PC Hardware compatibility
Issues of hardware compatibility are among the most troublesome in the
computer industry today and FreeBSD is by no means immune to trouble. In
this respect, FreeBSD's advantage of being able to run on inexpensive
commodity PC hardware is also its liability when it comes to support for
the amazing variety of components on the market. While it would be
impossible to provide a exhaustive listing of hardware that FreeBSD
supports, this section serves as a catalog of the device drivers included
with FreeBSD and the hardware each drivers supports. Where possible and
appropriate, notes about specific products are included. You may also
want to refer to the kernel
configuration file section in this handbook for a list of
supported devices.
As FreeBSD is a volunteer project without a funded testing department,
we depend on you, the user, for much of the information contained in this
catalog. If you have direct experience of hardware that does or does not
work with FreeBSD, please let us know by sending e-mail to the &a.doc;.
Questions about supported hardware should be directed to the &a.questions;
(see Mailing Lists for more
information). When submitting information or asking a question, please
remember to specify exactly what version of FreeBSD you are using and
include as many details of your hardware as possible.
Resources on the Internet
The following links have proven useful in selecting hardware. Though
some of what you see won't necessarily be specific (or even applicable)
to FreeBSD, most of the hardware information out there is OS
independent. Please check with the FreeBSD hardware guide to make sure
that your chosen configuration is supported before making any
purchases.
The Pentium Systems
Hardware Performance Guide
Sample Configurations
The following list of sample hardware configurations by no means
constitutes an endorsement of a given hardware vendor or product by
The FreeBSD Project. This information is provided
only as a public service and merely catalogs some of the experiences
that various individuals have had with different hardware combinations.
Your mileage may vary. Slippery when wet. Beware of dog.
Jordan's Picks
I have had fairly good luck building workstation and server
configurations with the following components. I can't guarantee that
you will too, nor that any of the companies here will remain
“best buys” forever. I will try, when I can, to keep this
list up-to-date but cannot obviously guarantee that it will be at any
given time.
Motherboards
For Pentium Pro (P6) systems, I'm quite fond of the Tyan S1668
dual-processor motherboard as well as the Intel PR440FX motherboard
with on-board SCSI WIDE and 100/10MB Intel Etherexpress NIC. You
can build a dandy little single or dual processor system (which is
supported in FreeBSD 3.0) for very little cost now that the Pentium
Pro 180/256K chips have fallen so greatly in price, but no telling
how much longer this will last.
For the Pentium II, I'm rather partial to the ASUS P2l97-S
motherboard with the on-board Adaptec SCSI WIDE controller.
For Pentium machines, the ASUS P55T2P4
motherboard appears to be a good choice for mid-to-high range
Pentium server and workstation systems.
Those wishing to build more fault-tolerant systems should also
be sure to use Parity memory or, for truly 24/7 applications, ECC
memory.
ECC memory does involve a slight performance trade-off (which
may or may not be noticeable depending on your application) but
buys you significantly increased fault-tolerance to memory
errors.
Disk Controllers
This one is a bit trickier, and while I used to recommend the
Buslogic controllers
unilaterally for everything from ISA to PCI, now I tend to lean
towards the Adaptec
1542CF for ISA, Buslogic Bt747c for EISA and Adaptec 2940UW for
PCI.
The NCR/Symbios cards for PCI have also worked well for me,
though you need to make sure that your motherboard supports the
BIOS-less model if you're using one of those (if your card has
nothing which looks even vaguely like a ROM chip on it, you've
probably got one which expects its BIOS to be on your
motherboard).
If you should find that you need more than one SCSI controller
in a PCI machine, you may wish to consider conserving your scarce
PCI bus resources by buying the Adaptec 3940 card, which puts two
SCSI controllers (and internal busses) in a single slot.
There are two types of 3940 on the market—the older
model with AIC 7880 chips on it, and the newer one with AIC 7895
chips. The newer model requires CAM
support which is not yet part of FreeBSD—you have to add it,
or install from one of the CAM binary snapshot release.
Disk drives
In this particular game of Russian roulette, I'll make few
specific recommendations except to say “SCSI over IDE whenever
you can afford it.” Even in small desktop configurations, SCSI
often makes more sense since it allows you to easily migrate drives
from server to desktop as falling drive prices make it economical to
do so. If you have more than one machine to administer then think
of it not simply as storage, think of it as a food chain! For a
serious server configuration, there's not even any
argument—use SCSI equipment and good cables.
CDROM drives
My SCSI preferences extend to SCSI CDROM drives as well, and
while the Toshiba drives
have always been favourites of mine (in whatever speed is hot that
week), I'm still fond of my good old Plextor PX-12CS drive. It's
only a 12 speed, but it's offered excellent performance and
reliability.
Generally speaking, most SCSI CDROM drives I've seen have been
of pretty solid construction and you probably won't go wrong with an
HP or NEC SCSI CDROM drive either. SCSI CDROM prices also appear to
have dropped considerably in the last few months and are now quite
competitive with IDE CDROMs while remaining a technically superior
solution. I now see no reason whatsoever to settle for an IDE CDROM
drive if given a choice between the two.
CD Recordable (WORM) drives
At the time of this writing, FreeBSD supports 3 types of CDR
drives (though I believe they all ultimately come from Phillips
anyway): The Phillips CDD 522 (Acts like a Plasmon), the PLASMON
RF4100 and the HP 6020i. I myself use the HP 6020i for burning
CDROMs (in 2.2 and alter releases—it does not work with
earlier releases of the SCSI code) and it works very well. See
/usr/share/examples/worm
on your 2.2 system for example scripts used to created ISO9660
filesystem images (with RockRidge extensions) and burn them onto an
HP6020i CDR.
Tape drives
I've had pretty good luck with both 8mm
drives from Exabyte and 4mm
(DAT) drives from HP.
For backup purposes, I'd have to give the higher recommendation
to the Exabyte due to the more robust nature (and higher storage
capacity) of 8mm tape.
Video Cards
If you can also afford to buy a commercial X server for
US$99 from Xi Graphics, Inc.
(formerly X Inside, Inc) then I can heartily recommend the
Matrox Millenium
II card. Note that support for this card is also
excellent with the XFree86 server, which is now
at version 3.3.2.
You also certainly can't go wrong with one of Number 9's cards — their
S3 Vision 868 and 968 based cards (the 9FX series) also being quite
fast and very well supported by XFree86's S3 server. You can also
pick up their Revolution 3D cards very cheaply these days,
especially if you require a lot of video memory.
Monitors
I have had very good luck with the Sony
Multiscan 17seII monitors, as have I with the Viewsonic
offering in the same (Trinitron) tube. For larger than 17", all I
can recommend at the time of this writing is to not spend any less
than U.S. $2,000 for a 21" monitor or $1,700 for a 20"
monitor if that's what you really need. There are good monitors
available in the >=20" range and there are also cheap monitors in
the >=20" range. Unfortunately, very few are both cheap and
good!
Networking
I can recommend the Intel EtherExpress Pro/100B card first and
foremost, followed by the SMC Ultra 16 controller for any
ISA application and the SMC EtherPower or Compex ENET32 cards for
slightly cheaper PCI based networking. In general, any PCI NIC
based around DEC's DC21041 Ethernet controller chip, such as the
Znyx ZX342 or DEC DE435/450, will generally work quite well and can
frequently be found in 2-port and 4-port version (useful for
firewalls and routers), though the Pro/100MB card has the edge when
it comes to providing the best performance with lower
overhead.
If what you're looking for is the cheapest possible solution
then almost any NE2000 clone will do a fine job for very little
cost.
Serial
If you're looking for high-speed serial networking solutions,
then Digi International
makes the SYNC/570
series, with drivers now in FreeBSD-current. Emerging Technologies also
manufactures a board with T1/E1 capabilities, using software they
provide. I have no direct experience using either product,
however.
Multiport card options are somewhat more numerous, though it has
to be said that FreeBSD's support for Cyclades's products is
probably the tightest, primarily as a result of that company's
commitment to making sure that we are adequately supplied with
evaluation boards and technical specs. I've heard that the
Cyclom-16Ye offers the best price/performance, though I've not
checked the prices lately. Other multiport cards I've heard good
things about are the BOCA and AST cards, and Stallion Technologies
apparently offers an unofficial driver for their cards at this
location.
Audio
I currently use a Creative
Labs AWE32 though just about anything from Creative Labs
will generally work these days. This is not to say that other types
of sound cards don't also work, simply that I have little experience
with them (I was a former GUS fan, but Gravis's soundcard situation
has been dire for some time).
Video
For video capture, there are two good choices — any card
based on the Brooktree BT848 chip, such as the Hauppage or WinTV
boards, will work very nicely with FreeBSD. Another board which
works for me is the Matrox Meteor card.
FreeBSD also supports the older video spigot card from Creative
Labs, but those are getting somewhat difficult to find. Note that
the Meteor frame grabber card will not work
with motherboards based on the 440FX chipset! See the motherboard reference section for details.
In such cases, it's better to go with a BT848 based board.
Core/Processing
Motherboards, busses, and chipsets
* ISA
* EISA
* VLB
PCI
Contributed by &a.obrien; from postings by
&a.rgrimes;. 25 April 1995.
Continuing updates by &a.jkh;. Last
update on 26 August 1996.
Of the Intel PCI chip sets, the following list describes various
types of known-brokenness and the degree of breakage, listed from
worst to best.
Mercury:
Cache coherency problems, especially if there are ISA bus
masters behind the ISA to PCI bridge chip. Hardware flaw, only
known work around is to turn the cache off.
Saturn-I (ie, 82424ZX at rev 0, 1 or
2):
Write back cache coherency problems. Hardware flaw, only
known work around is to set the external cache to
write-through mode. Upgrade to Saturn-II.
Saturn-II (ie, 82424ZX at rev 3 or
4):
Works fine, but many MB manufactures leave out the
external dirty bit SRAM needed for write back operation. Work
arounds are either run it in write through mode, or get the
dirty bit SRAM installed. (I have these for the ASUS
PCI/I-486SP3G rev 1.6 and later boards).
Neptune:
Can not run more than 2 bus master devices. Admitted Intel
design flaw. Workarounds include do not run more than 2 bus
masters, special hardware design to replace the PCI bus
arbiter (appears on Intel Altair board and several other Intel
server group MB's). And of course Intel's official answer,
move to the Triton chip set, we “fixed it
there”.
Triton (ie, 430FX):
No known cache coherency or bus master problems, chip set
does not implement parity checking. Workaround for parity
issue. Use Triton-II based motherboards if you have the
choice.
Triton-II (ie, 430HX):
All reports on motherboards using this chipset have been
favorable so far. No known problems.
Orion:
Early versions of this chipset suffered from a PCI
write-posting bug which can cause noticeable performance
degradation in applications where large amounts of PCI bus
traffic is involved. B0 stepping or later revisions of the
chipset fixed this problem.
440FX:
This Pentium
Pro support chipset seems to work well, and does not
suffer from any of the early Orion chipset problems. It also
supports a wider variety of memory, including ECC and parity.
The only known problem with it is that the Matrox Meteor frame
grabber card doesn't like it.
CPUs/FPUs
Contributed by &a.asami;. 26 December
1997.
P6 class (Pentium Pro/Pentium II)
Both the Pentium Pro and Pentium II work fine with FreeBSD. In
fact, our main ftp site ftp.FreeBSD.org (also known
as "ftp.cdrom.com", world's largest ftp site)
runs FreeBSD on a Pentium Pro. Configurations
details are available for interested parties.
Pentium class
The Intel Pentium (P54C), Pentium MMX (P55C), AMD K6 and
Cyrix/IBM 6x86MX processors are all reported to work with FreeBSD.
I will not go into details of which processor is faster than what,
there are zillions of web sites on the Internet that tells you one
way or another. :)
Various CPUs have different voltage/cooling requirements. Make
sure your motherboard can supply the exact voltage needed by the
CPU. For instance, many recent MMX chips require split voltage
(e.g., 2.9V core, 3.3V I/O). Also, some AMD and Cyrix/IBM chips
run hotter than Intel chips. In that case, make sure you have
good heatsink/fans (you can get the list of certified parts from
their web pages).
Clock speeds
Contributed by &a.rgrimes;. 1 October
1996.
Updated by &a.asami;. 27 December
1997.
Pentium class machines use different clock speeds for the
various parts of the system. These being the speed of the CPU,
external memory bus, and the PCI bus. It is not always true that
a “faster” processor will make a system faster than a
“slower” one, due to the various clock speeds used.
Below is a table showing the differences:
Rated CPU MHz
External Clock and Memory Bus MHz
External to Internal Clock Multiplier
PCI Bus Clock MHz
60
60
1.0
30
66
66
1.0
33
75
50
1.5
25
90
60
1.5
30
100
50
2
25
100
66
1.5
33
120
60
2
30
133
66
2
33
150
60
2.5
30 (Intel, AMD)
150
75
2
37.5 (Cyrix/IBM 6x86MX)
166
66
2.5
33
180
60
3
30
200
66
3
33
233
66
3.5
33
66MHz may actually be 66.667MHz, but don't assume so.
The Pentium 100 can be run at either 50MHz external clock
with a multiplier of 2 or at 66MHz and a multiplier of
1.5.
As can be seen the best parts to be using are the 100, 133,
166, 200 and 233, with the exception that at a multiplier of 3 or
more the CPU starves for memory.
The AMD K6 Bug
In 1997, there have been reports of the AMD K6 seg faulting
during heavy compilation. That problem has been fixed in 3Q '97.
According to reports, K6 chips with date mark “9733”
or larger (i.e., manufactured in the 33rd week of '97 or later) do
not have this bug.
* 486 class
* 386 class
286 class
Sorry, FreeBSD does not run on 80286 machines. It is nearly
impossible to run today's large full-featured UNIXes on such
hardware.
* Memory
The minimum amount of memory you must have to install FreeBSD is 5
MB. Once your system is up and running you can build a custom kernel that
will use less memory. If you use the boot4.flp
you can get away with having only 4 MB.
* BIOS
Input/Output Devices
* Video cards
* Sound cards
Serial ports and multiport cards
The UART: What it is and how it works
Copyright © 1996 &a.uhclem;, All Rights
Reserved. 13 January 1996.
The Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter (UART)
controller is the key component of the serial communications
subsystem of a computer. The UART takes bytes of data and transmits
the individual bits in a sequential fashion. At the destination, a
second UART re-assembles the bits into complete bytes.
Serial transmission is commonly used with modems and for
non-networked communication between computers, terminals and other
devices.
There are two primary forms of serial transmission: Synchronous
and Asynchronous. Depending on the modes that are supported by the
hardware, the name of the communication sub-system will usually
include a A if it supports Asynchronous
communications, and a S if it supports
Synchronous communications. Both forms are described below.
Some common acronyms are:
UART Universal Asynchronous
Receiver/Transmitter
USART Universal Synchronous-Asynchronous
Receiver/Transmitter
Synchronous Serial Transmission
Synchronous serial transmission requires that the sender and
receiver share a clock with one another, or that the sender
provide a strobe or other timing signal so that the receiver knows
when to “read” the next bit of the data. In most
forms of serial Synchronous communication, if there is no data
available at a given instant to transmit, a fill character must be
sent instead so that data is always being transmitted.
Synchronous communication is usually more efficient because only
data bits are transmitted between sender and receiver, and
synchronous communication can be more more costly if extra wiring
and circuits are required to share a clock signal between the
sender and receiver.
A form of Synchronous transmission is used with printers and
fixed disk devices in that the data is sent on one set of wires
while a clock or strobe is sent on a different wire. Printers and
fixed disk devices are not normally serial devices because most
fixed disk interface standards send an entire word of data for
each clock or strobe signal by using a separate wire for each bit
of the word. In the PC industry, these are known as Parallel
devices.
The standard serial communications hardware in the PC does not
support Synchronous operations. This mode is described here for
comparison purposes only.
Asynchronous Serial Transmission
Asynchronous transmission allows data to be transmitted
without the sender having to send a clock signal to the receiver.
Instead, the sender and receiver must agree on timing parameters
in advance and special bits are added to each word which are used
to synchronize the sending and receiving units.
When a word is given to the UART for Asynchronous
transmissions, a bit called the "Start Bit" is added to the
beginning of each word that is to be transmitted. The Start Bit
is used to alert the receiver that a word of data is about to be
sent, and to force the clock in the receiver into synchronization
with the clock in the transmitter. These two clocks must be
accurate enough to not have the frequency drift by more than 10%
during the transmission of the remaining bits in the word. (This
requirement was set in the days of mechanical teleprinters and is
easily met by modern electronic equipment.)
After the Start Bit, the individual bits of the word of data
are sent, with the Least Significant Bit (LSB) being sent first.
Each bit in the transmission is transmitted for exactly the same
amount of time as all of the other bits, and the receiver
“looks” at the wire at approximately halfway through
the period assigned to each bit to determine if the bit is a
1 or a 0. For example, if
it takes two seconds to send each bit, the receiver will examine
the signal to determine if it is a 1 or a
0 after one second has passed, then it will
wait two seconds and then examine the value of the next bit, and
so on.
The sender does not know when the receiver has
“looked” at the value of the bit. The sender only
knows when the clock says to begin transmitting the next bit of
the word.
When the entire data word has been sent, the transmitter may
add a Parity Bit that the transmitter generates. The Parity Bit
may be used by the receiver to perform simple error checking.
