Adaptec 29320?

[Bill Squire]

On Mon, Feb 02, 2004 at 10:53:10PM -0600, James Van Artsdalen wrote:
> Is anyone using an Adptec 29320?  Mine is not working.
> I suspect is may be a BIOS problem on the Tyan K8W S2885.
> I also have a Highpoint 1820 that does not work right.

Not anymore. It worked for awhile and after a few days it just stopped.
Next i was given a PERC 320/DC Adaptec FSA RAID (aac) This was much better
but still an Adaptec. I'm using a 29160 now and it is going to go! These
cards just don't seem to be up to a busy Unix environment. In all cases
the firmware was the latest. (Surprisingly FreeDOS runs quite well on 
the amd64, and needed to run the flash.exe stuff.) I'm getting a real
Cirrus Logic card. These cost a third what Adaptec costs and my experience
has only been good with these cheap (smb) cards. I work with servers and
most BOFH's swear by them and deplore Adaptec. (Therefore all those 'free'
cards to try. ;-) Gladly stump up a hundred Euros or so for piece of mind.  

> If I boot Win64 while the 29320 is plugged in Win64 hangs after
> logging in.  FreeBSD/AMD64 does not crash but does not work either,

Keep hearing about "Win64". Those few I know who develop on that platform
or maintain Windows servers say its quite a farce (remember NT on Alpha?)
and keep me clear of it. Are there any real 64bit applications in this M$
distribution? I only ask because I wouldn't mind being able run some of
the better offerings from the Windows community like you can do with the 
FreeBSD on i386. I get the source for several major Windows applications
but it all seems so hopelessly 32bit. No, I can't give any out but can 
suggest you may be surprised what you can get by asking. "Wine64" would
indeed be fine. 

Presently I'm using an Asus K8 motherboard for an Opteron-100 marketed as
"Athlon-FX" or something. Not bad for Taiwan, but apparently Taiwan thought
amd64 was going to be Windows and therefore some really goofy features. 

All AMD products seem to work better slightly overclocked. 2250MHz for a 
2200MHz chip is perfectly inline with the 3 - 5% rule. When increasing the 
bus speed, Adaptec cards give out first, then SATA and then the video and 
so on. Sorry, this is a bit offtopic.

> and the startup log has this:

> ahd0: <Adaptec 29320 Ultra320 SCSI adapter> port 0-0xff,0-0xff mem 0-0x1fff at device 8.0 on pci2
> pcib2: device ahd0 requested unsupported I/O range 0x0-0x0 (decoding 0xf000-0x1fff)
> ahd0: can't allocate register resources
> device_probe_and_attach: ahd0 attach returned 12
> ahd0: <Adaptec 29320 Ultra320 SCSI adapter> port 0-0xff,0-0xff mem 0-0x1fff at device 8.1 on pci2
> pcib2: device ahd0 requested unsupported I/O range 0x0-0x0 (decoding 0xf000-0x1fff)
> ahd0: can't allocate register resources
> device_probe_and_attach: ahd0 attach returned 12
> 
> The option ROM on the card is not run.

This may be mistaken, but I recall stopping something similar to the above 
in either 'device hints' or 'loader.conf', by stipulating where the DMA 
would be. Maybe give it a try but i'd suggest a better SCSI host adapter.
I'm not trying to bring on flames as this is exactly how i see it and
Adaptec sounds good from a salesman. A large wholesaler in Tiel, of all 
places, that sells me the 'smb' cards also sells Adaptec and says: "Managers
like that name". I think that says it all.  

Highpoint apparently supplies FreeBSD drivers. <http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA/brr1540.htm> I hear 3ware works well and Promise seems 'promising' for SATA
RAID. (and quite cheap too) Anyone use the Promise SATA 150 TX4 ?