 53C1010 range on NT.
And, btw, these chips are all PCI.
Doing so, 12 different drivers would be needed to cover 4 different O/Ses,
for example. These drivers (I spoke about both LSILOGIC and ADAPTEC
drivers for NT) obviously work for i386, but what about architecture
dependencies at source level?
May-be this is the reason some UNIX vendors seem to love UDI. :)
If you also use SYMBIOS chips, you may give a try with SYM-2. For the
moment, it replaces only 6 drivers :) as also seems to do, for the moment,
Justin's AIC7XXX-6, by the way.
The plans seem clear to me. :-)
Btw, I _do_ like a lot better the 'one driver' plan over the '12 or more'
one.
G?rard.
> May-be this is the reason some UNIX vendors seem to love UDI. :)
>
> If you also use SYMBIOS chips, you may give a try with SYM-2. For the
> moment, it replaces only 6 drivers :) as also seems to do, for the moment,
> Justin's AIC7XXX-6, by the way.
>
> The plans seem clear to me. :-)
> Btw, I _do_ like a lot better the 'one driver' plan over the '12 or more'
> one.
Hmm. Well, it's good if it works. The joint Qlogic FC/SCSI driver of mine has
it's own plusses && minusses...
>BTW, is there really enough common ground between the whole series of
>AIC chips to justify a single huge driver? I know they ship three
>separate NT drivers to cover this range..
The chips are very similar. I think the single driver for Linux is
actually a smaller binary than any of the individual drivers for NT. 8-)
--
Justin