Then at least one Stop Bit is sent by the transmitter.
When the receiver has received all of the bits in the data
word, it may check for the Parity Bits (both sender and receiver
must agree on whether a Parity Bit is to be used), and then the
receiver looks for a Stop Bit. If the Stop Bit does not appear
when it is supposed to, the UART considers the entire word to be
garbled and will report a Framing Error to the host processor when
the data word is read. The usual cause of a Framing Error is that
the sender and receiver clocks were not running at the same speed,
or that the signal was interrupted.
Regardless of whether the data was received correctly or not,
the UART automatically discards the Start, Parity and Stop bits.
If the sender and receiver are configured identically, these bits
are not passed to the host.
If another word is ready for transmission, the Start Bit for
the new word can be sent as soon as the Stop Bit for the previous
word has been sent.
Because asynchronous data is “self synchronizing”,
if there is no data to transmit, the transmission line can be
idle.
Other UART Functions
In addition to the basic job of converting data from parallel
to serial for transmission and from serial to parallel on
reception, a UART will usually provide additional circuits for
signals that can be used to indicate the state of the transmission
media, and to regulate the flow of data in the event that the
remote device is not prepared to accept more data. For example,
when the device connected to the UART is a modem, the modem may
report the presence of a carrier on the phone line while the
computer may be able to instruct the modem to reset itself or to
not take calls by asserting or deasserting one more more of these
extra signals. The function of each of these additional signals is
defined in the EIA RS232-C standard.
The RS232-C and V.24 Standards
In most computer systems, the UART is connected to circuitry
that generates signals that comply with the EIA RS232-C
specification. There is also a CCITT standard named V.24 that
mirrors the specifications included in RS232-C.
RS232-C Bit Assignments (Marks and Spaces)
In RS232-C, a value of 1 is called a
Mark and a value of 0 is
called a Space. When a communication line is
idle, the line is said to be “Marking”, or
transmitting continuous 1 values.
The Start bit always has a value of 0 (a
Space). The Stop Bit always has a value of 1
(a Mark). This means that there will always be a Mark (1) to
Space (0) transition on the line at the start of every word,
even when multiple word are transmitted back to back. This
guarantees that sender and receiver can resynchronize their
clocks regardless of the content of the data bits that are being
transmitted.
The idle time between Stop and Start bits does not have to
be an exact multiple (including zero) of the bit rate of the
communication link, but most UARTs are designed this way for
simplicity.
In RS232-C, the "Marking" signal (a 1) is
represented by a voltage between -2 VDC and -12 VDC, and a
"Spacing" signal (a 0) is represented by a
voltage between 0 and +12 VDC. The transmitter is supposed to
send +12 VDC or -12 VDC, and the receiver is supposed to allow
for some voltage loss in long cables. Some transmitters in low
power devices (like portable computers) sometimes use only +5
VDC and -5 VDC, but these values are still acceptable to a
RS232-C receiver, provided that the cable lengths are
short.
RS232-C Break Signal
RS232-C also specifies a signal called a
Break, which is caused by sending continuous
Spacing values (no Start or Stop bits). When there is no
electricity present on the data circuit, the line is considered
to be sending Break.
The Break signal must be of a duration
longer than the time it takes to send a complete byte plus
Start, Stop and Parity bits. Most UARTs can distinguish between
a Framing Error and a Break, but if the UART cannot do this, the
Framing Error detection can be used to identify Breaks.
In the days of teleprinters, when numerous printers around
the country were wired in series (such as news services), any
unit could cause a Break by temporarily
opening the entire circuit so that no current flowed. This was
used to allow a location with urgent news to interrupt some
other location that was currently sending information.
In modern systems there are two types of Break signals. If
the Break is longer than 1.6 seconds, it is considered a "Modem
Break", and some modems can be programmed to terminate the
conversation and go on-hook or enter the modems' command mode
when the modem detects this signal. If the Break is smaller
than 1.6 seconds, it signifies a Data Break and it is up to the
remote computer to respond to this signal. Sometimes this form
of Break is used as an Attention or Interrupt signal and
sometimes is accepted as a substitute for the ASCII CONTROL-C
character.
Marks and Spaces are also equivalent to “Holes”
and “No Holes” in paper tape systems.
Breaks cannot be generated from paper tape or from any
other byte value, since bytes are always sent with Start and
Stop bit. The UART is usually capable of generating the
continuous Spacing signal in response to a special command
from the host processor.
RS232-C DTE and DCE Devices
The RS232-C specification defines two types of equipment:
the Data Terminal Equipment (DTE) and the Data Carrier Equipment
(DCE). Usually, the DTE device is the terminal (or computer),
and the DCE is a modem. Across the phone line at the other end
of a conversation, the receiving modem is also a DCE device and
the computer that is connected to that modem is a DTE device.
The DCE device receives signals on the pins that the DTE device
transmits on, and vice versa.
When two devices that are both DTE or both DCE must be
connected together without a modem or a similar media translater
between them, a NULL modem must be used. The NULL modem
electrically re-arranges the cabling so that the transmitter
output is connected to the receiver input on the other device,
and vice versa. Similar translations are performed on all of
the control signals so that each device will see what it thinks
are DCE (or DTE) signals from the other device.
The number of signals generated by the DTE and DCE devices
are not symmetrical. The DTE device generates fewer signals for
the DCE device than the DTE device receives from the DCE.
RS232-C Pin Assignments
The EIA RS232-C specification (and the ITU equivalent, V.24)
calls for a twenty-five pin connector (usually a DB25) and
defines the purpose of most of the pins in that
connector.
In the IBM Personal Computer and similar systems, a subset
of RS232-C signals are provided via nine pin connectors (DB9).
The signals that are not included on the PC connector deal
mainly with synchronous operation, and this transmission mode is
not supported by the UART that IBM selected for use in the IBM
PC.
Depending on the computer manufacturer, a DB25, a DB9, or
both types of connector may be used for RS232-C communications.
(The IBM PC also uses a DB25 connector for the parallel printer
interface which causes some confusion.)
Below is a table of the RS232-C signal assignments in the
DB25 and DB9 connectors.
DB25 RS232-C Pin
DB9 IBM PC Pin
EIA Circuit Symbol
CCITT Circuit Symbol
Common Name
Signal Source
Description
1
-
AA
101
PG/FG
-
Frame/Protective Ground
2
3
BA
103
TD
DTE
Transmit Data
3
2
BB
104
RD
DCE
Receive Data
4
7
CA
105
RTS
DTE
Request to Send
5
8
CB
106
CTS
DCE
Clear to Send
6
6
CC
107
DSR
DCE
Data Set Ready
7
5
AV
102
SG/GND
-
Signal Ground
8
1
CF
109
DCD/CD
DCE
Data Carrier Detect
9
-
-
-
-
-
Reserved for Test
10
-
-
-
-
-
Reserved for Test
11
-
-
-
-
-
Reserved for Test
12
-
CI
122
SRLSD
DCE
Sec. Recv. Line Signal Detector
13
-
SCB
121
SCTS
DCE
Secondary Clear to Send
14
-
SBA
118
STD
DTE
Secondary Transmit Data
15
-
DB
114
TSET
DCE
Trans. Sig. Element Timing
16
-
SBB
119
SRD
DCE
Secondary Received Data
17
-
DD
115
RSET
DCE
Receiver Signal Element Timing
18
-
-
141
LOOP
DTE
Local Loopback
19
-
SCA
120
SRS
DTE
Secondary Request to Send
20
4
CD
108.2
DTR
DTE
Data Terminal Ready
21
-
-
-
RDL
DTE
Remote Digital Loopback
22
9
CE
125
RI
DCE
Ring Indicator
23
-
CH
111
DSRS
DTE
Data Signal Rate Selector
24
-
DA
113
TSET
DTE
Trans. Sig. Element Timing
25
-
-
142
-
DCE
Test Mode
Bits, Baud and Symbols
Baud is a measurement of transmission speed in asynchronous
communication. Because of advances in modem communication
technology, this term is frequently misused when describing the
data rates in newer devices.
Traditionally, a Baud Rate represents the number of bits that
are actually being sent over the media, not the amount of data
that is actually moved from one DTE device to the other. The Baud
count includes the overhead bits Start, Stop and Parity that are
generated by the sending UART and removed by the receiving UART.
This means that seven-bit words of data actually take 10 bits to
be completely transmitted. Therefore, a modem capable of moving
300 bits per second from one place to another can normally only
move 30 7-bit words if Parity is used and one Start and Stop bit
are present.
If 8-bit data words are used and Parity bits are also used,
the data rate falls to 27.27 words per second, because it now
takes 11 bits to send the eight-bit words, and the modem still
only sends 300 bits per second.
The formula for converting bytes per second into a baud rate
and vice versa was simple until error-correcting modems came
along. These modems receive the serial stream of bits from the
UART in the host computer (even when internal modems are used the
data is still frequently serialized) and converts the bits back
into bytes. These bytes are then combined into packets and sent
over the phone line using a Synchronous transmission method. This
means that the Stop, Start, and Parity bits added by the UART in
the DTE (the computer) were removed by the modem before
transmission by the sending modem. When these bytes are received
by the remote modem, the remote modem adds Start, Stop and Parity
bits to the words, converts them to a serial format and then sends
them to the receiving UART in the remote computer, who then strips
the Start, Stop and Parity bits.
The reason all these extra conversions are done is so that the
two modems can perform error correction, which means that the
receiving modem is able to ask the sending modem to resend a block
of data that was not received with the correct checksum. This
checking is handled by the modems, and the DTE devices are usually
unaware that the process is occurring.
By striping the Start, Stop and Parity bits, the additional
bits of data that the two modems must share between themselves to
perform error-correction are mostly concealed from the effective
transmission rate seen by the sending and receiving DTE equipment.
For example, if a modem sends ten 7-bit words to another modem
without including the Start, Stop and Parity bits, the sending
modem will be able to add 30 bits of its own information that the
receiving modem can use to do error-correction without impacting
the transmission speed of the real data.
The use of the term Baud is further confused by modems that
perform compression. A single 8-bit word passed over the
telephone line might represent a dozen words that were transmitted
to the sending modem. The receiving modem will expand the data
back to its original content and pass that data to the receiving
DTE.
Modern modems also include buffers that allow the rate that
bits move across the phone line (DCE to DCE) to be a different
speed than the speed that the bits move between the DTE and DCE on
both ends of the conversation. Normally the speed between the DTE
and DCE is higher than the DCE to DCE speed because of the use of
compression by the modems.
Because the number of bits needed to describe a byte varied
during the trip between the two machines plus the differing
bits-per-seconds speeds that are used present on the DTE-DCE and
DCE-DCE links, the usage of the term Baud to describe the overall
communication speed causes problems and can misrepresent the true
transmission speed. So Bits Per Second (bps) is the correct term
to use to describe the transmission rate seen at the DCE to DCE
interface and Baud or Bits Per Second are acceptable terms to use
when a connection is made between two systems with a wired
connection, or if a modem is in use that is not performing
error-correction or compression.
Modern high speed modems (2400, 9600, 14,400, and 19,200bps)
in reality still operate at or below 2400 baud, or more
accurately, 2400 Symbols per second. High speed modem are able to
encode more bits of data into each Symbol using a technique called
Constellation Stuffing, which is why the effective bits per second
rate of the modem is higher, but the modem continues to operate
within the limited audio bandwidth that the telephone system
provides. Modems operating at 28,800 and higher speeds have
variable Symbol rates, but the technique is the same.
The IBM Personal Computer UART
Starting with the original IBM Personal Computer, IBM selected
the National Semiconductor INS8250 UART for use in the IBM PC
Parallel/Serial Adapter. Subsequent generations of compatible
computers from IBM and other vendors continued to use the INS8250
or improved versions of the National Semiconductor UART
family.
National Semiconductor UART Family Tree
There have been several versions and subsequent generations
of the INS8250 UART. Each major version is described
below.
INS8250 -> INS8250B
\
\
\-> INS8250A -> INS82C50A
\
\
\-> NS16450 -> NS16C450
\
\
\-> NS16550 -> NS16550A -> PC16550D
INS8250
This part was used in the original IBM PC and IBM
PC/XT. The original name for this part was the INS8250
ACE (Asynchronous Communications Element) and it is made
from NMOS technology.
The 8250 uses eight I/O ports and has a one-byte send
and a one-byte receive buffer. This original UART has
several race conditions and other flaws. The original IBM
BIOS includes code to work around these flaws, but this
made the BIOS dependent on the flaws being present, so
subsequent parts like the 8250A, 16450 or 16550 could not
be used in the original IBM PC or IBM PC/XT.
INS8250-B
This is the slower speed of the INS8250 made from NMOS
technology. It contains the same problems as the original
INS8250.
INS8250A
An improved version of the INS8250 using XMOS
technology with various functional flaws corrected. The
INS8250A was used initially in PC clone computers by
vendors who used “clean” BIOS designs. Because
of the corrections in the chip, this part could not be
used with a BIOS compatible with the INS8250 or
INS8250B.
INS82C50A
This is a CMOS version (low power consumption) of the
INS8250A and has similar functional
characteristics.
NS16450
Same as NS8250A with improvements so it can be used
with faster CPU bus designs. IBM used this part in the
IBM AT and updated the IBM BIOS to no longer rely on the
bugs in the INS8250.
NS16C450
This is a CMOS version (low power consumption) of the
NS16450.
NS16550
Same as NS16450 with a 16-byte send and receive buffer
but the buffer design was flawed and could not be reliably
be used.
NS16550A
Same as NS16550 with the buffer flaws corrected. The
16550A and its successors have become the most popular
UART design in the PC industry, mainly due it its ability
to reliably handle higher data rates on operating systems
with sluggish interrupt response times.
NS16C552
This component consists of two NS16C550A CMOS UARTs in
a single package.
PC16550D
Same as NS16550A with subtle flaws corrected. This is
revision D of the 16550 family and is the latest design
available from National Semiconductor.
The NS16550AF and the PC16550D are the same thing
National reorganized their part numbering system a few years
ago, and the NS16550AFN no longer exists by that name. (If you
have a NS16550AFN, look at the date code on the part, which is a
four digit number that usually starts with a nine. The first
two digits of the number are the year, and the last two digits
are the week in that year when the part was packaged. If you
have a NS16550AFN, it is probably a few years old.)
The new numbers are like PC16550DV, with minor differences
in the suffix letters depending on the package material and its
shape. (A description of the numbering system can be found
below.)
It is important to understand that in some stores, you may
pay $15(US) for a NS16550AFN made in 1990 and in the next
bin are the new PC16550DN parts with minor fixes that National
has made since the AFN part was in production, the PC16550DN was
probably made in the past six months and it costs half (as low
as $5(US) in volume) as much as the NS16550AFN because they
are readily available.
As the supply of NS16550AFN chips continues to shrink, the
price will probably continue to increase until more people
discover and accept that the PC16550DN really has the same
function as the old part number.
National Semiconductor Part Numbering System
The older NSnnnnnrqp part
numbers are now of the format
PCnnnnnrgp.
The r is the revision field. The
current revision of the 16550 from National Semiconductor is
D.
The p is the package-type field.
The types are:
"F"
QFP
(quad flat pack) L lead type
"N"
DIP
(dual inline package) through hole straight lead
type
"V"
LPCC
(lead plastic chip carrier) J lead type
The g is the product grade field.
If an I precedes the package-type letter, it
indicates an “industrial” grade part, which has
higher specs than a standard part but not as high as Military
Specification (Milspec) component. This is an optional
field.
So what we used to call a NS16550AFN (DIP Package) is now
called a PC16550DN or PC16550DIN.
Other Vendors and Similar UARTs
Over the years, the 8250, 8250A, 16450 and 16550 have been
licensed or copied by other chip vendors. In the case of the
8250, 8250A and 16450, the exact circuit (the
“megacell”) was licensed to many vendors, including
Western Digital and Intel. Other vendors reverse-engineered the
part or produced emulations that had similar behavior.
In internal modems, the modem designer will frequently emulate
the 8250A/16450 with the modem microprocessor, and the emulated
UART will frequently have a hidden buffer consisting of several
hundred bytes. Because of the size of the buffer, these
emulations can be as reliable as a 16550A in their ability to
handle high speed data. However, most operating systems will
still report that the UART is only a 8250A or 16450, and may not
make effective use of the extra buffering present in the emulated
UART unless special drivers are used.
Some modem makers are driven by market forces to abandon a
design that has hundreds of bytes of buffer and instead use a
16550A UART so that the product will compare favorably in market
comparisons even though the effective performance may be lowered
by this action.
A common misconception is that all parts with
“16550A” written on them are identical in performance.
There are differences, and in some cases, outright flaws in most
of these 16550A clones.
When the NS16550 was developed, the National Semiconductor
obtained several patents on the design and they also limited
licensing, making it harder for other vendors to provide a chip
with similar features. Because of the patents, reverse-engineered
designs and emulations had to avoid infringing the claims covered
by the patents. Subsequently, these copies almost never perform
exactly the same as the NS16550A or PC16550D, which are the parts
most computer and modem makers want to buy but are sometimes
unwilling to pay the price required to get the genuine
part.
