Follow-up on the my hard-disk problem

[Albert Cahalan]

> Nothing worked.  Yesterday, after all the frustration, finally
> success!  It turned out that I had to recompile the kernel, and in 
> "make config", say yes to 
> 
> 	use old disk-only driver for primary i/f (CONFIG_BLK_DEV_HD) 
> 
> (The BIOS is set at 708 cylinders/32 heads).  Now the kernel
> recognizes 

Oh, of course...  :-)
That driver is kept around for systems that have timing problems
and such.  It does not support IDE CD-ROMs, but that is OK for you.

> Well, one problem solved.  The next problem we are dealing with is the
> SCSI CD-ROM drive.  It is an NEC 4X CD-ROM attached to a NEC 16-bit AT
> SCSI Host Adapter.  I have thrown in almost every SCSI driver from the
> kernel: in "make config" of the kernel, I have
> 
> #
> # SCSI support
> #
> CONFIG_SCSI=y
> 
> #
> # SCSI support type (disk, tape, CDrom)
> #
> # CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SD is not set
> # CONFIG_CHR_DEV_ST is not set
> CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SR=y
> CONFIG_CHR_DEV_SG=y

You do not need SCSI generic support.  It is for burners (CD-RAM :-)
and big flatbed SCSI scanners.

> #
> # SCSI low-level drivers
> #
> CONFIG_SCSI_AHA152X=y
> CONFIG_SCSI_AHA1542=y
> CONFIG_SCSI_AHA1740=y
> CONFIG_SCSI_AHA274X=y
> CONFIG_SCSI_BUSLOGIC=y
> CONFIG_SCSI_EATA_DMA=y
> CONFIG_SCSI_U14_34F=y
> CONFIG_SCSI_FUTURE_DOMAIN=y
> CONFIG_SCSI_GENERIC_NCR5380=y
> CONFIG_SCSI_NCR53C7xx=y
> CONFIG_SCSI_IN2000=y
> CONFIG_SCSI_PAS16=y
> CONFIG_SCSI_QLOGIC=y
> CONFIG_SCSI_SEAGATE=y
> CONFIG_SCSI_T128=y
> CONFIG_SCSI_ULTRASTOR=y
> CONFIG_SCSI_7000FASST=y

Look at the board and see what chip it uses.

The kernel can only autodetect a SCSI controller if it has a BIOS.
(Can you boot from your SCSI controller?  If not, then no BIOS)
When you get the LILO prompt, pass the kernel some parameters to
let it know what controller you have.

Example:  I put append="aha152x=0x340,11,7,1" in /etc/lilo.conf and
aha152x=0x340,11,7,1 on the LILO command line.  This is because I have
an Adaptec SCSI chip in my Sound Blaster which is not detected.

> No SCSI host was detected upon boot-up, and trying to mount /dev/scd0
> and /dev/scd1 both failed.  By the way, the SCSI AT adapter is set
> with I/O address 0x350 and BIOS ROM Address 0xC8000, and the IRQ is
> 12.  We also have a 3com ethernet board, and that works fine.  (We
> didn't include it in the kernel, but it did work under another kernel
> that did include the network device support).

Hmmm, what kernel are you using?  Try 1.3.30, 1.3.40 or something like
that (avoid 1.3.32-1.3.35 or so, Linus messed up all the drivers).
These kernels are less stable, but they include more drivers.