Subject: Re: SCSI info with i386 port <[email-masked]>

From: "Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com" <[email-masked]>

>in getting a Wide SCSI-2 board if they were supported.  Does anybody know of
>any SCSI board, of course with the exception of the 'evil, wicked and nasty'
>Adaptec boards, that support Wide SCSI-2?

The only ones that I'm aware of are the EISA BusLogic bt757s, and the
NCR PCI 53c825.  The former "should just work" with the BusLogic
driver, though I've never heard of it being tested.  The latter is in
beta test from the same guys that wrote the NCR 53c810 driver.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Michael L. VanLoon     [email-masked]     [email-masked]
  Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free un*x for PC/Mac/Amiga/etc.
     Working NetBSD ports: 386+PC, Mac, Amiga, HP300, Sun3, Sun4c, PC532
               In progress: DEC pmax (MIPS R2k/3k), VAX, Sun4m
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

---

From: Ken Hornstein <[email-masked]>

>I have a question that I was wondering if anybody could give me some info
>about.  Does NetBSD-1.0 Beta support Wide SCSI-2, or SCSI-3?  I have seen a fe
>w
>machines come out recently that say they support Wide SCSI-2, and one that 
>claimed support for SCSI-3.  While I doubt the claim of SCSI-3 compliance (
>Last I heard, the SCSI-3 committee was still a long way away from agreeing on
>the standard, but I could be totally wrong about that ), I would be interested

I am pretty sure that "wide" SCSI-2 requires a differential interface or a
special cable (78 pins).  The end result is that you have to buy special "wide
SCSI" peripherials that aren't compatible with other host adapters (I _think_
you can run both normal SCSI and wide SCSI peripherials on the same bus
with some funky cabling, but I'm not sure).

I know Buslogic makes a differential controller, and it should "just work"
with the bt742 driver, but I don't think anyone's tested it.  I don't know
if the higher-level SCSI code would have to be modified to support Wide
SCSI or not.

Unless you have some really huge I/O requirements, I would advise against it;
there are many unknowns here and you'd have to spend a lot of money and time
to get it all working.  Most of the mid-to-high range cards support FAST
SCSI, which is pretty cool and is supported by most newer drives.

--Ken