Some of the differences in the clone 16550A parts are
unimportant, while others can prevent the device from being used
at all with a given operating system or driver. These differences
may show up when using other drivers, or when particular
combinations of events occur that were not well tested or
considered in the Windows driver. This is because most modem
vendors and 16550-clone makers use the Microsoft drivers from
Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and the Microsoft MSD utility as the
primary tests for compatibility with the NS16550A. This
over-simplistic criteria means that if a different operating
system is used, problems could appear due to subtle differences
between the clones and genuine components.
National Semiconductor has made available a program named
COMTEST that performs compatibility
tests independent of any OS drivers. It should be remembered that
the purpose of this type of program is to demonstrate the flaws in
the products of the competition, so the program will report major
as well as extremely subtle differences in behavior in the part
being tested.
In a series of tests performed by the author of this document
in 1994, components made by National Semiconductor, TI, StarTech,
and CMD as well as megacells and emulations embedded in internal
modems were tested with COMTEST. A difference count for some of
these components is listed below. Because these tests were
performed in 1994, they may not reflect the current performance of
the given product from a vendor.
It should be noted that COMTEST normally aborts when an
excessive number or certain types of problems have been detected.
As part of this testing, COMTEST was modified so that it would not
abort no matter how many differences were encountered.
Vendor
Part Number
Errors (aka "differences" reported)
National
(PC16550DV)
0
National
(NS16550AFN)
0
National
(NS16C552V)
0
TI
(TL16550AFN)
3
CMD
(16C550PE)
19
StarTech
(ST16C550J)
23
Rockwell
Reference modem with internal 16550 or an
emulation (RC144DPi/C3000-25)
117
Sierra
Modem with an internal 16550
(SC11951/SC11351)
91
To date, the author of this document has not found any
non-National parts that report zero differences using the
COMTEST program. It should also be noted that National has had
five versions of the 16550 over the years and the newest parts
behave a bit differently than the classic NS16550AFN that is
considered the benchmark for functionality. COMTEST appears to
turn a blind eye to the differences within the National product
line and reports no errors on the National parts (except for the
original 16550) even when there are official erratas that
describe bugs in the A, B and C revisions of the parts, so this
bias in COMTEST must be taken into account.
It is important to understand that a simple count of
differences from COMTEST does not reveal a lot about what
differences are important and which are not. For example, about
half of the differences reported in the two modems listed above
that have internal UARTs were caused by the clone UARTs not
supporting five- and six-bit character modes. The real 16550,
16450, and 8250 UARTs all support these modes and COMTEST checks
the functionality of these modes so over fifty differences are
reported. However, almost no modern modem supports five- or
six-bit characters, particularly those with error-correction and
compression capabilities. This means that the differences related
to five- and six-bit character modes can be discounted.
Many of the differences COMTEST reports have to do with
timing. In many of the clone designs, when the host reads from
one port, the status bits in some other port may not update in the
same amount of time (some faster, some slower) as a
real NS16550AFN and COMTEST looks for these
differences. This means that the number of differences can be
misleading in that one device may only have one or two differences
but they are extremely serious, and some other device that updates
the status registers faster or slower than the reference part
(that would probably never affect the operation of a properly
written driver) could have dozens of differences reported.
COMTEST can be used as a screening tool to alert the
administrator to the presence of potentially incompatible
components that might cause problems or have to be handled as a
special case.
If you run COMTEST on a 16550 that is in a modem or a modem is
attached to the serial port, you need to first issue a ATE0&W
command to the modem so that the modem will not echo any of the
test characters. If you forget to do this, COMTEST will report at
least this one difference:
Error (6)...Timeout interrupt failed: IIR = c1 LSR = 61
8250/16450/16550 Registers
The 8250/16450/16550 UART occupies eight contiguous I/O port
addresses. In the IBM PC, there are two defined locations for
these eight ports and they are known collectively as COM1 and
COM2. The makers of PC-clones and add-on cards have created two
additional areas known as COM3 and COM4, but these extra COM ports
conflict with other hardware on some systems. The most common
conflict is with video adapters that provide IBM 8514
emulation.
COM1 is located from 0x3f8 to 0x3ff and normally uses IRQ 4
COM2 is located from 0x2f8 to 0x2ff and normally uses IRQ 3 COM3
is located from 0x3e8 to 0x3ef and has no standardized IRQ COM4 is
located from 0x2e8 to 0x2ef and has no standardized IRQ.
A description of the I/O ports of the 8250/16450/16550 UART is
provided below.
I/O Port
Access Allowed
Description
+0x00
write (DLAB==0)
Transmit Holding Register
(THR).Information written to this port are
treated as data words and will be transmitted by the
UART.
+0x00
read (DLAB==0)
Receive Buffer Register (RBR).Any
data words received by the UART form the serial link are
accessed by the host by reading this
port.
+0x00
write/read (DLAB==1)
Divisor Latch LSB (DLL)This value
will be divided from the master input clock (in the IBM
PC, the master clock is 1.8432MHz) and the resulting
clock will determine the baud rate of the UART. This
register holds bits 0 thru 7 of the
divisor.
+0x01
write/read (DLAB==1)
Divisor Latch MSB (DLH)This value
will be divided from the master input clock (in the IBM
PC, the master clock is 1.8432MHz) and the resulting
clock will determine the baud rate of the UART. This
register holds bits 8 thru 15 of the
divisor.
+0x01
write/read (DLAB==0)
Interrupt Enable Register
(IER)The 8250/16450/16550 UART
classifies events into one of four categories.
Each category can be configured to generate an
interrupt when any of the events occurs. The
8250/16450/16550 UART generates a single external
interrupt signal regardless of how many events in
the enabled categories have occurred. It is up to
the host processor to respond to the interrupt and
then poll the enabled interrupt categories
(usually all categories have interrupts enabled)
to determine the true cause(s) of the
interrupt.
Bit 7
Reserved, always 0.
Bit 6
Reserved, always 0.
Bit 5
Reserved, always 0.
Bit 4
Reserved, always 0.
Bit 3
Enable Modem Status Interrupt (EDSSI). Setting
this bit to "1" allows the UART to generate an
interrupt when a change occurs on one or more of the
status lines.
Bit 2
Enable Receiver Line Status Interrupt (ELSI)
Setting this bit to "1" causes the UART to generate
an interrupt when the an error (or a BREAK signal)
has been detected in the incoming data.
Bit 1
Enable Transmitter Holding Register Empty
Interrupt (ETBEI) Setting this bit to "1" causes the
UART to generate an interrupt when the UART has room
for one or more additional characters that are to be
transmitted.
Bit 0
Enable Received Data Available Interrupt
(ERBFI) Setting this bit to "1" causes the UART to
generate an interrupt when the UART has received
enough characters to exceed the trigger level of the
FIFO, or the FIFO timer has expired (stale data), or
a single character has been received when the FIFO
is disabled.
+0x02
write
FIFO Control Register (FCR)
(This port does not exist on the 8250 and 16450
UART.)
Bit 7
Receiver Trigger Bit #1
Bit 6
Receiver Trigger Bit
#0These two bits control at what
point the receiver is to generate an interrupt
when the FIFO is active.
7
6
How many words are received
before an interrupt is generated
0
0
1
0
1
4
1
0
8
1
1
14
Bit 5
Reserved, always 0.
Bit 4
Reserved, always 0.
Bit 3
DMA Mode Select. If Bit 0 is
set to "1" (FIFOs enabled), setting this bit changes
the operation of the -RXRDY and -TXRDY signals from
Mode 0 to Mode 1.
Bit 2
Transmit FIFO Reset. When a
"1" is written to this bit, the contents of the FIFO
are discarded. Any word currently being transmitted
will be sent intact. This function is useful in
aborting transfers.
Bit 1
Receiver FIFO Reset. When a
"1" is written to this bit, the contents of the FIFO
are discarded. Any word currently being assembled
in the shift register will be received
intact.
Bit 0
16550 FIFO Enable. When set,
both the transmit and receive FIFOs are enabled.
Any contents in the holding register, shift
registers or FIFOs are lost when FIFOs are enabled
or disabled.
+0x02
read
Interrupt Identification
Register
Bit 7
FIFOs enabled. On the
8250/16450 UART, this bit is zero.
Bit 6
FIFOs enabled. On the
8250/16450 UART, this bit is zero.
Bit 5
Reserved, always 0.
Bit 4
Reserved, always 0.
Bit 3
Interrupt ID Bit #2. On the
8250/16450 UART, this bit is zero.
Bit 2
Interrupt ID Bit #1
Bit 1
Interrupt ID Bit #0.These three
bits combine to report the category of event that
caused the interrupt that is in progress. These
categories have priorities, so if multiple
categories of events occur at the same time, the
UART will report the more important events first and
the host must resolve the events in the order they
are reported. All events that caused the current
interrupt must be resolved before any new interrupts
will be generated. (This is a limitation of the PC
architecture.)
2
1
0
Priority
Description
0
1
1
First
Received Error (OE, PE, BI, or
FE)
0
1
0
Second
Received Data Available
1
1
0
Second
Trigger level identification
(Stale data in receive buffer)
0
0
1
Third
Transmitter has room for more
words (THRE)
0
0
0
Fourth
Modem Status Change (-CTS, -DSR,
-RI, or -DCD)
Bit 0
Interrupt Pending Bit. If this
bit is set to "0", then at least one interrupt is
pending.
+0x03
write/read
Line Control Register
(LCR)
Bit 7
Divisor Latch Access Bit
(DLAB). When set, access to the data
transmit/receive register (THR/RBR) and the
Interrupt Enable Register (IER) is disabled. Any
access to these ports is now redirected to the
Divisor Latch Registers. Setting this bit, loading
the Divisor Registers, and clearing DLAB should be
done with interrupts disabled.
Bit 6
Set Break. When set to "1",
the transmitter begins to transmit continuous
Spacing until this bit is set to "0". This
overrides any bits of characters that are being
transmitted.
Bit 5
Stick Parity. When parity is
enabled, setting this bit causes parity to always be
"1" or "0", based on the value of Bit 4.
Bit 4
Even Parity Select (EPS). When
parity is enabled and Bit 5 is "0", setting this bit
causes even parity to be transmitted and expected.
Otherwise, odd parity is used.
Bit 3
Parity Enable (PEN). When set
to "1", a parity bit is inserted between the last
bit of the data and the Stop Bit. The UART will
also expect parity to be present in the received
data.
Bit 2
Number of Stop Bits (STB). If
set to "1" and using 5-bit data words, 1.5 Stop Bits
are transmitted and expected in each data word. For
6, 7 and 8-bit data words, 2 Stop Bits are
transmitted and expected. When this bit is set to
"0", one Stop Bit is used on each data word.
Bit 1
Word Length Select Bit #1
(WLSB1)
Bit 0
Word Length Select Bit #0
(WLSB0)
Together these
bits specify the number of bits in each data
word.
1
0
Word
Length
0
0
5 Data
Bits
0
1
6 Data
Bits
1
0
7 Data
Bits
1
1
8 Data
Bits
+0x04
write/read
Modem Control Register
(MCR)
Bit 7
Reserved, always 0.
Bit 6
Reserved, always 0.
Bit 5
Reserved, always 0.
Bit 4
Loop-Back Enable. When set to "1", the UART
transmitter and receiver are internally connected
together to allow diagnostic operations. In
addition, the UART modem control outputs are
connected to the UART modem control inputs. CTS is
connected to RTS, DTR is connected to DSR, OUT1 is
connected to RI, and OUT 2 is connected to
DCD.
Bit 3
OUT 2. An auxiliary output that the host
processor may set high or low. In the IBM PC serial
adapter (and most clones), OUT 2 is used to
tri-state (disable) the interrupt signal from the
8250/16450/16550 UART.
Bit 2
OUT 1. An auxiliary output that the host
processor may set high or low. This output is not
used on the IBM PC serial adapter.
Bit 1
Request to Send (RTS). When set to "1", the
output of the UART -RTS line is Low
(Active).
Bit 0
Data Terminal Ready (DTR). When set to "1",
the output of the UART -DTR line is Low
(Active).
+0x05
write/read
Line Status Register
(LSR)
Bit 7
Error in Receiver FIFO. On the 8250/16450
UART, this bit is zero. This bit is set to "1" when
any of the bytes in the FIFO have one or more of the
following error conditions: PE, FE, or BI.
Bit 6
Transmitter Empty (TEMT). When set to "1",
there are no words remaining in the transmit FIFO
or the transmit shift register. The transmitter is
completely idle.
Bit 5
Transmitter Holding Register Empty (THRE).
When set to "1", the FIFO (or holding register) now
has room for at least one additional word to
transmit. The transmitter may still be transmitting
when this bit is set to "1".
Bit 4
Break Interrupt (BI). The receiver has
detected a Break signal.
Bit 3
Framing Error (FE). A Start Bit was detected
but the Stop Bit did not appear at the expected
time. The received word is probably
garbled.
Bit 2
Parity Error (PE). The parity bit was
incorrect for the word received.
Bit 1
Overrun Error (OE). A new word was received
and there was no room in the receive buffer. The
newly-arrived word in the shift register is
discarded. On 8250/16450 UARTs, the word in the
holding register is discarded and the newly- arrived
word is put in the holding register.
Bit 0
Data Ready (DR) One or more words are in the
receive FIFO that the host may read. A word must be
completely received and moved from the shift
register into the FIFO (or holding register for
8250/16450 designs) before this bit is set.
+0x06
write/read
Modem Status Register
(MSR)
Bit 7
Data Carrier Detect (DCD). Reflects the state
of the DCD line on the UART.
Bit 6
Ring Indicator (RI). Reflects the state of the
RI line on the UART.
Bit 5
Data Set Ready (DSR). Reflects the state of
the DSR line on the UART.
Bit 4
Clear To Send (CTS). Reflects the state of the
CTS line on the UART.
Bit 3
Delta Data Carrier Detect (DDCD). Set to "1"
if the -DCD line has changed state one more more
times since the last time the MSR was read by the
host.
Bit 2
Trailing Edge Ring Indicator (TERI). Set to
"1" if the -RI line has had a low to high transition
since the last time the MSR was read by the
host.
Bit 1
Delta Data Set Ready (DDSR). Set to "1" if the
-DSR line has changed state one more more times
since the last time the MSR was read by the
host.
Bit 0
Delta Clear To Send (DCTS). Set to "1" if the
-CTS line has changed state one more more times
since the last time the MSR was read by the
host.
+0x07
write/read
Scratch Register (SCR). This register performs no
function in the UART. Any value can be written by the
host to this location and read by the host later
on.
Beyond the 16550A UART
Although National Semiconductor has not offered any components
compatible with the 16550 that provide additional features,
various other vendors have. Some of these components are
described below. It should be understood that to effectively
utilize these improvements, drivers may have to be provided by the
chip vendor since most of the popular operating systems do not
support features beyond those provided by the 16550.
ST16650
By default this part is similar to the NS16550A, but an
extended 32-byte send and receive buffer can be optionally
enabled. Made by Startech.
TIL16660
By default this part behaves similar to the NS16550A,
but an extended 64-byte send and receive buffer can be
optionally enabled. Made by Texas Instruments.
Hayes ESP
This proprietary plug-in card contains a 2048-byte send
and receive buffer, and supports data rates to
230.4Kbit/sec. Made by Hayes.
In addition to these “dumb” UARTs, many vendors
produce intelligent serial communication boards. This type of
design usually provides a microprocessor that interfaces with
several UARTs, processes and buffers the data, and then alerts the
main PC processor when necessary. Because the UARTs are not
directly accessed by the PC processor in this type of
communication system, it is not necessary for the vendor to use
UARTs that are compatible with the 8250, 16450, or the 16550 UART.
This leaves the designer free to components that may have better
performance characteristics.
Configuring the <devicename>sio</devicename> driver
The sio driver provides support for
NS8250-, NS16450-, NS16550 and NS16550A-based EIA RS-232C (CCITT
V.24) communications interfaces. Several multiport cards are
supported as well. See the &man.sio.4;
manual page for detailed technical documentation.
Digi International (DigiBoard) PC/8
Contributed by &a.awebster;. 26 August
1995.
Here is a config snippet from a machine with a Digi
International PC/8 with 16550. It has 8 modems connected to these
8 lines, and they work just great. Do not forget to add
options COM_MULTIPORT or it will not work very
well!
device sio4 at isa? port 0x100 tty flags 0xb05
device sio5 at isa? port 0x108 tty flags 0xb05
device sio6 at isa? port 0x110 tty flags 0xb05
device sio7 at isa? port 0x118 tty flags 0xb05
device sio8 at isa? port 0x120 tty flags 0xb05
device sio9 at isa? port 0x128 tty flags 0xb05
device sio10 at isa? port 0x130 tty flags 0xb05
device sio11 at isa? port 0x138 tty flags 0xb05 irq 9 vector siointr
The trick in setting this up is that the MSB of the flags
represent the last SIO port, in this case 11 so flags are
0xb05.
Boca 16
Contributed by &a.whiteside;. 26 August
1995.
The procedures to make a Boca 16 port board with FreeBSD are
pretty straightforward, but you will need a couple things to make
it work:
You either need the kernel sources installed so you can
recompile the necessary options or you will need someone else
to compile it for you. The 2.0.5 default kernel does
not come with multiport support enabled
and you will need to add a device entry for each port
anyways.
Two, you will need to know the interrupt and IO setting
for your Boca Board so you can set these options properly in
the kernel.
One important note — the actual UART chips for the Boca
16 are in the connector box, not on the internal board itself. So
if you have it unplugged, probes of those ports will fail. I have
never tested booting with the box unplugged and plugging it back
in, and I suggest you do not either.
