[ILUG] SCSI woes

[Kenn Humborg]

On Tue, Feb 01, 2000 at 11:57:59PM +0000, Kenn Humborg wrote:
> The host adapter is an Adaptec ADP1505, the driver is
> the aha152x.  I see that the driver hasn't been updated 
> since 1996.  The disks are RZ55s.

OK.  We're all sorted now.  The problem was that driver for 
the AVA1505 doesn't support synchronous transfers.  This disk 
doesn't want to talk asynchronously until you've done a 
synch/asynch negotiation, which this driver doesn't do.

A little patch from a guy in the States and we are go.

Next little question...

If I have two disks and one tape all on the SCSI bus, all
powered up, everything works fine.  However, if the disks
are not powered, nothing works and the driver spews out 
error messages.  

Is it normal that an unpowered device screws up bus operation?
I was under the impression that an unpowered device would be
pretty much invisible on the bus.  Or is this because these
are SCSI-1 disks from the early days of SCSI when the standard
hadn't quite settled?  

Or is the AVA-1505 a complete pile of crap? (even though I 
got it for free :-)

Later,
Kenn

PS.  Vincent Cunniffe offered to try out these disks on his
     machine.  Thanks for the offer, but these are _heavy_
     disks.  I won't be bringing them up from Galway in 
     a hurry!