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From: eichelbe@nadc.arpa (J. Eichelberger)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: SI 9900 hangs
Message-ID: <8269@brl-adm.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 13-Jul-87 10:23:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-adm.8269
Posted: Mon Jul 13 10:23:26 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 14-Jul-87 05:40:00 EDT
Sender: news@brl-adm.ARPA
Lines: 47

We are running 4.3 BSD UNIX on a VAX 11/780.

We have a problem with 9766-disk related hangs on our VAX.  We have a
Systems Industries (SI) 9900 controller connected to three 9766 drives.
We have the controller set in the SI-mode instead of the "act like a true
RM05 from DEC" mode.  Bu we still use the hp driver from the 4.3 BSD.

Every so often we get a system hang.  All activity on the SI controller
stops.  Hitting the reset on the toggle switch restarts everything.  Most
of the time we don't see any error messages.  If we do see one, it's
hp0: not ready

Has anyone seen this type of problem?  Our field service if trying to
blame the problem on the hp driver since dumps of various memory
locations (we halt the machine when we hang and do EXAMINEs of various
memory locations per the field service) indicate, they say, that the
driver is not resetting an error state.  I want to know why I get an
error in the first place!!!  They can't answer that.

Well, anyway, the last register dump we gave them indicated that the
drive status register for drive #1 (counting from 0) had an error.
The register contained 51C0, and from some manual they decoded the
value as follows:
VV set=Volume Valid
DRY set=Drive Ready
DPR set=Driver Present
MOL=Medium Online
ERR set=Error

and

Error Register #1 contained 4000, supposedly meaning

Bit 14 set=Unsafe (Huh???)

There is all kind of other stuff available from the dump, but I won't
bother you with it here.

If anyone can help, please drop me a line.  Maybe a driver fix can be
made.  Maybe field service should analyze the 9766 for problems.  I
think the latter is in order.  We are using the standard 4.3 BSD hp.c
for the driver.

Thank you.

            Jon Eichelberger
            eichelbe@NADC.ARPA