Many people have problems with the internal SCSI bus of PCI class
machines (7x00, 8500, 9500). The support for the MESH SCSI chip is
getting better day by day, though.
 
If you have personal experience with disks that don't work well with
MkLinux, post your suggestions here. I will try to maintain them as good
as I can. You can reach me via email: mlan@selection-line.net
 
Note for those still on DR1: there were some incompatibilities with some
disks; however they were resolved in DR2. So you better upgrade soon...
 
970228 note: Some of the MESH (= internal) SCSI bus problems are
supposedly fixed in the Updates 970213 and newer. So it might be a good
idea to check them out...
 
970316 note: The latest WIP kernel (970303) has an option for switching
off disconnect/reconnect, a feature that some disks have problems with.
Have a look at the acompanying ReadMe!
-----------------
1. IBM disks
 
A. DFHS drives: you need to disable 'TI Sync Negotiation' by setting jumper
                number 4 (from right) on the front option connector block.
   (This may help on other IBM drives too...)
 
 
2. Quantum disks
 
A. Fireball drives:if your problem is a panic on boot (Unable to handle disconnect)
                   it may help to change your Quantum drive from ID 0 to ID 1.
 
B. If this doesn't help and for other drives: try connecting them from the internal
   (fast) SCSI bus onto the Internal/External (regular) SCSI bus: unplug the ribbon
   cable and replug it into the second connector.
3. Other makes: try 2.B. above...
 
More to follow! If you have suggestions: mail me at mlan@selection-line.net

Latest Update on 10/5/97:

The latest update to DR2.1 (Update2) successfully fixes the 'Target Initiated Sync neg.'
problem with IBM hard drives.

mlan@selection-line.net

There are fewer and fewer problems with disks these days.

The ones that I heard of in recent weeks are:

- Removables: SyJet, Jaz, Zip... They seem to give lots of media errors, which in
turn are not well digested by the kernel.
- Some Quantum 3 Gig disks: They seemed to give erors when used in setups with large
partitions (>2 Gig ?) 

By the way, Linux-Pmac has a new, much improved MESH driver that supports sync
data transfers as well (=faster ;-).

971006 mlan@selection-line.net

Neat drives, those.

Peter
gorniau@unixg.ubc.ca