dump card state: amd64 + 300G seagate + Adaptec AIC7902 + 5.3-stable

[Scott Long]

Mike Hunter wrote:

> On Feb 03, "Mark Bojara" wrote:
> 
> 
>>I have the same problem with a 18 GB Seagate SCSI drive I checked around
>>on seagates website and I cant seem to find firmware updates anywhere.
>>Could you perhaps direct me to a link also I see other replies to this
>>post show that this wont necessarily fix this problem.
> 
> 
> I was told that you either have to call them or email them:
> 
> http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/asp/tools/en/webhelp/How_To_Contact_Seagate.html
> 
> discsupport at seagate.com
> 
> I didn't see any way to get a new bios for the onboard adaptec card.  Dmesg
> says my adaptec "card" is "Adaptec AIC7902 Ultra320 SCSI adapter", but
> a bios is nowhere to be found on their website.  I've been told by others
> it's not possible to upgrade the onboard chipset's BIOS, but Scott thinks
> it's there somewhere.

The BIOS version should show up in the Adaptec banner during boot.
Adaptec does provide BIOS updates for the add-in cards that it sells.
For the on-motherboard chips, you'll have to contact the motherboard
vendor for a BIOS update since the Adaptec and System BIOS images are
usually combined.

BIOS updates are rarely for fixing runtime problems.  The Adaptec SCSI
chips do not use a traditional microprocessor and firmware image, so
it's not as if updating the BIOS will give you a new firmware that will
make the chip run differently, like with an LSI SCSI chip or a RAID
card.  At best, the BIOS might set initial state of the chip to
enable/disable/tweak certain features.  The OS driver is what really
controls the runtime operation, though.

Scott