SUMMARY: dual channel termination

From: Lisa Weihl (lweihl@cs.bgsu.edu)
Date: Tue Sep 22 1998 - 19:29:06 CDT


Original post:

I think I already know the answer to this but need a quick confirmation. I
searched the archives and found lots of SCSI info but not the answer to my
question.

I just put a dual-channel single ended PCI SCSI card in an Ultra 5.
Currently I have only one Ultra Wide disk so I need only one channel. Does
that mean I have to have a terminator on the other channel? The UW drive
has an active terminator on it. I'm assuming so but I'm not completely sure
if the channels are 2 separate SCSI chains or what.

Since inserting the card and rebooting the server seems to want to emit a
high pitched squeal every 5 min or so which goes away after a bit. I don't
know if that's related to the SCSI chain not being properly terminated or
what. I've just shut things down for now since this is a new server I'm
building anyway.

It does recognize the drive just fine and I have formatted it into 2
partitions. As for jumper settings on the SCSI card I followed what was in
the UltraSCSI Host Adapter Installation Guide that Sun sent along. I also
recently added an

internal IDE CD-ROM but I don't think that should cause any problems.

If anyone has a clue on what the squealing might be I'd appreciate it.

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SUMMARY

Only received a few replies on this. In the process of rebooting several
times to try and find the source of the squeal (it was the drive) my system
got majorly hosed. My system went from seeing the drive to seeing it only
at certain SCSI ID's to not being able to even get to the PROM when booting
when the external SCSI cable was connected. Sun had me apply a patch which
solved the last problem but now I get bus fault on doing an probe scsi.
Hosed the motherboard bus and now it'll need repaired. I suppose I could
have done something when I booted one time with the cover off to see if I
could hear a squeal but I sure did try to be careful. Or I suppose I
could've plugged the CD-ROM into the motherboard wrong but that sure seems
unlikely given how things are marked so well.

Thanks to the following:

Harvey Wamboldt <harvey@iotek.ns.ca>
Andrew Hoerter ahoerter@netcom.com
 Al Hopper <al@logical-approach.com>

Who all said no the 2nd channel does not have to be terminated. Also they
said the source of squeal could be power supply, drive going bad (it's
brand new) or fan motor.

Once I moved the drive off the top of the server and booted once with the
cover off I was able to determine it was the drive making the noise. I
talked with the vendor (Direct Data Storage) and he said it could be the
drive trying to recalibrate itself every so often when idle. I now know
from timing it that it occurs every 3:45 for a one minute period. It's a
9G Seagate Barracuda. Does this sound familiar to anyone?

Lisa

******************************************************************
Lisa Weihl, System Administrator E-mail: lweihl@cs.bgsu.edu
Department of Computer Science Office: Hayes 225
Bowling Green State University Phone: (419) 372-0116
Bowling Green, Ohio 43403-0214 Fax: (419) 372-8061



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