Re: aic7xxx (and sym53c8xx) plans

Re: aic7xxx (and sym53c8xx) plans

[Chip Salzenberg]

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. -            <chip@valinux.com>
   "Give me immortality, or give me death!"  // Firesign Theatre

Re: aic7xxx (and sym53c8xx) plans

[Matthew Jacob]

On Wed, 14 Feb 2001, Chip Salzenberg wrote:

> 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).

"Justin" not "Jason"

> 
> 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."

Yes indeed. And he also support FreeBSD too. Very excellent.

Maybe the two of *them* can convince Linus to take the !$*!)$*!)$*~$)* patch
to scsi_syms.c that exports the add/del timer functions....

Re: aic7xxx (and sym53c8xx) plans

[Alan Cox]

> Maybe the two of *them* can convince Linus to take the !$*!)$*!)$*~$)* patch
> to scsi_syms.c that exports the add/del timer functions....

Umm Eric Youngdale is Mr SCSI

RE: aic7xxx (and sym53c8xx) plans

[Nathan Black]

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:chip@valinux.com]
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. -            <chip@valinux.com>
   "Give me immortality, or give me death!"  // Firesign Theatre
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
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RE: aic7xxx (and sym53c8xx) plans

[Matt Liotta]

I am still stuck on 2.2 because of this issue. I would really like to see
this driver in 2.4.2.

-Matt

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nathan Black [mailto:NBlack@md.aacisd.com]
> Sent: Thursday, February 15, 2001 9:20 AM
> To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
> Subject: RE: aic7xxx (and sym53c8xx) plans
> 
> 
> 
> 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:chip@valinux.com]
> 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. -            <chip@valinux.com>
>    "Give me immortality, or give me death!"  // Firesign Theatre
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe 
> linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe 
> linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
> 

Re: aic7xxx (and sym53c8xx) plans

[Justin T. Gibbs]

>I am still stuck on 2.2 because of this issue. I would really like to see
>this driver in 2.4.2.

Have you tested the 2.2.18 version of the new driver?  The patches
should work on most 2.2.X kernels, I just haven't gotten around to
verifying that.  The more testers, the merrier! :-)

--
Justin

RE: aic7xxx (and sym53c8xx) plans

[Matt Liotta]

All of my boxes with that card are on 2.2.16. The rest are on 2.4.1, so I
don't really have a need to test 2.2.18 as I would rather be on 2.4.x for
all of my boxes.

-Matt

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Justin T. Gibbs [mailto:gibbs@scsiguy.com]
> Sent: Thursday, February 15, 2001 9:36 AM
> To: Matt Liotta
> Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
> Subject: Re: aic7xxx (and sym53c8xx) plans 
> 
> 
> >I am still stuck on 2.2 because of this issue. I would 
> really like to see
> >this driver in 2.4.2.
> 
> Have you tested the 2.2.18 version of the new driver?  The patches
> should work on most 2.2.X kernels, I just haven't gotten around to
> verifying that.  The more testers, the merrier! :-)
> 
> --
> Justin
> 

Re: aic7xxx (and sym53c8xx) plans

[Justin T. Gibbs]

>All of my boxes with that card are on 2.2.16. The rest are on 2.4.1, so I
>don't really have a need to test 2.2.18 as I would rather be on 2.4.x for
>all of my boxes.

Well, I'll try and generate patches against 2.2.16 soon.  I probably
need to support 2.2.14 too.  There are already so many versions to
keep track of, the sooner the driver becomes embedded, the better.

--
Justin

Re: aic7xxx (and sym53c8xx) plans

[J . A . Magallon]

On 02.15 Justin T. Gibbs wrote:
> >All of my boxes with that card are on 2.2.16. The rest are on 2.4.1, so I
> >don't really have a need to test 2.2.18 as I would rather be on 2.4.x for
> >all of my boxes.
> 
> Well, I'll try and generate patches against 2.2.16 soon.  I probably
> need to support 2.2.14 too.  There are already so many versions to
> keep track of, the sooner the driver becomes embedded, the better.
> 

Please, I think it would be much more useful a patch against the latest
2.2.19-pre (if that one for 2.2.18 does not work, I have not tried)
and the latest 2.4.1-ac14, that is what people experiments with.

People who has still a 2.2.14 or 16 looks like does not worry too much
about updating and building kernels, and it they go into the work, they
can just go to 2.2.18, compatible with 16 and 14 and much more stable.

I think it is better to work for preX kernels than for eldely ones.

-- 
J.A. Magallon                                                      $> cd pub
mailto:jamagallon@able.es                                          $> more beer

Linux werewolf 2.4.1-ac14 #1 SMP Thu Feb 15 16:05:52 CET 2001 i686

Re: aic7xxx (and sym53c8xx) plans

[Chip Salzenberg]

According to J . A . Magallon:
> Please, I think it would be much more useful a patch against the latest
> 2.2.19-pre (if that one for 2.2.18 does not work, I have not tried)
> and the latest 2.4.1-ac14, that is what people experiments with.

There's no end of versions that people use.

Might I suggest that Justin imitate the maintainers of lm_sensors, and
create a program (shell script, Perl program, whatever) that *creates*
a patch against any given Linux source tree?  Obviously it could break
in the face of weird trees, but even minimal flexibility would save him
a lot of work ...
-- 
Chip Salzenberg              - a.k.a. -             <chip@valinux.com>
 "We have no fuel on board, plus or minus 8 kilograms."  -- NEAR tech

Re: aic7xxx (and sym53c8xx) plans

[J . A . Magallon]

On 02.15 Chip Salzenberg wrote:
> According to J . A . Magallon:
> 
> Might I suggest that Justin imitate the maintainers of lm_sensors, and
> create a program (shell script, Perl program, whatever) that *creates*
> a patch against any given Linux source tree?  Obviously it could break
> in the face of weird trees, but even minimal flexibility would save him
> a lot of work ...

So you can end with 1Mb of patch doing

-#endif /* Hello */
+#endif Hello

like happens in i2c-lm

Better a real patch...
 
-- 
J.A. Magallon                                                      $> cd pub
mailto:jamagallon@able.es                                          $> more beer

Linux werewolf 2.4.1-ac14 #1 SMP Thu Feb 15 16:05:52 CET 2001 i686

Re: aic7xxx (and sym53c8xx) plans

[Peter Samuelson]

[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

Re: aic7xxx (and sym53c8xx) plans

[Justin T. Gibbs]

>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

RE: aic7xxx (and sym53c8xx) plans

[Nathan Black]

Actuall, I have tried it on a few machines now. It "seems" to work very
reliable with a 2940UW card, AIC 7890 chip, and a 2940U2W Card that I have
on my machines.(obviously these are all different machines). 

Nathan
-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Samuelson [mailto:peter@cadcamlab.org]
Sent: Saturday, February 17, 2001 7:06 PM
To: Nathan Black
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: aic7xxx (and sym53c8xx) plans



[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

Re: aic7xxx (and sym53c8xx) plans

[Gérard Roudier]

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.

  Gérard.

Re: aic7xxx (and sym53c8xx) plans

[Peter Samuelson]

[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

Re: aic7xxx (and sym53c8xx) plans

[Matthew Jacob]

> 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...

Re: aic7xxx (and sym53c8xx) plans

[Justin T. Gibbs]

>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