Early BusLogic MCA SCSI Controllers in
servers with >16MB RAM
A problem has been identified with early revisions of MicroCode and ROM
chips on the BusLogic BT-646S MCA SCSI controllers. When installed in servers with greater
than 16MB of contiguous RAM (FT//e or FT//s with >16MB RAM, or earlier MCA system with
>16MB RAM on a HyperRAM card), data corruption can occur when large blocks of data are
transferred by the SCSI bus. This can occur when copying/updating large files, or when
backing up to or restoring from a SCSI tape backup device. This problem then manifests
itself on the system by physically corrupting the contents of the files on the server's
disk, or by crashing the server (as a corrupted memory data block is passed to the
operating system).
The current revision of BusLogic BT-646S MCA SCSI controller(03 rev B),
with 3.36F MicroCode and 4.70M BIOS, do NOT exhibit this problem, but earlier versions of
MicroCode (such as 3.35F) and BIOS (such as 4.70K) do. On a card fitted with earlier
releases of MicroCode and BIOS, upgrading to the latest releases will overcome the
problems.
New MicroCode and BIOS firmware for the BusLogic BT-646S SCSI controller
can be obtained through the Apricot Spares Department should an upgrade be required.
| Note: |
If on a system with a HyperRAM card (Panther 1 FT/s or FT/e, or earlier
MCA system), the problem will ONLY be encountered if the HyperRAM card has more than 16MB
of RAM installed, as there was a 128K hole between the motherboard memory and HyperRAM
memory on these earlier systems, and the problems encountered only occurs on systems with
more than 16MB of CONTIGUOUS memory. |
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