If you do not already have a custom kernel configuration file
set up, refer to Kernel
Configuration for general procedures. The following are
the specifics for the Boca 16 board and assume you are using the
kernel name MYKERNEL and editing with vi.
Add the line
options COM_MULTIPORT
to the config file.
Where the current device
sion lines are, you
will need to add 16 more devices. Only the last device
includes the interrupt vector for the board. (See the
&man.sio.4; manual page for detail as
to why.) The following example is for a Boca Board with an
interrupt of 3, and a base IO address 100h. The IO address
for Each port is +8 hexadecimal from the previous port, thus
the 100h, 108h, 110h... addresses.
device sio1 at isa? port 0x100 tty flags 0x1005
device sio2 at isa? port 0x108 tty flags 0x1005
device sio3 at isa? port 0x110 tty flags 0x1005
device sio4 at isa? port 0x118 tty flags 0x1005
…
device sio15 at isa? port 0x170 tty flags 0x1005
device sio16 at isa? port 0x178 tty flags 0x1005 irq 3 vector siointr
The flags entry must be changed from
this example unless you are using the exact same sio
assignments. Flags are set according to
0xMYY
where M indicates the minor number
of the master port (the last port on a Boca 16) and
YY indicates if FIFO is enabled or
disabled(enabled), IRQ sharing is used(yes) and if there is an
AST/4 compatible IRQ control register(no). In this example,
flags 0x1005 indicates that
the master port is sio16. If I added another board and
assigned sio17 through sio28, the flags for all 16 ports on
that board would be 0x1C05, where 1C
indicates the minor number of the master port. Do not change
the 05 setting.
Save and complete the kernel configuration, recompile,
install and reboot. Presuming you have successfully installed
the recompiled kernel and have it set to the correct address
and IRQ, your boot message should indicate the successful
probe of the Boca ports as follows: (obviously the sio
numbers, IO and IRQ could be different)
sio1 at 0x100-0x107 flags 0x1005 on isa
sio1: type 16550A (multiport)
sio2 at 0x108-0x10f flags 0x1005 on isa
sio2: type 16550A (multiport)
sio3 at 0x110-0x117 flags 0x1005 on isa
sio3: type 16550A (multiport)
sio4 at 0x118-0x11f flags 0x1005 on isa
sio4: type 16550A (multiport)
sio5 at 0x120-0x127 flags 0x1005 on isa
sio5: type 16550A (multiport)
sio6 at 0x128-0x12f flags 0x1005 on isa
sio6: type 16550A (multiport)
sio7 at 0x130-0x137 flags 0x1005 on isa
sio7: type 16550A (multiport)
sio8 at 0x138-0x13f flags 0x1005 on isa
sio8: type 16550A (multiport)
sio9 at 0x140-0x147 flags 0x1005 on isa
sio9: type 16550A (multiport)
sio10 at 0x148-0x14f flags 0x1005 on isa
sio10: type 16550A (multiport)
sio11 at 0x150-0x157 flags 0x1005 on isa
sio11: type 16550A (multiport)
sio12 at 0x158-0x15f flags 0x1005 on isa
sio12: type 16550A (multiport)
sio13 at 0x160-0x167 flags 0x1005 on isa
sio13: type 16550A (multiport)
sio14 at 0x168-0x16f flags 0x1005 on isa
sio14: type 16550A (multiport)
sio15 at 0x170-0x177 flags 0x1005 on isa
sio15: type 16550A (multiport)
sio16 at 0x178-0x17f irq 3 flags 0x1005 on isa
sio16: type 16550A (multiport master)
If the messages go by too fast to see,
&prompt.root; dmesg | more
will show you the boot messages.
Next, appropriate entries in /dev for
the devices must be made using the
/dev/MAKEDEV script. After becoming
root:
&prompt.root; cd /dev
&prompt.root; ./MAKEDEV tty1
&prompt.root; ./MAKEDEV cua1
(everything in between)
&prompt.root; ./MAKEDEV ttyg
&prompt.root; ./MAKEDEV cuag
If you do not want or need callout devices for some
reason, you can dispense with making the
cua* devices.
If you want a quick and sloppy way to make sure the
devices are working, you can simply plug a modem into each
port and (as root)
&prompt.root; echo at > ttyd*
for each device you have made. You
should see the RX lights flash for each
working port.
Support for Cheap Multi-UART Cards
Contributed by Helge Oldach
hmo@sep.hamburg.com, September
1999
Ever wondered about FreeBSD support for your 20$ multi-I/O
card with two (or more) COM ports, sharing IRQs? Here's
how:
Usually the only option to support these kind of boards is to
use a distinct IRQ for each port. For example, if your CPU board
has an on-board COM1 port (aka
sio0–I/O address 0x3F8 and IRQ 4)
and you have an extension board with two UARTs, you will commonly
need to configure them as COM2 (aka
sio1–I/O address 0x2F8 and IRQ 3),
and the third port (aka sio2) as I/O
0x3E8 and IRQ 5. Obviously this is a waste of IRQ ressources, as
it should be basically possible to run both extension board ports
using a single IRQ with the COM_MULTIPORT
configuration described in the previous sections.
Such cheap I/O boards commonly have a 4 by 3 jumper matrix for
the COM ports, similar to the following:
o o o *
Port A |
o * o *
Port B |
o * o o
IRQ 2 3 4 5
Shown here is port A wired for IRQ 5 and port B wired for IRQ
3. The IRQ columns on your specific board may vary—other
boards may supply jumpers for IRQs 3, 4, 5, and 7 instead.
One could conclude that wiring both ports for IRQ 3 using a
handcrafted wire-made jumper covering all three connection points
in the IRQ 3 column would solve the issue, but no. You cannot
duplicate IRQ 3 because the output drivers of each UART are wired
in a “totem pole” fashion, so if one of the UARTs
drives IRQ 3, the output signal will not be what you would expect.
Depending on the implementation of the extension board or your
motherboard, the IRQ 3 line will continuously stay up, or always
stay low.
You need to decouple the IRQ drivers for the two UARTs, so
that the IRQ line of the board only goes up if (and only if) one
of the UARTs asserts a IRQ, and stays low otherwise. The solution
was proposed by Jrg Wunsch
j@ida.interface-business.de: To solder up a
wired-or consisting of two diodes (Germanium or Schottky-types
strongly preferred) and a 1 kOhm resistor. Here is the schematic,
starting from the 4 by 3 jumper field above:
Diode
+---------->|-------+
/ |
o * o o | 1 kOhm
Port A +----|######|-------+
o * o o | |
Port B `-------------------+ ==+==
o * o o | Ground
\ |
+--------->|-------+
IRQ 2 3 4 5 Diode
The cathodes of the diodes are connected to a common point,
together with a 1 kOhm pull-down resistor. It is essential to
connect the resistor to ground to avoid floating of the IRQ line
on the bus.
Now we are ready to configure a kernel. Staying with this
example, we would configure:
# standard on-board COM1 port
device sio0 at isa? port "IO_COM1" tty flags 0x10
# patched-up multi-I/O extension board
options COM_MULTIPORT
device sio1 at isa? port "IO_COM2" tty flags 0x205
device sio2 at isa? port "IO_COM3" tty flags 0x205 irq 3
Note that the flags setting for
sio1 and sio2 is
truely essential; refer to
&man.sio.4; for details. (Generally, the 2 in
the "flags" attribute refers to sio2
which holds the IRQ, and you surely want a 5
low nibble.) With kernel verbose mode turned on this should yield
something similar to this:
sio0: irq maps: 0x1 0x11 0x1 0x1
sio0 at 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 flags 0x10 on isa
sio0: type 16550A
sio1: irq maps: 0x1 0x9 0x1 0x1
sio1 at 0x2f8-0x2ff flags 0x205 on isa
sio1: type 16550A (multiport)
sio2: irq maps: 0x1 0x9 0x1 0x1
sio2 at 0x3e8-0x3ef irq 3 flags 0x205 on isa
sio2: type 16550A (multiport master)
Though /sys/i386/isa/sio.c is somewhat
cryptic with its use of the “irq maps” array above,
the basic idea is that you observe 0x1 in the
first, third, and fourth place. This means that the corresponding
IRQ was set upon output and cleared after, which is just what we
would expect. If your kernel does not display this behaviour, most
likely there is something wrong with your wiring.
Configuring the <devicename>cy</devicename> driver
Contributed by &a.alex;. 6 June
1996.
The Cyclades multiport cards are based on the
cy driver instead of the usual
sio driver used by other multiport cards.
Configuration is a simple matter of:
Add the cy device to your kernel configuration
(note that your irq and iomem settings may differ).
device cy0 at isa? tty irq 10 iomem 0xd4000 iosiz 0x2000 vector cyintr
Rebuild and
install the new kernel.
Make the device
nodes by typing (the following example assumes an
8-port board):
&prompt.root; cd /dev
&prompt.root; for i in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7;do ./MAKEDEV cuac$i ttyc$i;done
If appropriate, add dialup
entries to /etc/ttys by
duplicating serial device (ttyd) entries and
using ttyc in place of
ttyd. For example:
ttyc0 "/usr/libexec/getty std.38400" unknown on insecure
ttyc1 "/usr/libexec/getty std.38400" unknown on insecure
ttyc2 "/usr/libexec/getty std.38400" unknown on insecure
…
ttyc7 "/usr/libexec/getty std.38400" unknown on insecure
Reboot with the new kernel.
Configuring the <devicename>si</devicename> driver
Contributed by &a.nsayer;. 25 March
1998.
The Specialix SI/XIO and SX multiport cards use the
si driver. A single machine can
have up to 4 host cards. The following host cards
are supported:
ISA SI/XIO host card (2 versions)
EISA SI/XIO host card
PCI SI/XIO host card
ISA SX host card
PCI SX host card
Although the SX and SI/XIO host cards look markedly different,
their functionality are basically the same. The host cards do not
use I/O locations, but instead require a 32K chunk of memory. The
factory configuration for ISA cards places this at
0xd0000-0xd7fff.
They also require an IRQ. PCI cards will, of course, autoconfigure
themselves.
You can attach up to 4 external modules to each host card. The
external modules contain either 4 or 8 serial ports. They come in
the following varieties:
SI 4 or 8 port modules. Up to 57600 bps on each port
supported.
XIO 8 port modules. Up to 115200 bps on each port
supported. One type of XIO module has 7 serial and 1 parallel
port.
SXDC 8 port modules. Up to 921600 bps on each port
supported. Like XIO, a module is available with one parallel
port as well.
To configure an ISA host card, add the following line to your
kernel configuration
file, changing the numbers as appropriate:
device si0 at isa? tty iomem 0xd0000 irq 11
Valid IRQ numbers are 9, 10, 11, 12 and 15 for SX ISA host cards
and 11, 12 and 15 for SI/XIO ISA host cards.
To configure an EISA or PCI host card, use this line:
device si0
After adding the configuration entry, rebuild and install your
new kernel.
After rebooting with the new kernel, you need to make the device nodes in /dev. The
MAKEDEV script will take care of this for you.
Count how many total ports you have and type:
&prompt.root; cd /dev
&prompt.root; ./MAKEDEV ttyAnn cuaAnn
(where nn is the number of
ports)
If you want login prompts to appear on these ports, you will
need to add lines like this to /etc/ttys:
ttyA01 "/usr/libexec/getty std.9600" vt100 on insecure
Change the terminal type as appropriate. For modems,
dialup or unknown is
fine.
* Parallel ports
* Modems
* Network cards
* Keyboards
Mice
Contributed by Joel Sutton
jsutton@bbcon.com.au January 2000
FreeBSD supports a variety of different mice via the PS/2, serial
and USB ports. Most users choose to use the mouse daemon to handle
their mouse because it allows interaction in both X and on the system
console. For more information on the mouse daemon refer to
&man.moused.8;. The examples throughout this section assume that
the mouse daemon is being used.
This section contains the names of specific products that the
author has confirmed will work with FreeBSD. Other similar devices
not listed may also be supported.
PS/2
System Configuration
To ensure that your PS/2 mouse functions correctly with the
mouse daemon you will need to include the following text in
/etc/rc.conf
moused_enable="YES"
moused_type="ps/2"
moused_port="/dev/psm0"
Known Compatible Devices
Logitech First Mouse - Three Button
Microsoft Serial - PS/2 Compatible Mouse
Serial
System Configuration
To ensure that your serial mouse functions correctly with the
mouse daemon you will need to include the following text in
/etc/rc.conf. This example assumes that the
mouse is connected to COM1: and can be
automatically recognised by the mouse daemon.
moused_enable="YES"
moused_type="auto"
moused_port="/dev/cuaa0"
See the &man.moused.8; manual page for a detailed description
of how to configure the mouse daemon to work with specific types
of serial mice.
Known Compatible Devices
Generic Microsoft Compatible Mice
Logitech First Mouse - Three Button
Microsoft Serial - PS/2 Compatible Mouse
USB
System Configuration
The USB device drivers are a relatively new addition to
FreeBSD and have not yet been included in the GENERIC kernel. The
following prodecure is an example of how to setup the relevant
drivers on a typical system.
Add the ums device to the usb
section of your kernel
configuration. For example:
controller usb0 controller uhci0 device ums0
Rebuild and
install the new kernel.
Make the device
node by typing:
&prompt.root; cd /dev
&prompt.root; sh MAKEDEV ums0
Include the following text in
/etc/rc.conf to ensure correct operation
of the mouse daemon:
moused_enable="YES"
moused_type="auto"
moused_port="/dev/ums0"
Reboot the system.
&prompt.root; shutdown -r now
Known Compatible Devices
Logitech TrackMan - Marble Wheel
* Other
Storage Devices
Using ESDI hard disks
Copyright © 1995, &a.wilko;. 24
September 1995.
ESDI is an acronym that means Enhanced Small Device Interface. It
is loosely based on the good old ST506/412 interface originally
devised by Seagate Technology, the makers of the first affordable
5.25" winchester disk.
The acronym says Enhanced, and rightly so. In the first place the
speed of the interface is higher, 10 or 15 Mbits/second instead of the
5 Mbits/second of ST412 interfaced drives. Secondly some higher level
commands are added, making the ESDI interface somewhat 'smarter' to
the operating system driver writers. It is by no means as smart as
SCSI by the way. ESDI is standardized by ANSI.
Capacities of the drives are boosted by putting more sectors on
each track. Typical is 35 sectors per track, high capacity drives I
have seen were up to 54 sectors/track.
Although ESDI has been largely obsoleted by IDE and SCSI
interfaces, the availability of free or cheap surplus drives makes
them ideal for low (or now) budget systems.
Concepts of ESDI
Physical connections
The ESDI interface uses two cables connected to each drive.
One cable is a 34 pin flat cable edge connector that carries the
command and status signals from the controller to the drive and
vice-versa. The command cable is daisy chained between all the
drives. So, it forms a bus onto which all drives are
connected.
The second cable is a 20 pin flat cable edge connector that
carries the data to and from the drive. This cable is radially
connected, so each drive has its own direct connection to the
controller.
To the best of my knowledge PC ESDI controllers are limited to
using a maximum of 2 drives per controller. This is compatibility
feature(?) left over from the WD1003 standard that reserves only a
single bit for device addressing.
Device addressing
On each command cable a maximum of 7 devices and 1 controller
can be present. To enable the controller to uniquely identify
which drive it addresses, each ESDI device is equipped with
jumpers or switches to select the devices address.
On PC type controllers the first drive is set to address 0,
the second disk to address 1. Always make
sure you set each disk to an unique address! So, on a
PC with its two drives/controller maximum the first drive is drive
0, the second is drive 1.
Termination
The daisy chained command cable (the 34 pin cable remember?)
needs to be terminated at the last drive on the chain. For this
purpose ESDI drives come with a termination resistor network that
can be removed or disabled by a jumper when it is not used.
So, one and only one drive, the one at
the farthest end of the command cable has its terminator
installed/enabled. The controller automatically terminates the
other end of the cable. Please note that this implies that the
controller must be at one end of the cable and
not in the middle.
Using ESDI disks with FreeBSD
Why is ESDI such a pain to get working in the first
place?
People who tried ESDI disks with FreeBSD are known to have
developed a profound sense of frustration. A combination of factors
works against you to produce effects that are hard to understand
when you have never seen them before.
This has also led to the popular legend ESDI and FreeBSD is a
plain NO-GO. The following sections try to list all the pitfalls
and solutions.
ESDI speed variants
As briefly mentioned before, ESDI comes in two speed flavors.
The older drives and controllers use a 10 Mbits/second data
transfer rate. Newer stuff uses 15 Mbits/second.
It is not hard to imagine that 15 Mbits/second drive cause
problems on controllers laid out for 10 Mbits/second. As always,
consult your controller and drive
documentation to see if things match.
Stay on track
Mainstream ESDI drives use 34 to 36 sectors per track. Most
(older) controllers cannot handle more than this number of
sectors. Newer, higher capacity, drives use higher numbers of
sectors per track. For instance, I own a 670 Mb drive that has 54
sectors per track.
In my case, the controller could not handle this number of
sectors. It proved to work well except that it only used 35
sectors on each track. This meant losing a lot of disk
space.
Once again, check the documentation of your hardware for more
info. Going out-of-spec like in the example might or might not
work. Give it a try or get another more capable
controller.
