SuSE Support Database

Title: NCR- / Symbios Logic SCSI controller

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NCR- / Symbios Logic SCSI controller

Interesting facts about NCR controllers

The company Symbios-Logic (used to be NCR) offers a line of SCSI controller chips. Most of them are located on PCI plug-in boards, but some of them are also used as onboard controllers. For information about the latter type, please read the SDB article
"ASUS PCI/I-486 SP3"
(http://www.suse.de/Support/sdb/asus_sp3.html)

The following cards are most commonly used :

The plug-in boards distributed by Symbios Logic are called 8100 etc, their names are loosely modeled after the NCR notations.

It is important for the usage of these cards under Linux, that the SDMS-BIOS has at least version 3.06.00, no matter if it is on a plug-in card or integrated into the mainboards BIOS (which is more often).

We've heard of cases where users were using BIOS versions 3.04.00 succesfully. However this falls into the category "Linux-wonders", since this BIOS shows a couple of significant bugs under Linux, that might lead to the complete destruction of the filesystems of ALL connected drives. The BIOS messages should at least look like the following example :

        NCR SDMS (TM) V3.0 PCI SCSI BIOS, PCI Rev. 2.0,
        NCRPCI-3.06.0

For information about destroyed filesystems, see the SDB article:
"Error in the filesystem with Conner CFP 1060S"
(maddin_conner.html).

All plug-in boards produced by Symbios Logic which have their own BIOS have for sure a BIOS version > 3.06.00. Also newer motherboard BIOSes usually have a SDMS BIOS version 4.x .

Apart from Symbios Logic (NCR), Plug-in boards with NCR controllers are also distributed by ASUS (SP-200) and Gigabyte GA-401.

On most NCR cards one or two jumpers can be found, that can be used to assign a PCI interrupt line and the status of first or second controller to it. Most of the time only the latter is available. On most of the NCR cards are located one or two jumpers, with which one can assign to the plug-in board a PCI interrupt line and the status of first or second controller. Mostly only the last one is available. In the norm, the card is to be jumpered in INTA to second. Please check this. Often the NCR controller must be installed in the PCI slot 1, so slot 1 is correctly operated on PCI INTA.

About the topic interrupts, please read the SDB article:
"PCI BIOS and Interrupts"
( http://www.suse.de/Support/sdb/maddin_pcibios.html).

For the NCR chip based controller there are currently (Kernel 2.0.25) two low level drivers:

NCR53c7,8xx SCSI support
NCR53C8XX   SCSI support

Should you still have problems with one of them at booting-time, please use the other one. Pay attention to choose the same driver at the kernel's reconfiguration as the one that you have used up to now to boot.

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See also:

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Keywords: NCR, SYMBIOS, LOGIC, SCSI, HOST ADAPTER, CONTROLLER, PCI BUS, INTERRUPT, BIOS

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Categories: SCSI

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SDB-maddin_ncr, Copyright SuSE GmbH, Nuremberg, Germany - Version: 27. Feb 1997
Impressum - Last generated: 24. Feb 1999 15:09:55 by maddin with sdb_gen 1.00.0