Subject: Lockups under heavy disk access

From: Kimmo T Paasiala <[email-masked]>

Symptoms: When I'm doing something that causes heavy disk traffic
(for example compiling something) sometimes the system hangs with
the disk light staying on.

My system: A2000 equipped with A2630(4 Megs) + GVP Series II HD-controller
 + Rodime RO3259TS (200 Megs)
I'm using the newest kernel(#744).

Any suggestions ? 

-- 

Kimmo Paasiala ([email-masked]

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From: [email-masked] (Stefan G. Berg)

>I'm using the newest kernel(#744).

I have these problems with my tape drive, both under NetBSD and
AmigaDOS.  The problem is due to noise in my lines.  I never managed
to fix the problem.  The external cable is three feet long and
shielded, both internal and external devices are properly terminated
at the end.  As far as I can see I didn't break any rules, but I still
have problems.  Part of the reason is my 040 accelerator which puts a
higher load on my SCSI bus (since it can access the controller
faster).

I have an Amiga 500 with GVP controller. My fix for this is to boot
NetBSD with 16 bit memory which slows my 040 down enough so that I can
do backups at least.

Stefan

,-------------------------------------------------------,
|Usenet   [email-masked] Stefan G. Berg|
|Internet [email-masked]           MIME // AMIGA |
|Bitnet   sgberg@indiana   GE_Mail s.berg5   \X/ w/ bms |
`-------------------------------------------------------'

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From: [email-masked]

> higher load on my SCSI bus (since it can access the controller

If it's a noisy SCSI bus, you could try to fix the problem by using an 
active terminator, instead of the common passive one. Slightly more
expensive, but could possibly help your system. I hope you don't run with
synchronous xfer on that system...

-Markus
-- 
CHUUG/EUnet Switzerland				Markus Wild
Zweierstrasse 35	Tel: +41 1 291 45 80	[email-masked]
CH-8004 Zuerich		Fax: +41 1 291 46 42	S=mw;P=EUnet;A=EUnet;C=CH

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From: Eric Glanz - Unix Support <[email-masked]>

I was having the same locking problems with my tape drive and hard drive.  I
updated to a rev 8 SCSI chip, and that fixed the bus locking with the tape
drive under AmigaDOS and NetBSD, but I eventually had to ditch the drive that I
was using for BSD.  I just could not get it to work, it kept locking the SCSI
bus.  When I switched to another drive, everything worked fine.  FYI - The
drive that I could not get working was a 200 Meg Hitachi DK312c.

Hope this helps!

--Eric Glanz

Unix Support  
University of Wisconsin - Platteville