Hard or soft sectoring
Most ESDI drives allow hard or soft sectoring to be selected
using a jumper. Hard sectoring means that the drive will produce
a sector pulse on the start of each new sector. The controller
uses this pulse to tell when it should start to write or
read.
Hard sectoring allows a selection of sector size (normally
256, 512 or 1024 bytes per formatted sector). FreeBSD uses 512
byte sectors. The number of sectors per track also varies while
still using the same number of bytes per formatted sector. The
number of unformatted bytes per sector
varies, dependent on your controller it needs more or less
overhead bytes to work correctly. Pushing more sectors on a
track of course gives you more usable space, but might give
problems if your controller needs more bytes than the drive
offers.
In case of soft sectoring, the controller itself determines
where to start/stop reading or writing. For ESDI hard sectoring
is the default (at least on everything I came across). I never
felt the urge to try soft sectoring.
In general, experiment with sector settings before you install
FreeBSD because you need to re-run the low-level format after each
change.
Low level formatting
ESDI drives need to be low level formatted before they are
usable. A reformat is needed whenever you figgle with the number
of sectors/track jumpers or the physical orientation of the drive
(horizontal, vertical). So, first think, then format. The format
time must not be underestimated, for big disks it can take
hours.
After a low level format, a surface scan is done to find and
flag bad sectors. Most disks have a manufacturer bad block list
listed on a piece of paper or adhesive sticker. In addition, on
most disks the list is also written onto the disk. Please use the
manufacturer's list. It is much easier to remap a defect now than
after FreeBSD is installed.
Stay away from low-level formatters that mark all sectors of a
track as bad as soon as they find one bad sector. Not only does
this waste space, it also and more importantly causes you grief
with bad144 (see the section on bad144).
Translations
Translations, although not exclusively a ESDI-only problem,
might give you real trouble. Translations come in multiple
flavors. Most of them have in common that they attempt to work
around the limitations posed upon disk geometries by the original
IBM PC/AT design (thanks IBM!).
First of all there is the (in)famous 1024 cylinder limit. For
a system to be able to boot, the stuff (whatever operating system)
must be in the first 1024 cylinders of a disk. Only 10 bits are
available to encode the cylinder number. For the number of
sectors the limit is 64 (0-63). When you combine the 1024
cylinder limit with the 16 head limit (also a design feature) you
max out at fairly limited disk sizes.
To work around this problem, the manufacturers of ESDI PC
controllers added a BIOS prom extension on their boards. This
BIOS extension handles disk I/O for booting (and for some
operating systems all disk I/O) by using
translation. For instance, a big drive might be presented to the
system as having 32 heads and 64 sectors/track. The result is
that the number of cylinders is reduced to something below 1024
and is therefore usable by the system without problems. It is
noteworthy to know that FreeBSD does not use the BIOS after its
kernel has started. More on this later.
A second reason for translations is the fact that most older
system BIOSes could only handle drives with 17 sectors per track
(the old ST412 standard). Newer system BIOSes usually have a
user-defined drive type (in most cases this is drive type
47).
Whatever you do to translations after reading this document,
keep in mind that if you have multiple operating systems on the
same disk, all must use the same translation
While on the subject of translations, I have seen one
controller type (but there are probably more like this) offer the
option to logically split a drive in multiple partitions as a BIOS
option. I had select 1 drive == 1 partition because this
controller wrote this info onto the disk. On power-up it read the
info and presented itself to the system based on the info from the
disk.
Spare sectoring
Most ESDI controllers offer the possibility to remap bad
sectors. During/after the low-level format of the disk bad
sectors are marked as such, and a replacement sector is put in
place (logically of course) of the bad one.
In most cases the remapping is done by using N-1 sectors on
each track for actual data storage, and sector N itself is the
spare sector. N is the total number of sectors physically
available on the track. The idea behind this is that the
operating system sees a 'perfect' disk without bad sectors. In
the case of FreeBSD this concept is not usable.
The problem is that the translation from
bad to good is performed
by the BIOS of the ESDI controller. FreeBSD, being a true 32 bit
operating system, does not use the BIOS after it has been booted.
Instead, it has device drivers that talk directly to the
hardware.
So: don't use spare sectoring, bad block remapping
or whatever it may be called by the controller manufacturer when
you want to use the disk for FreeBSD.
Bad block handling
The preceding section leaves us with a problem. The
controller's bad block handling is not usable and still FreeBSD's
filesystems assume perfect media without any flaws. To solve this
problem, FreeBSD use the bad144 tool. Bad144
(named after a Digital Equipment standard for bad block handling)
scans a FreeBSD slice for bad blocks. Having found these bad
blocks, it writes a table with the offending block numbers to the
end of the FreeBSD slice.
When the disk is in operation, the disk accesses are checked
against the table read from the disk. Whenever a block number is
requested that is in the bad144 list, a
replacement block (also from the end of the FreeBSD slice) is
used. In this way, the bad144 replacement
scheme presents 'perfect' media to the FreeBSD filesystems.
There are a number of potential pitfalls associated with the
use of bad144. First of all, the slice cannot
have more than 126 bad sectors. If your drive has a high number
of bad sectors, you might need to divide it into multiple FreeBSD
slices each containing less than 126 bad sectors. Stay away from
low-level format programs that mark every
sector of a track as bad when they find a flaw on the track. As
you can imagine, the 126 limit is quickly reached when the
low-level format is done this way.
Second, if the slice contains the root filesystem, the slice
should be within the 1024 cylinder BIOS limit. During the boot
process the bad144 list is read using the BIOS and this only
succeeds when the list is within the 1024 cylinder limit.
The restriction is not that only the root
filesystem must be within the 1024 cylinder
limit, but rather the entire slice that
contains the root filesystem.
Kernel configuration
ESDI disks are handled by the same wddriver
as IDE and ST412 MFM disks. The wd driver
should work for all WD1003 compatible interfaces.
Most hardware is jumperable for one of two different I/O
address ranges and IRQ lines. This allows you to have two wd
type controllers in one system.
When your hardware allows non-standard strappings, you can use
these with FreeBSD as long as you enter the correct info into the
kernel config file. An example from the kernel config file (they
live in /sys/i386/conf BTW).
# First WD compatible controller
controller wdc0 at isa? port "IO_WD1" bio irq 14 vector wdintr
disk wd0 at wdc0 drive 0
disk wd1 at wdc0 drive 1
# Second WD compatible controller
controller wdc1 at isa? port "IO_WD2" bio irq 15 vector wdintr
disk wd2 at wdc1 drive 0
disk wd3 at wdc1 drive 1
Particulars on ESDI hardware
Adaptec 2320 controllers
I successfully installed FreeBSD onto a ESDI disk controlled
by a ACB-2320. No other operating system was present on the
disk.
To do so I low level formatted the disk using
NEFMT.EXE (ftpable from
www.adaptec.com) and answered NO to
the question whether the disk should be formatted with a spare
sector on each track. The BIOS on the ACD-2320 was disabled. I
used the free configurable option in the system
BIOS to allow the BIOS to boot it.
Before using NEFMT.EXE I tried to format
the disk using the ACB-2320 BIOS builtin formatter. This proved
to be a show stopper, because it did not give me an option to
disable spare sectoring. With spare sectoring enabled the FreeBSD
installation process broke down on the bad144
run.
Please check carefully which
ACB-232xy variant you have. The
x is either 0 or
2, indicating a controller without or with a
floppy controller on board.
The y is more interesting. It can either
be a blank, a A-8 or a D. A
blank indicates a plain 10 Mbits/second controller. An
A-8 indicates a 15 Mbits/second controller
capable of handling 52 sectors/track. A D
means a 15 Mbits/second controller that can also handle drives
with > 36 sectors/track (also 52 ?).
All variations should be capable of using 1:1 interleaving.
Use 1:1, FreeBSD is fast enough to handle it.
Western Digital WD1007 controllers
I successfully installed FreeBSD onto a ESDI disk controlled
by a WD1007 controller. To be precise, it was a WD1007-WA2.
Other variations of the WD1007 do exist.
To get it to work, I had to disable the sector translation and
the WD1007's onboard BIOS. This implied I could not use the
low-level formatter built into this BIOS. Instead, I grabbed
WDFMT.EXE from www.wdc.com Running this formatted my drive
just fine.
Ultrastor U14F controllers
According to multiple reports from the net, Ultrastor ESDI
boards work OK with FreeBSD. I lack any further info on
particular settings.
Further reading
If you intend to do some serious ESDI hacking, you might want to
have the official standard at hand:
The latest ANSI X3T10 committee document is: Enhanced Small
Device Interface (ESDI) [X3.170-1990/X3.170a-1991] [X3T10/792D
Rev 11]
On Usenet the newsgroup comp.periphs is a noteworthy place
to look for more info.
The World Wide Web (WWW) also proves to be a very handy info
source: For info on Adaptec ESDI controllers see http://www.adaptec.com/. For
info on Western Digital controllers see http://www.wdc.com/.
Thanks to...
Andrew Gordon for sending me an Adaptec 2320 controller and ESDI
disk for testing.
What is SCSI?
Copyright © 1995, &a.wilko;. July 6,
1996.
SCSI is an acronym for Small Computer Systems Interface. It is an
ANSI standard that has become one of the leading I/O buses in the
computer industry. The foundation of the SCSI standard was laid by
Shugart Associates (the same guys that gave the world the first mini
floppy disks) when they introduced the SASI bus (Shugart Associates
Standard Interface).
After some time an industry effort was started to come to a more
strict standard allowing devices from different vendors to work
together. This effort was recognized in the ANSI SCSI-1 standard.
The SCSI-1 standard (approx 1985) is rapidly becoming obsolete. The
current standard is SCSI-2 (see Further reading), with SCSI-3
on the drawing boards.
In addition to a physical interconnection standard, SCSI defines a
logical (command set) standard to which disk devices must adhere.
This standard is called the Common Command Set (CCS) and was developed
more or less in parallel with ANSI SCSI-1. SCSI-2 includes the
(revised) CCS as part of the standard itself. The commands are
dependent on the type of device at hand. It does not make much sense
of course to define a Write command for a scanner.
The SCSI bus is a parallel bus, which comes in a number of
variants. The oldest and most used is an 8 bit wide bus, with
single-ended signals, carried on 50 wires. (If you do not know what
single-ended means, do not worry, that is what this document is all
about.) Modern designs also use 16 bit wide buses, with differential
signals. This allows transfer speeds of 20Mbytes/second, on cables
lengths of up to 25 meters. SCSI-2 allows a maximum bus width of 32
bits, using an additional cable. Quickly emerging are Ultra SCSI (also
called Fast-20) and Ultra2 (also called Fast-40). Fast-20 is 20
million transfers per second (20 Mbytes/sec on a 8 bit bus), Fast-40
is 40 million transfers per second (40 Mbytes/sec on a 8 bit bus).
Most hard drives sold today are single-ended Ultra SCSI (8 or 16
bits).
Of course the SCSI bus not only has data lines, but also a number
of control signals. A very elaborate protocol is part of the standard
to allow multiple devices to share the bus in an efficient manner. In
SCSI-2, the data is always checked using a separate parity line. In
pre-SCSI-2 designs parity was optional.
In SCSI-3 even faster bus types are introduced, along with a
serial SCSI busses that reduces the cabling overhead and allows a
higher maximum bus length. You might see names like SSA and
Fiberchannel in this context. None of the serial buses are currently
in widespread use (especially not in the typical FreeBSD environment).
For this reason the serial bus types are not discussed any
further.
As you could have guessed from the description above, SCSI devices
are intelligent. They have to be to adhere to the SCSI standard
(which is over 2 inches thick BTW). So, for a hard disk drive for
instance you do not specify a head/cylinder/sector to address a
particular block, but simply the number of the block you want.
Elaborate caching schemes, automatic bad block replacement etc are all
made possible by this 'intelligent device' approach.
On a SCSI bus, each possible pair of devices can communicate.
Whether their function allows this is another matter, but the standard
does not restrict it. To avoid signal contention, the 2 devices have
to arbitrate for the bus before using it.
The philosophy of SCSI is to have a standard that allows
older-standard devices to work with newer-standard ones. So, an old
SCSI-1 device should normally work on a SCSI-2 bus. I say Normally,
because it is not absolutely sure that the implementation of an old
device follows the (old) standard closely enough to be acceptable on a
new bus. Modern devices are usually more well-behaved, because the
standardization has become more strict and is better adhered to by the
device manufacturers.
Generally speaking, the chances of getting a working set of
devices on a single bus is better when all the devices are SCSI-2 or
newer. This implies that you do not have to dump all your old stuff
when you get that shiny 2GB disk: I own a system on which a pre-SCSI-1
disk, a SCSI-2 QIC tape unit, a SCSI-1 helical scan tape unit and 2
SCSI-1 disks work together quite happily. From a performance
standpoint you might want to separate your older and newer (=faster)
devices however.
Components of SCSI
As said before, SCSI devices are smart. The idea is to put the
knowledge about intimate hardware details onto the SCSI device
itself. In this way, the host system does not have to worry about
things like how many heads are hard disks has, or how many tracks
there are on a specific tape device. If you are curious, the
standard specifies commands with which you can query your devices on
their hardware particulars. FreeBSD uses this capability during
boot to check out what devices are connected and whether they need
any special treatment.
The advantage of intelligent devices is obvious: the device
drivers on the host can be made in a much more generic fashion,
there is no longer a need to change (and qualify!) drivers for every
odd new device that is introduced.
For cabling and connectors there is a golden rule: get good
stuff. With bus speeds going up all the time you will save yourself
a lot of grief by using good material.
So, gold plated connectors, shielded cabling, sturdy connector
hoods with strain reliefs etc are the way to go. Second golden rule:
do no use cables longer than necessary. I once spent 3 days hunting
down a problem with a flaky machine only to discover that shortening
the SCSI bus by 1 meter solved the problem. And the original bus
length was well within the SCSI specification.
SCSI bus types
From an electrical point of view, there are two incompatible bus
types: single-ended and differential. This means that there are two
different main groups of SCSI devices and controllers, which cannot
be mixed on the same bus. It is possible however to use special
converter hardware to transform a single-ended bus into a
differential one (and vice versa). The differences between the bus
types are explained in the next sections.
In lots of SCSI related documentation there is a sort of jargon
in use to abbreviate the different bus types. A small list:
FWD: Fast Wide Differential
FND: Fast Narrow Differential
SE: Single Ended
FN: Fast Narrow
etc.
With a minor amount of imagination one can usually imagine what
is meant.
Wide is a bit ambiguous, it can indicate 16 or 32 bit buses. As
far as I know, the 32 bit variant is not (yet) in use, so wide
normally means 16 bit.
Fast means that the timing on the bus is somewhat different, so
that on a narrow (8 bit) bus 10 Mbytes/sec are possible instead of 5
Mbytes/sec for 'slow' SCSI. As discussed before, bus speeds of 20
and 40 million transfers/second are also emerging (Fast-20 == Ultra
SCSI and Fast-40 == Ultra2 SCSI).
The data lines > 8 are only used for data transfers and
device addressing. The transfers of commands and status messages
etc are only performed on the lowest 8 data lines. The standard
allows narrow devices to operate on a wide bus. The usable bus
width is negotiated between the devices. You have to watch your
device addressing closely when mixing wide and narrow.
Single ended buses
A single-ended SCSI bus uses signals that are either 5 Volts
or 0 Volts (indeed, TTL levels) and are relative to a COMMON
ground reference. A singled ended 8 bit SCSI bus has
approximately 25 ground lines, who are all tied to a single `rail'
on all devices. A standard single ended bus has a maximum length
of 6 meters. If the same bus is used with fast-SCSI devices, the
maximum length allowed drops to 3 meters. Fast-SCSI means that
instead of 5Mbytes/sec the bus allows 10Mbytes/sec
transfers.
Fast-20 (Ultra SCSI) and Fast-40 allow for 20 and 40 million
transfers/second respectively. So, F20 is 20 Mbytes/second on a 8
bit bus, 40 Mbytes/second on a 16 bit bus etc. For F20 the max
bus length is 1.5 meters, for F40 it becomes 0.75 meters. Be
aware that F20 is pushing the limits quite a bit, so you will
quickly find out if your SCSI bus is electrically sound.
If some devices on your bus use 'fast' to communicate your
bus must adhere to the length restrictions for fast
buses!
It is obvious that with the newer fast-SCSI devices the bus
length can become a real bottleneck. This is why the differential
SCSI bus was introduced in the SCSI-2 standard.
For connector pinning and connector types please refer to the
SCSI-2 standard (see Further
reading) itself, connectors etc are listed there in
painstaking detail.
Beware of devices using non-standard cabling. For instance
Apple uses a 25pin D-type connecter (like the one on serial ports
and parallel printers). Considering that the official SCSI bus
needs 50 pins you can imagine the use of this connector needs some
'creative cabling'. The reduction of the number of ground wires
they used is a bad idea, you better stick to 50 pins cabling in
accordance with the SCSI standard. For Fast-20 and 40 do not even
think about buses like this.
Differential buses
A differential SCSI bus has a maximum length of 25 meters.
Quite a difference from the 3 meters for a single-ended fast-SCSI
bus. The idea behind differential signals is that each bus signal
has its own return wire. So, each signal is carried on a
(preferably twisted) pair of wires. The voltage difference
between these two wires determines whether the signal is asserted
or de-asserted. To a certain extent the voltage difference
between ground and the signal wire pair is not relevant (do not
try 10 kVolts though).
It is beyond the scope of this document to explain why this
differential idea is so much better. Just accept that
electrically seen the use of differential signals gives a much
better noise margin. You will normally find differential buses in
use for inter-cabinet connections. Because of the lower cost
single ended is mostly used for shorter buses like inside
cabinets.
There is nothing that stops you from using differential stuff
with FreeBSD, as long as you use a controller that has device
driver support in FreeBSD. As an example, Adaptec marketed the
AHA1740 as a single ended board, whereas the AHA1744 was
differential. The software interface to the host is identical for
both.
Terminators
Terminators in SCSI terminology are resistor networks that are
used to get a correct impedance matching. Impedance matching is
important to get clean signals on the bus, without reflections or
ringing. If you once made a long distance telephone call on a bad
line you probably know what reflections are. With 20Mbytes/sec
traveling over your SCSI bus, you do not want signals echoing
back.
Terminators come in various incarnations, with more or less
sophisticated designs. Of course, there are internal and external
variants. Many SCSI devices come with a number of sockets in
which a number of resistor networks can (must be!) installed. If
you remove terminators from a device, carefully store them. You
will need them when you ever decide to reconfigure your SCSI bus.
There is enough variation in even these simple tiny things to make
finding the exact replacement a frustrating business. There are
also SCSI devices that have a single jumper to enable or disable a
built-in terminator. There are special terminators you can stick
onto a flat cable bus. Others look like external connectors, or a
connector hood without a cable. So, lots of choice as you can
see.
There is much debate going on if and when you should switch
from simple resistor (passive) terminators to active terminators.
Active terminators contain slightly more elaborate circuit to give
cleaner bus signals. The general consensus seems to be that the
usefulness of active termination increases when you have long
buses and/or fast devices. If you ever have problems with your
SCSI buses you might consider trying an active terminator. Try to
borrow one first, they reputedly are quite expensive.
Please keep in mind that terminators for differential and
single-ended buses are not identical. You should not
mix the two variants.
OK, and now where should you install your terminators? This is
by far the most misunderstood part of SCSI. And it is by far the
simplest. The rule is: every single line on the SCSI
bus has 2 (two) terminators, one at each end of the
bus. So, two and not one or three or whatever. Do
yourself a favor and stick to this rule. It will save you endless
grief, because wrong termination has the potential to introduce
highly mysterious bugs. (Note the “potential” here;
the nastiest part is that it may or may not work.)
A common pitfall is to have an internal (flat) cable in a
machine and also an external cable attached to the controller. It
seems almost everybody forgets to remove the terminators from the
controller. The terminator must now be on the last external
device, and not on the controller! In general, every
reconfiguration of a SCSI bus must pay attention to this.
Termination is to be done on a per-line basis. This means
if you have both narrow and wide buses connected to the same
host adapter, you need to enable termination on the higher 8
bits of the bus on the adapter (as well as the last devices on
each bus, of course).
What I did myself is remove all terminators from my SCSI
devices and controllers. I own a couple of external terminators,
for both the Centronics-type external cabling and for the internal
flat cable connectors. This makes reconfiguration much
easier.
On modern devices, sometimes integrated terminators are used.
These things are special purpose integrated circuits that can be
dis/en-abled with a control pin. It is not necessary to
physically remove them from a device. You may find them on newer
host adapters, sometimes they are software configurable, using
some sort of setup tool. Some will even auto-detect the cables
attached to the connectors and automatically set up the
termination as necessary. At any rate, consult your
documentation!
Terminator power
The terminators discussed in the previous chapter need power
to operate properly. On the SCSI bus, a line is dedicated to this
purpose. So, simple huh?
Not so. Each device can provide its own terminator power to
the terminator sockets it has on-device. But if you have external
terminators, or when the device supplying the terminator power to
the SCSI bus line is switched off you are in trouble.
The idea is that initiators (these are devices that initiate
actions on the bus, a discussion follows) must supply terminator
power. All SCSI devices are allowed (but not required) to supply
terminator power.
To allow for un-powered devices on a bus, the terminator power
must be supplied to the bus via a diode. This prevents the
backflow of current to un-powered devices.
To prevent all kinds of nastiness, the terminator power is
usually fused. As you can imagine, fuses might blow. This can,
but does not have to, lead to a non functional bus. If multiple
devices supply terminator power, a single blown fuse will not put
you out of business. A single supplier with a blown fuse
certainly will. Clever external terminators sometimes have a LED
indication that shows whether terminator power is present.
In newer designs auto-restoring fuses that 'reset' themselves
after some time are sometimes used.
Device addressing
Because the SCSI bus is, ehh, a bus there must be a way to
distinguish or address the different devices connected to
it.
This is done by means of the SCSI or target ID. Each device
has a unique target ID. You can select the ID to which a device
must respond using a set of jumpers, or a dip switch, or something
similar. Some SCSI host adapters let you change the target ID
from the boot menu. (Yet some others will not let you change the
ID from 7.) Consult the documentation of your device for more
information.
Beware of multiple devices configured to use the same ID.
Chaos normally reigns in this case. A pitfall is that one of the
devices sharing the same ID sometimes even manages to answer to
I/O requests!
For an 8 bit bus, a maximum of 8 targets is possible. The
maximum is 8 because the selection is done bitwise using the 8
data lines on the bus. For wide buses this increases to the
number of data lines (usually 16).
A narrow SCSI device can not communicate with a SCSI device
with a target ID larger than 7. This means it is generally not
a good idea to move your SCSI host adapter's target ID to
something higher than 7 (or your CD-ROM will stop
working).
The higher the SCSI target ID, the higher the priority the
devices has. When it comes to arbitration between devices that
want to use the bus at the same time, the device that has the
highest SCSI ID will win. This also means that the SCSI host
adapter usually uses target ID 7. Note however that the lower 8
IDs have higher priorities than the higher 8 IDs on a wide-SCSI
bus. Thus, the order of target IDs is: [7 6 .. 1 0 15 14 .. 9 8]
on a wide-SCSI system. (If you you are wondering why the lower 8
have higher priority, read the previous paragraph for a
hint.)
For a further subdivision, the standard allows for Logical
Units or LUNs for short. A single target ID may have multiple
LUNs. For example, a tape device including a tape changer may
have LUN 0 for the tape device itself, and LUN 1 for the tape
changer. In this way, the host system can address each of the
functional units of the tape changer as desired.
Bus layout
SCSI buses are linear. So, not shaped like Y-junctions, star
topologies, rings, cobwebs or whatever else people might want to
invent. One of the most common mistakes is for people with
wide-SCSI host adapters to connect devices on all three connecters
(external connector, internal wide connector, internal narrow
connector). Don't do that. It may appear to work if you are
really lucky, but I can almost guarantee that your system will
stop functioning at the most unfortunate moment (this is also
known as “Murphy's law”).
You might notice that the terminator issue discussed earlier
becomes rather hairy if your bus is not linear. Also, if you have
more connectors than devices on your internal SCSI cable, make
sure you attach devices on connectors on both ends instead of
using the connectors in the middle and let one or both ends
dangle. This will screw up the termination of the bus.
The electrical characteristics, its noise margins and
ultimately the reliability of it all are tightly related to linear
bus rule.
Stick to the linear bus rule!
Using SCSI with FreeBSD
About translations, BIOSes and magic...
As stated before, you should first make sure that you have a
electrically sound bus.
When you want to use a SCSI disk on your PC as boot disk, you
must aware of some quirks related to PC BIOSes. The PC BIOS in
its first incarnation used a low level physical interface to the
hard disk. So, you had to tell the BIOS (using a setup tool or a
BIOS built-in setup) how your disk physically looked like. This
involved stating number of heads, number of cylinders, number of
sectors per track, obscure things like precompensation and reduced
write current cylinder etc.
One might be inclined to think that since SCSI disks are smart
you can forget about this. Alas, the arcane setup issue is still
present today. The system BIOS needs to know how to access your
SCSI disk with the head/cyl/sector method in order to load the
FreeBSD kernel during boot.
The SCSI host adapter or SCSI controller you have put in your
AT/EISA/PCI/whatever bus to connect your disk therefore has its
own on-board BIOS. During system startup, the SCSI BIOS takes
over the hard disk interface routines from the system BIOS. To
fool the system BIOS, the system setup is normally set to No hard
disk present. Obvious, isn't it?
The SCSI BIOS itself presents to the system a so called
translated drive. This means that a fake
drive table is constructed that allows the PC to boot the drive.
This translation is often (but not always) done using a pseudo
drive with 64 heads and 32 sectors per track. By varying the
number of cylinders, the SCSI BIOS adapts to the actual drive
size. It is useful to note that 32 * 64 / 2 = the size of your
drive in megabytes. The division by 2 is to get from disk blocks
that are normally 512 bytes in size to Kbytes.
Right. All is well now?! No, it is not. The system BIOS has
another quirk you might run into. The number of cylinders of a
bootable hard disk cannot be greater than 1024. Using the
translation above, this is a show-stopper for disks greater than 1
GB. With disk capacities going up all the time this is causing
problems.
Fortunately, the solution is simple: just use another
translation, e.g. with 128 heads instead of 32. In most cases new
SCSI BIOS versions are available to upgrade older SCSI host
adapters. Some newer adapters have an option, in the form of a
jumper or software setup selection, to switch the translation the
SCSI BIOS uses.
It is very important that all operating
systems on the disk use the same translation
to get the right idea about where to find the relevant partitions.
So, when installing FreeBSD you must answer any questions about
heads/cylinders etc using the translated values your host adapter
uses.
Failing to observe the translation issue might lead to
un-bootable systems or operating systems overwriting each others
partitions. Using fdisk you should be able to see all
partitions.
You might have heard some talk of “lying” devices?
Older FreeBSD kernels used to report the geometry of SCSI disks
when booting. An example from one of my systems:
aha0 targ 0 lun 0: <MICROP 1588-15MB1057404HSP4>
sd0: 636MB (1303250 total sec), 1632 cyl, 15 head, 53 sec, bytes/sec 512
Newer kernels usually do not report this information.
e.g.
(bt0:0:0): "SEAGATE ST41651 7574" type 0 fixed SCSI 2
sd0(bt0:0:0): Direct-Access 1350MB (2766300 512 byte sectors)
Why has this changed?
This info is retrieved from the SCSI disk itself. Newer disks
often use a technique called zone bit recording. The idea is that
on the outer cylinders of the drive there is more space so more
sectors per track can be put on them. This results in disks that
have more tracks on outer cylinders than on the inner cylinders
and, last but not least, have more capacity. You can imagine that
the value reported by the drive when inquiring about the geometry
now becomes suspect at best, and nearly always misleading. When
asked for a geometry , it is nearly always better to supply the
geometry used by the BIOS, or if the BIOS is never going
to know about this disk, (e.g. it is not a booting
disk) to supply a fictitious geometry that is convenient.
SCSI subsystem design
FreeBSD uses a layered SCSI subsystem. For each different
controller card a device driver is written. This driver knows all
the intimate details about the hardware it controls. The driver
has a interface to the upper layers of the SCSI subsystem through
which it receives its commands and reports back any status.
On top of the card drivers there are a number of more generic
drivers for a class of devices. More specific: a driver for tape
devices (abbreviation: st), magnetic disks (sd), CD-ROMs (cd) etc.
In case you are wondering where you can find this stuff, it all
lives in /sys/scsi. See the man pages in
section 4 for more details.
The multi level design allows a decoupling of low-level bit
banging and more high level stuff. Adding support for another
piece of hardware is a much more manageable problem.
Kernel configuration
Dependent on your hardware, the kernel configuration file must
contain one or more lines describing your host adapter(s). This
includes I/O addresses, interrupts etc. Consult the man page for
your adapter driver to get more info. Apart from that, check out
/sys/i386/conf/LINT for an overview of a
kernel config file. LINT contains every
possible option you can dream of. It does
not imply LINT will
actually get you to a working kernel at all.
Although it is probably stating the obvious: the kernel config
file should reflect your actual hardware setup. So, interrupts,
I/O addresses etc must match the kernel config file. During
system boot messages will be displayed to indicate whether the
configured hardware was actually found.
Note that most of the EISA/PCI drivers (namely
ahb, ahc,
ncr and amd
will automatically obtain the correct parameters from the host
adapters themselves at boot time; thus, you just need to write,
for instance, controller ahc0.
An example loosely based on the FreeBSD 2.2.5-Release kernel
config file LINT with some added comments
(between []):
# SCSI host adapters: `aha', `ahb', `aic', `bt', `nca'
#
# aha: Adaptec 154x
# ahb: Adaptec 174x
# ahc: Adaptec 274x/284x/294x
# aic: Adaptec 152x and sound cards using the Adaptec AIC-6360 (slow!)
# amd: AMD 53c974 based SCSI cards (e.g., Tekram DC-390 and 390T)
# bt: Most Buslogic controllers
# nca: ProAudioSpectrum cards using the NCR 5380 or Trantor T130
# ncr: NCR/Symbios 53c810/815/825/875 etc based SCSI cards
# uha: UltraStore 14F and 34F
# sea: Seagate ST01/02 8 bit controller (slow!)
# wds: Western Digital WD7000 controller (no scatter/gather!).
#
[For an Adaptec AHA274x/284x/294x/394x etc controller]
controller ahc0
[For an NCR/Symbios 53c875 based controller]
controller ncr0
[For an Ultrastor adapter]
controller uha0 at isa? port "IO_UHA0" bio irq ? drq 5 vector uhaintr
# Map SCSI buses to specific SCSI adapters
controller scbus0 at ahc0
controller scbus2 at ncr0
controller scbus1 at uha0
# The actual SCSI devices
disk sd0 at scbus0 target 0 unit 0 [SCSI disk 0 is at scbus 0, LUN 0]
disk sd1 at scbus0 target 1 [implicit LUN 0 if omitted]
disk sd2 at scbus1 target 3 [SCSI disk on the uha0]
disk sd3 at scbus2 target 4 [SCSI disk on the ncr0]
tape st1 at scbus0 target 6 [SCSI tape at target 6]
device cd0 at scbus? [the first ever CD-ROM found, no wiring]
The example above tells the kernel to look for a ahc (Adaptec
274x) controller, then for an NCR/Symbios board, and so on. The
lines following the controller specifications tell the kernel to
configure specific devices but only attach
them when they match the target ID and LUN specified on the
corresponding bus.
Wired down devices get “first shot” at the unit
numbers so the first non “wired down” device, is
allocated the unit number one greater than the highest
“wired down” unit number for that kind of device. So,
if you had a SCSI tape at target ID 2 it would be configured as
st2, as the tape at target ID 6 is wired down to unit number
1.
Wired down devices need not be found to get their unit
number. The unit number for a wired down device is reserved for
that device, even if it is turned off at boot time. This allows
the device to be turned on and brought on-line at a later time,
without rebooting. Notice that a device's unit number has
no relationship with its target ID on the
SCSI bus.
Below is another example of a kernel config file as used by
FreeBSD version < 2.0.5. The difference with the first example
is that devices are not “wired down”. “Wired
down” means that you specify which SCSI target belongs to
which device.
A kernel built to the config file below will attach the first
SCSI disk it finds to sd0, the second disk to sd1 etc. If you ever
removed or added a disk, all other devices of the same type (disk
in this case) would 'move around'. This implies you have to
change /etc/fstab each time.
Although the old style still works, you are
strongly recommended to use this new feature.
It will save you a lot of grief whenever you shift your hardware
around on the SCSI buses. So, when you re-use your old trusty
config file after upgrading from a pre-FreeBSD2.0.5.R system check
this out.
[driver for Adaptec 174x]
controller ahb0 at isa? bio irq 11 vector ahbintr
[for Adaptec 154x]
controller aha0 at isa? port "IO_AHA0" bio irq 11 drq 5 vector ahaintr
[for Seagate ST01/02]
controller sea0 at isa? bio irq 5 iomem 0xc8000 iosiz 0x2000 vector seaintr
controller scbus0
device sd0 [support for 4 SCSI harddisks, sd0 up sd3]
device st0 [support for 2 SCSI tapes]
[for the CD-ROM]
device cd0 #Only need one of these, the code dynamically grows
Both examples support SCSI disks. If during boot more devices
of a specific type (e.g. sd disks) are found than are configured
in the booting kernel, the system will simply allocate more
devices, incrementing the unit number starting at the last number
“wired down”. If there are no “wired
down” devices then counting starts at unit 0.
Use man 4 scsi to check for the latest info
on the SCSI subsystem. For more detailed info on host adapter
drivers use eg man 4 ahc for info on the
Adaptec 294x driver.
Tuning your SCSI kernel setup
Experience has shown that some devices are slow to respond to
INQUIRY commands after a SCSI bus reset (which happens at boot
time). An INQUIRY command is sent by the kernel on boot to see
what kind of device (disk, tape, CD-ROM etc) is connected to a
specific target ID. This process is called device probing by the
way.
To work around the 'slow response' problem, FreeBSD allows a
tunable delay time before the SCSI devices are probed following a
SCSI bus reset. You can set this delay time in your kernel
configuration file using a line like:
options SCSI_DELAY=15 #Be pessimistic about Joe SCSI device
This line sets the delay time to 15 seconds. On my own system
I had to use 3 seconds minimum to get my trusty old CD-ROM drive
to be recognized. Start with a high value (say 30 seconds or so)
when you have problems with device recognition. If this helps,
tune it back until it just stays working.
Rogue SCSI devices
Although the SCSI standard tries to be complete and concise,
it is a complex standard and implementing things correctly is no
easy task. Some vendors do a better job then others.
This is exactly where the “rogue” devices come
into view. Rogues are devices that are recognized by the FreeBSD
kernel as behaving slightly (...) non-standard. Rogue devices are
reported by the kernel when booting. An example for two of my
cartridge tape units:
Feb 25 21:03:34 yedi /kernel: ahb0 targ 5 lun 0: <TANDBERG TDC 3600 -06:>
Feb 25 21:03:34 yedi /kernel: st0: Tandberg tdc3600 is a known rogue
Mar 29 21:16:37 yedi /kernel: aha0 targ 5 lun 0: <ARCHIVE VIPER 150 21247-005>
Mar 29 21:16:37 yedi /kernel: st1: Archive Viper 150 is a known rogue
For instance, there are devices that respond to all LUNs on a
certain target ID, even if they are actually only one device. It
is easy to see that the kernel might be fooled into believing that
there are 8 LUNs at that particular target ID. The confusion this
causes is left as an exercise to the reader.
The SCSI subsystem of FreeBSD recognizes devices with bad
habits by looking at the INQUIRY response they send when probed.
Because the INQUIRY response also includes the version number of
the device firmware, it is even possible that for different
firmware versions different workarounds are used. See e.g.
/sys/scsi/st.c and
/sys/scsi/scsiconf.c for more info on how
this is done.
This scheme works fine, but keep in mind that it of course
only works for devices that are known to be weird. If you are the
first to connect your bogus Mumbletech SCSI CD-ROM you might be
the one that has to define which workaround is needed.
After you got your Mumbletech working, please send the
required workaround to the FreeBSD development team for inclusion
in the next release of FreeBSD. Other Mumbletech owners will be
grateful to you.
Multiple LUN devices
In some cases you come across devices that use multiple
logical units (LUNs) on a single SCSI ID. In most cases FreeBSD
only probes devices for LUN 0. An example are so called bridge
boards that connect 2 non-SCSI harddisks to a SCSI bus (e.g. an
Emulex MD21 found in old Sun systems).
This means that any devices with LUNs != 0 are not normally
found during device probe on system boot. To work around this
problem you must add an appropriate entry in /sys/scsi/scsiconf.c
and rebuild your kernel.
Look for a struct that is initialized like below:
{
T_DIRECT, T_FIXED, "MAXTOR", "XT-4170S", "B5A",
"mx1", SC_ONE_LU
}
For you Mumbletech BRIDGE2000 that has more than one LUN, acts
as a SCSI disk and has firmware revision 123 you would add
something like:
{
T_DIRECT, T_FIXED, "MUMBLETECH", "BRIDGE2000", "123",
"sd", SC_MORE_LUS
}
The kernel on boot scans the inquiry data it receives against
the table and acts accordingly. See the source for more
info.
Tagged command queueing
Modern SCSI devices, particularly magnetic disks,
support what is called tagged command queuing (TCQ).
In a nutshell, TCQ allows the device to have multiple I/O
requests outstanding at the same time. Because the device is
intelligent, it can optimise its operations (like head
positioning) based on its own request queue. On SCSI devices
like RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) arrays the TCQ
function is indispensable to take advantage of the device's
inherent parallelism.
Each I/O request is uniquely identified by a “tag”
(hence the name tagged command queuing) and this tag is used by
FreeBSD to see which I/O in the device drivers queue is reported
as complete by the device.
It should be noted however that TCQ requires device driver
support and that some devices implemented it “not quite
right” in their firmware. This problem bit me once, and it
leads to highly mysterious problems. In such cases, try to
disable TCQ.
Busmaster host adapters
Most, but not all, SCSI host adapters are bus mastering
controllers. This means that they can do I/O on their own without
putting load onto the host CPU for data movement.
This is of course an advantage for a multitasking operating
system like FreeBSD. It must be noted however that there might be
some rough edges.
For instance an Adaptec 1542 controller can be set to use
different transfer speeds on the host bus (ISA or AT in this
case). The controller is settable to different rates because not
all motherboards can handle the higher speeds. Problems like
hangups, bad data etc might be the result of using a higher data
transfer rate then your motherboard can stomach.
The solution is of course obvious: switch to a lower data
transfer rate and try if that works better.
In the case of a Adaptec 1542, there is an option that can be
put into the kernel config file to allow dynamic determination of
the right, read: fastest feasible, transfer rate. This option is
disabled by default:
options "TUNE_1542" #dynamic tune of bus DMA speed
Check the man pages for the host adapter that you use. Or
better still, use the ultimate documentation (read: driver
source).
Tracking down problems
The following list is an attempt to give a guideline for the
most common SCSI problems and their solutions. It is by no means
complete.
Check for loose connectors and cables.
Check and double check the location and number of your
terminators.
Check if your bus has at least one supplier of terminator
power (especially with external terminators.
Check if no double target IDs are used.
Check if all devices to be used are powered up.
Make a minimal bus config with as little devices as
possible.
If possible, configure your host adapter to use slow bus
speeds.
Disable tagged command queuing to make things as simple as
possible (for a NCR hostadapter based system see man
ncrcontrol)
If you can compile a kernel, make one with the
SCSIDEBUG option, and try accessing the
device with debugging turned on for that device. If your device
does not even probe at startup, you may have to define the
address of the device that is failing, and the desired debug
level in /sys/scsi/scsidebug.h. If it
probes but just does not work, you can use the
&man.scsi.8; command to dynamically set a debug level to
it in a running kernel (if SCSIDEBUG is
defined). This will give you copious
debugging output with which to confuse the gurus. See
man 4 scsi for more exact information. Also
look at man 8 scsi.
Further reading
If you intend to do some serious SCSI hacking, you might want to
have the official standard at hand:
Approved American National Standards can be purchased from
ANSI at
13th Floor
11 West 42nd Street
New York
NY 10036
Sales Dept: (212) 642-4900
You can also buy many ANSI
standards and most committee draft documents from Global
Engineering Documents,
15 Inverness Way East
Englewood
CO, 80112-5704
Phone: (800) 854-7179
Outside USA and Canada: (303) 792-2181
Fax: (303) 792- 2192
Many X3T10 draft documents are available electronically on the
SCSI BBS (719-574-0424) and on the ncrinfo.ncr.com anonymous ftp site.
Latest X3T10 committee documents are:
AT Attachment (ATA or IDE) [X3.221-1994]
(Approved)
ATA Extensions (ATA-2) [X3T10/948D Rev 2i]
Enhanced Small Device Interface (ESDI)
[X3.170-1990/X3.170a-1991]
(Approved)
Small Computer System Interface — 2 (SCSI-2)
[X3.131-1994] (Approved)
SCSI-2 Common Access Method Transport and SCSI Interface
Module (CAM) [X3T10/792D Rev 11]
Other publications that might provide you with additional
information are:
“SCSI: Understanding the Small Computer System
Interface”, written by NCR Corporation. Available from:
Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 07632 Phone: (201) 767-5937
ISBN 0-13-796855-8
“Basics of SCSI”, a SCSI tutorial written by
Ancot Corporation Contact Ancot for availability information at:
Phone: (415) 322-5322 Fax: (415) 322-0455
“SCSI Interconnection Guide Book”, an AMP
publication (dated 4/93, Catalog 65237) that lists the various
SCSI connectors and suggests cabling schemes. Available from
AMP at (800) 522-6752 or (717) 564-0100
“Fast Track to SCSI”, A Product Guide written by
Fujitsu. Available from: Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ,
07632 Phone: (201) 767-5937 ISBN 0-13-307000-X
“The SCSI Bench Reference”, “The SCSI
Encyclopedia”, and the “SCSI Tutor”, ENDL
Publications, 14426 Black Walnut Court, Saratoga CA, 95070
Phone: (408) 867-6642
“Zadian SCSI Navigator” (quick ref. book) and
“Discover the Power of SCSI” (First book along with
a one-hour video and tutorial book), Zadian Software, Suite 214,
1210 S. Bascom Ave., San Jose, CA 92128, (408) 293-0800
On Usenet the newsgroups comp.periphs.scsi and comp.periphs are noteworthy places
to look for more info. You can also find the SCSI-Faq there, which
is posted periodically.
Most major SCSI device and host adapter suppliers operate ftp
sites and/or BBS systems. They may be valuable sources of
information about the devices you own.
* Disk/tape controllers
* SCSI
* IDE
* Floppy
Hard drives
SCSI hard drives
Contributed by &a.asami;. 17 February
1998.
As mentioned in the SCSI section,
virtually all SCSI hard drives sold today are SCSI-2 compliant and
thus will work fine as long as you connect them to a supported SCSI
host adapter. Most problems people encounter are either due to
badly designed cabling (cable too long, star topology, etc.),
insufficient termination, or defective parts. Please refer to the
SCSI section first if your SCSI hard
drive is not working. However, there are a couple of things you may
want to take into account before you purchase SCSI hard drives for
your system.
Rotational speed
Rotational speeds of SCSI drives sold today range from around
4,500RPM to 10,000RPM. Most of them are either 5,400RPM or
7,200RPM. Even though the 7,200RPM drives can generally transfer
data faster, they run considerably hotter than their 5,400RPM
counterparts. A large fraction of today's disk drive malfunctions
are heat-related. If you do not have very good cooling in your PC
case, you may want to stick with 5,400RPM or slower drives.
Note that newer drives, with higher areal recording densities,
can deliver much more bits per rotation than older ones. Today's
top-of-line 5,400RPM drives can sustain a throughput comparable to
7,200RPM drives of one or two model generations ago. The number
to find on the spec sheet for bandwidth is “internal data
(or transfer) rate”. It is usually in megabits/sec so
divide it by 8 and you'll get the rough approximation of how much
megabytes/sec you can get out of the drive.
(If you are a speed maniac and want a 10,000RPM drive for your
cute little peecee, be my guest; however, those drives become
extremely hot. Don't even think about it if you don't have a fan
blowing air directly at the drive or a
properly ventilated disk enclosure.)
Obviously, the latest 10,000RPM drives and 7,200RPM drives can
deliver more data than the latest 5,400RPM drives, so if absolute
bandwidth is the necessity for your applications, you have little
choice but to get the faster drives. Also, if you need low
latency, faster drives are better; not only do they usually have
lower average seek times, but also the rotational delay is one
place where slow-spinning drives can never beat a faster one.
(The average rotational latency is half the time it takes to
rotate the drive once; thus, it's 3 milliseconds for 10,000RPM
drives, 4.2ms for 7,200RPM drives and 5.6ms for 5,400RPM drives.)
Latency is seek time plus rotational delay. Make sure you
understand whether you need low latency or more accesses per
second, though; in the latter case (e.g., news servers), it may
not be optimal to purchase one big fast drive. You can achieve
similar or even better results by using the ccd (concatenated
disk) driver to create a striped disk array out of multiple slower
drives for comparable overall cost.
Make sure you have adequate air flow around the drive,
especially if you are going to use a fast-spinning drive. You
generally need at least 1/2" (1.25cm) of spacing above and below a
drive. Understand how the air flows through your PC case. Most
cases have the power supply suck the air out of the back. See
where the air flows in, and put the drive where it will have the
largest volume of cool air flowing around it. You may need to seal
some unwanted holes or add a new fan for effective cooling.
Another consideration is noise. Many 7,200 or faster drives
generate a high-pitched whine which is quite unpleasant to most
people. That, plus the extra fans often required for cooling, may
make 7,200 or faster drives unsuitable for some office and home
environments.
Form factor
Most SCSI drives sold today are of 3.5" form factor. They
come in two different heights; 1.6" (“half-height”) or
1" (“low-profile”). The half-height drive is the same
height as a CD-ROM drive. However, don't forget the spacing rule
mentioned in the previous section. If you have three standard
3.5" drive bays, you will not be able to put three half-height
drives in there (without frying them, that is).
Interface
The majority of SCSI hard drives sold today are Ultra or
Ultra-wide SCSI. The maximum bandwidth of Ultra SCSI is 20MB/sec,
and Ultra-wide SCSI is 40MB/sec. There is no difference in max
cable length between Ultra and Ultra-wide; however, the more
devices you have on the same bus, the sooner you will start having
bus integrity problems. Unless you have a well-designed disk
enclosure, it is not easy to make more than 5 or 6 Ultra SCSI
drives work on a single bus.
On the other hand, if you need to connect many drives, going
for Fast-wide SCSI may not be a bad idea. That will have the same
max bandwidth as Ultra (narrow) SCSI, while electronically it's
much easier to get it “right”. My advice would be: if
you want to connect many disks, get wide SCSI drives; they usually
cost a little more but it may save you down the road. (Besides,
if you can't afford the cost difference, you shouldn't be building
a disk array.)
There are two variant of wide SCSI drives; 68-pin and 80-pin
SCA (Single Connector Attach). The SCA drives don't have a
separate 4-pin power connector, and also read the SCSI ID settings
through the 80-pin connector. If you are really serious about
building a large storage system, get SCA drives and a good SCA
enclosure (dual power supply with at least one extra fan). They
are more electronically sound than 68-pin counterparts because
there is no “stub” of the SCSI bus inside the disk
canister as in arrays built from 68-pin drives. They are easier
to install too (you just need to screw the drive in the canister,
instead of trying to squeeze in your fingers in a tight place to
hook up all the little cables (like the SCSI ID and disk activity
LED lines).
* IDE hard drives
Tape drives
Contributed by &a.jmb;. 2 July
1996.
General tape access commands
&man.mt.1; provides generic access to the tape drives. Some of
the more common commands are rewind,
erase, and status. See the
&man.mt.1; manual page for a detailed description.
Controller Interfaces
There are several different interfaces that support tape drives.
The interfaces are SCSI, IDE, Floppy and Parallel Port. A wide
variety of tape drives are available for these interfaces.
Controllers are discussed in Disk/tape
controllers.
SCSI drives
The &man.st.4; driver provides support for 8mm (Exabyte), 4mm
(DAT: Digital Audio Tape), QIC (Quarter-Inch Cartridge), DLT
(Digital Linear Tape), QIC Minicartridge and 9-track (remember the
big reels that you see spinning in Hollywood computer rooms) tape
drives. See the &man.st.4; manual page for a detailed
description.
The drives listed below are currently being used by members of
the FreeBSD community. They are not the only drives that will work
with FreeBSD. They just happen to be the ones that we use.
4mm (DAT: Digital Audio Tape)
Archive Python
28454
Archive Python
04687
HP C1533A
HP C1534A
HP 35450A
HP 35470A
HP 35480A
SDT-5000
Wangtek
6200
8mm (Exabyte)
EXB-8200
EXB-8500
EXB-8505
QIC (Quarter-Inch Cartridge)
Archive Ananconda
2750
Archive Viper
60
Archive Viper
150
Archive Viper
2525
Tandberg TDC
3600
Tandberg TDC
3620
Tandberg TDC
3800
Tandberg TDC
4222
Wangtek
5525ES
DLT (Digital Linear Tape)
Digital TZ87
Mini-Cartridge
Conner CTMS
3200
Exabyte 2501
Autoloaders/Changers
Hewlett-Packard HP C1553A
Autoloading DDS2
* IDE drives
Floppy drives
Conner 420R
* Parallel port drives
Detailed Information
Archive Anaconda 2750
The boot message identifier for this drive is ARCHIVE
ANCDA 2750 28077 -003 type 1 removable SCSI 2
This is a QIC tape drive.
Native capacity is 1.35GB when using QIC-1350 tapes. This
drive will read and write QIC-150 (DC6150), QIC-250 (DC6250), and
QIC-525 (DC6525) tapes as well.
Data transfer rate is 350kB/s using
&man.dump.8;. Rates of 530kB/s have been reported when using
Amanda
Production of this drive has been discontinued.
The SCSI bus connector on this tape drive is reversed from
that on most other SCSI devices. Make sure that you have enough
SCSI cable to twist the cable one-half turn before and after the
Archive Anaconda tape drive, or turn your other SCSI devices
upside-down.
Two kernel code changes are required to use this drive. This
drive will not work as delivered.
If you have a SCSI-2 controller, short jumper 6. Otherwise,
the drive behaves are a SCSI-1 device. When operating as a SCSI-1
device, this drive, “locks” the SCSI bus during some
tape operations, including: fsf, rewind, and rewoffl.
If you are using the NCR SCSI controllers, patch the file
/usr/src/sys/pci/ncr.c (as shown below).
Build and install a new kernel.
*** 4831,4835 ****
};
! if (np->latetime>4) {
/*
** Although we tried to wake it up,
--- 4831,4836 ----
};
! if (np->latetime>1200) {
/*
** Although we tried to wake it up,
Reported by: &a.jmb;
Archive Python 28454
The boot message identifier for this drive is ARCHIVE
Python 28454-XXX4ASB type 1 removable SCSI
2 density code 0x8c, 512-byte
blocks
This is a DDS-1 tape drive.
Native capacity is 2.5GB on 90m tapes.
Data transfer rate is XXX.
This drive was repackaged by Sun Microsystems as model
595-3067.
Reported by: Bob Bishop rb@gid.co.uk
Throughput is in the 1.5 MByte/sec range, however this will
drop if the disks and tape drive are on the same SCSI
controller.
Reported by: Robert E. Seastrom
rs@seastrom.com
Archive Python 04687
The boot message identifier for this drive is ARCHIVE
Python 04687-XXX 6580 Removable Sequential
Access SCSI-2 device
This is a DAT-DDS-2 drive.
Native capacity is 4GB when using 120m tapes.
This drive supports hardware data compression. Switch 4
controls MRS (Media Recognition System). MRS tapes have stripes
on the transparent leader. Switch 4 off
enables MRS, on disables MRS.
Parity is controlled by switch 5. Switch 5
on to enable parity control. Compression is
enabled with Switch 6 off. It is possible to
override compression with the SCSI MODE SELECT
command (see &man.mt.1;).
Data transfer rate is 800kB/s.
Archive Viper 60
The boot message identifier for this drive is ARCHIVE
VIPER 60 21116 -007 type 1 removable SCSI
1
This is a QIC tape drive.
Native capacity is 60MB.
Data transfer rate is XXX.
Production of this drive has been discontinued.
Reported by: Philippe Regnauld
regnauld@hsc.fr
Archive Viper 150
The boot message identifier for this drive is ARCHIVE
VIPER 150 21531 -004 Archive Viper 150 is a
known rogue type 1 removable SCSI
1. A multitude of firmware revisions exist for this
drive. Your drive may report different numbers (e.g
21247 -005.
This is a QIC tape drive.
Native capacity is 150/250MB. Both 150MB (DC6150) and 250MB
(DC6250) tapes have the recording format. The 250MB tapes are
approximately 67% longer than the 150MB tapes. This drive can
read 120MB tapes as well. It can not write 120MB tapes.
Data transfer rate is 100kB/s
This drive reads and writes DC6150 (150MB) and DC6250 (250MB)
tapes.
This drives quirks are known and pre-compiled into the scsi
tape device driver (&man.st.4;).
Under FreeBSD 2.2-current, use mt blocksize
512 to set the blocksize. (The particular drive had
firmware revision 21247 -005. Other firmware revisions may behave
differently) Previous versions of FreeBSD did not have this
problem.
Production of this drive has been discontinued.
Reported by: Pedro A M Vazquez
vazquez@IQM.Unicamp.BR
Mike Smith
msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au
Archive Viper 2525
The boot message identifier for this drive is ARCHIVE
VIPER 2525 25462 -011 type 1 removable SCSI
1
This is a QIC tape drive.
Native capacity is 525MB.
Data transfer rate is 180kB/s at 90 inches/sec.
The drive reads QIC-525, QIC-150, QIC-120 and QIC-24 tapes.
Writes QIC-525, QIC-150, and QIC-120.
Firmware revisions prior to 25462 -011 are
bug ridden and will not function properly.
Production of this drive has been discontinued.
Conner 420R
The boot message identifier for this drive is Conner
tape.
This is a floppy controller, minicartridge tape drive.
Native capacity is XXXX
Data transfer rate is XXX
The drive uses QIC-80 tape cartridges.
Reported by: Mark Hannon
mark@seeware.DIALix.oz.au
Conner CTMS 3200
The boot message identifier for this drive is CONNER
CTMS 3200 7.00 type 1 removable SCSI
2.
This is a minicartridge tape drive.
Native capacity is XXXX
Data transfer rate is XXX
The drive uses QIC-3080 tape cartridges.
Reported by: Thomas S. Traylor
tst@titan.cs.mci.com
<ulink
url="http://www.digital.com/info/Customer-Update/931206004.txt.html">DEC TZ87</ulink>
The boot message identifier for this drive is DEC
TZ87 (C) DEC 9206 type 1 removable SCSI
2 density code 0x19
This is a DLT tape drive.
Native capacity is 10GB.
This drive supports hardware data compression.
Data transfer rate is 1.2MB/s.
This drive is identical to the Quantum DLT2000. The drive
firmware can be set to emulate several well-known drives,
including an Exabyte 8mm drive.
Reported by: &a.wilko;
<ulink
url="http://www.Exabyte.COM:80/Products/Minicartridge/2501/Rfeatures.html">Exabyte EXB-2501</ulink>
The boot message identifier for this drive is EXABYTE
EXB-2501
This is a mini-cartridge tape drive.
Native capacity is 1GB when using MC3000XL
minicartridges.
Data transfer rate is XXX
This drive can read and write DC2300 (550MB), DC2750 (750MB),
MC3000 (750MB), and MC3000XL (1GB) minicartridges.
WARNING: This drive does not meet the SCSI-2 specifications.
The drive locks up completely in response to a SCSI MODE_SELECT
command unless there is a formatted tape in the drive. Before
using this drive, set the tape blocksize with
&prompt.root; mt -f /dev/st0ctl.0 blocksize 1024
Before using a minicartridge for the first time, the
minicartridge must be formated. FreeBSD 2.1.0-RELEASE and
earlier:
&prompt.root; /sbin/scsi -f /dev/rst0.ctl -s 600 -c "4 0 0 0 0 0"
(Alternatively, fetch a copy of the
scsiformat shell script from FreeBSD
2.1.5/2.2.) FreeBSD 2.1.5 and later:
&prompt.root; /sbin/scsiformat -q -w /dev/rst0.ctl
Right now, this drive cannot really be recommended for
FreeBSD.
Reported by: Bob Beaulieu
ez@eztravel.com
Exabyte EXB-8200
The boot message identifier for this drive is EXABYTE
EXB-8200 252X type 1 removable SCSI
1
This is an 8mm tape drive.
Native capacity is 2.3GB.
Data transfer rate is 270kB/s.
This drive is fairly slow in responding to the SCSI bus during
boot. A custom kernel may be required (set SCSI_DELAY to 10
seconds).
There are a large number of firmware configurations for this
drive, some have been customized to a particular vendor's
hardware. The firmware can be changed via EPROM
replacement.
Production of this drive has been discontinued.
Reported by: Mike Smith
msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au
Exabyte EXB-8500
The boot message identifier for this drive is EXABYTE
EXB-8500-85Qanx0 0415 type 1 removable SCSI
2
This is an 8mm tape drive.
Native capacity is 5GB.
Data transfer rate is 300kB/s.
Reported by: Greg Lehey grog@lemis.de
<ulink
url="http://www.Exabyte.COM:80/Products/8mm/8505XL/Rfeatures.html">Exabyte EXB-8505</ulink>
The boot message identifier for this drive is
EXABYTE EXB-85058SQANXR1 05B0 type 1
removable SCSI 2
This is an 8mm tape drive which supports compression, and is
upward compatible with the EXB-5200 and EXB-8500.
Native capacity is 5GB.
The drive supports hardware data compression.
Data transfer rate is 300kB/s.
Reported by: Glen Foster
gfoster@gfoster.com
Hewlett-Packard HP C1533A
The boot message identifier for this drive is HP
C1533A 9503 type 1 removable SCSI
2.
This is a DDS-2 tape drive. DDS-2 means hardware data
compression and narrower tracks for increased data
capacity.
Native capacity is 4GB when using 120m tapes. This drive
supports hardware data compression.
Data transfer rate is 510kB/s.
This drive is used in Hewlett-Packard's SureStore 6000eU and
6000i tape drives and C1533A DDS-2 DAT drive.
The drive has a block of 8 dip switches. The proper settings
for FreeBSD are: 1 ON; 2 ON; 3 OFF; 4 ON; 5 ON; 6 ON; 7 ON; 8
ON.
switch 1
switch 2
Result
On
On
Compression enabled at power-on, with host
control
On
Off
Compression enabled at power-on, no host
control
Off
On
Compression disabled at power-on, with host
control
Off
Off
Compression disabled at power-on, no host
control
Switch 3 controls MRS (Media Recognition System). MRS tapes
have stripes on the transparent leader. These identify the tape
as DDS (Digital Data Storage) grade media. Tapes that do not have
the stripes will be treated as write-protected. Switch 3 OFF
enables MRS. Switch 3 ON disables MRS.
See HP
SureStore Tape Products and Hewlett-Packard
Disk and Tape Technical Information for more information
on configuring this drive.
Warning: Quality control on these drives
varies greatly. One FreeBSD core-team member has returned 2 of
these drives. Neither lasted more than 5 months.
Reported by: &a.se;
Hewlett-Packard HP 1534A
The boot message identifier for this drive is HP
HP35470A T503 type 1 removable SCSI
2 Sequential-Access density code 0x13,
variable blocks.
This is a DDS-1 tape drive. DDS-1 is the original DAT tape
format.
Native capacity is 2GB when using 90m tapes.
Data transfer rate is 183kB/s.
The same mechanism is used in Hewlett-Packard's SureStore
2000i
tape drive, C35470A DDS format DAT drive, C1534A DDS format DAT
drive and HP C1536A DDS format DAT drive.
The HP C1534A DDS format DAT drive has two indicator lights,
one green and one amber. The green one indicates tape action:
slow flash during load, steady when loaded, fast flash during
read/write operations. The amber one indicates warnings: slow
flash when cleaning is required or tape is nearing the end of its
useful life, steady indicates an hard fault. (factory service
required?)
Reported by Gary Crutcher
gcrutchr@nightflight.com
Hewlett-Packard HP C1553A Autoloading DDS2
The boot message identifier for this drive is "".
This is a DDS-2 tape drive with a tape changer. DDS-2 means
hardware data compression and narrower tracks for increased data
capacity.
Native capacity is 24GB when using 120m tapes. This drive
supports hardware data compression.
Data transfer rate is 510kB/s (native).
This drive is used in Hewlett-Packard's SureStore 12000e
tape drive.
The drive has two selectors on the rear panel. The selector
closer to the fan is SCSI id. The other selector should be set to
7.
There are four internal switches. These should be set: 1 ON;
2 ON; 3 ON; 4 OFF.
At present the kernel drivers do not automatically change
tapes at the end of a volume. This shell script can be used to
change tapes:
#!/bin/sh
PATH="/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin"; export PATH
usage()
{
echo "Usage: dds_changer [123456ne] raw-device-name
echo "1..6 = Select cartridge"
echo "next cartridge"
echo "eject magazine"
exit 2
}
if [ $# -ne 2 ] ; then
usage
fi
cdb3=0
cdb4=0
cdb5=0
case $1 in
[123456])
cdb3=$1
cdb4=1
;;
n)
;;
e)
cdb5=0x80
;;
?)
usage
;;
esac
scsi -f $2 -s 100 -c "1b 0 0 $cdb3 $cdb4 $cdb5"
Hewlett-Packard HP 35450A
The boot message identifier for this drive is HP
HP35450A -A C620 type 1 removable SCSI
2 Sequential-Access density code
0x13
This is a DDS-1 tape drive. DDS-1 is the original DAT tape
format.
Native capacity is 1.2GB.
Data transfer rate is 160kB/s.
Reported by: mark thompson
mark.a.thompson@pobox.com
Hewlett-Packard HP 35470A
The boot message identifier for this drive is HP
HP35470A 9 09 type 1 removable SCSI
2
This is a DDS-1 tape drive. DDS-1 is the original DAT tape
format.
Native capacity is 2GB when using 90m tapes.
Data transfer rate is 183kB/s.
The same mechanism is used in Hewlett-Packard's SureStore
2000i
tape drive, C35470A DDS format DAT drive, C1534A DDS format DAT
drive, and HP C1536A DDS format DAT drive.
Warning: Quality control on these drives
varies greatly. One FreeBSD core-team member has returned 5 of
these drives. None lasted more than 9 months.
Reported by: David Dawes
dawes@rf900.physics.usyd.edu.au (9 09)
Hewlett-Packard HP 35480A
The boot message identifier for this drive is HP
HP35480A 1009 type 1 removable SCSI
2 Sequential-Access density code
0x13.
This is a DDS-DC tape drive. DDS-DC is DDS-1 with hardware
data compression. DDS-1 is the original DAT tape format.
Native capacity is 2GB when using 90m tapes. It cannot handle
120m tapes. This drive supports hardware data compression.
Please refer to the section on HP C1533A for the proper
switch settings.
Data transfer rate is 183kB/s.
This drive is used in Hewlett-Packard's SureStore 5000eU and
5000i
tape drives and C35480A DDS format DAT drive..
This drive will occasionally hang during a tape eject
operation (mt offline). Pressing the front
panel button will eject the tape and bring the tape drive back to
life.
WARNING: HP 35480-03110 only. On at least two occasions this
tape drive when used with FreeBSD 2.1.0, an IBM Server 320 and an
2940W SCSI controller resulted in all SCSI disk partitions being
lost. The problem has not be analyzed or resolved at this
time.
<ulink
url="http://www.sel.sony.com/SEL/ccpg/storage/tape/t5000.html">Sony SDT-5000</ulink>
There are at least two significantly different models: one is
a DDS-1 and the other DDS-2. The DDS-1 version is
SDT-5000 3.02. The DDS-2 version is
SONY SDT-5000 327M. The DDS-2 version has a 1MB
cache. This cache is able to keep the tape streaming in almost
any circumstances.
The boot message identifier for this drive is SONY
SDT-5000 3.02 type 1 removable SCSI
2 Sequential-Access density code
0x13
Native capacity is 4GB when using 120m tapes. This drive
supports hardware data compression.
Data transfer rate is depends upon the model or the drive. The
rate is 630kB/s for the SONY SDT-5000 327M
while compressing the data. For the SONY SDT-5000
3.02, the data transfer rate is 225kB/s.
In order to get this drive to stream, set the blocksize to 512
bytes (mt blocksize 512) reported by Kenneth
Merry ken@ulc199.residence.gatech.edu
SONY SDT-5000 327M information reported by
Charles Henrich henrich@msu.edu
Reported by: &a.jmz;
Tandberg TDC 3600
The boot message identifier for this drive is
TANDBERG TDC 3600 =08: type 1
removable SCSI 2
This is a QIC tape drive.
Native capacity is 150/250MB.
This drive has quirks which are known and work around code is
present in the scsi tape device driver (&man.st.4;).
Upgrading the firmware to XXX version will fix the quirks and
provide SCSI 2 capabilities.
Data transfer rate is 80kB/s.
IBM and Emerald units will not work. Replacing the firmware
EPROM of these units will solve the problem.
Reported by: Michael Smith
msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au
Tandberg TDC 3620
This is very similar to the Tandberg TDC 3600
drive.
Reported by: &a.joerg;
Tandberg TDC 3800
The boot message identifier for this drive is
TANDBERG TDC 3800 =04Y Removable
Sequential Access SCSI-2 device
This is a QIC tape drive.
Native capacity is 525MB.
Reported by: &a.jhs;
Tandberg TDC 4222
The boot message identifier for this drive is
TANDBERG TDC 4222 =07 type 1 removable
SCSI 2
This is a QIC tape drive.
Native capacity is 2.5GB. The drive will read all cartridges
from the 60 MB (DC600A) upwards, and write 150 MB (DC6150)
upwards. Hardware compression is optionally supported for the 2.5
GB cartridges.
This drives quirks are known and pre-compiled into the scsi
tape device driver (&man.st.4;) beginning with FreeBSD
2.2-current. For previous versions of FreeBSD, use
mt to read one block from the tape, rewind the
tape, and then execute the backup program (mt fsr 1; mt
rewind; dump ...)
Data transfer rate is 600kB/s (vendor claim with compression),
350 KB/s can even be reached in start/stop mode. The rate
decreases for smaller cartridges.
Reported by: &a.joerg;
Wangtek 5525ES
The boot message identifier for this drive is WANGTEK
5525ES SCSI REV7 3R1 type 1 removable SCSI
1 density code 0x11, 1024-byte
blocks
This is a QIC tape drive.
Native capacity is 525MB.
Data transfer rate is 180kB/s.
The drive reads 60, 120, 150, and 525MB tapes. The drive will
not write 60MB (DC600 cartridge) tapes. In order to overwrite 120
and 150 tapes reliably, first erase (mt erase)
the tape. 120 and 150 tapes used a wider track (fewer tracks per
tape) than 525MB tapes. The “extra” width of the
previous tracks is not overwritten, as a result the new data lies
in a band surrounded on both sides by the previous data unless the
tape have been erased.
This drives quirks are known and pre-compiled into the scsi
tape device driver (&man.st.4;).
Other firmware revisions that are known to work are:
M75D
Reported by: Marc van Kempen marc@bowtie.nl
REV73R1 Andrew Gordon
Andrew.Gordon@net-tel.co.uk
M75D
Wangtek 6200
The boot message identifier for this drive is WANGTEK
6200-HS 4B18 type 1 removable SCSI
2 Sequential-Access density code
0x13
This is a DDS-1 tape drive.
Native capacity is 2GB using 90m tapes.
Data transfer rate is 150kB/s.
Reported by: Tony Kimball alk@Think.COM
* Problem drives
CD-ROM drives
Contributed by &a.obrien;. 23 November
1997.
As mentioned in Jordan's
Picks Generally speaking those in The FreeBSD
Project prefer SCSI CDROM drives over IDE CDROM drives.
However not all SCSI CDROM drives are equal. Some feel the quality of
some SCSI CDROM drives have been deteriorating to that of IDE CDROM
drives. Toshiba used to be the favored stand-by, but many on the SCSI
mailing list have found displeasure with the 12x speed XM-5701TA as
its volume (when playing audio CDROMs) is not controllable by the
various audio player software.
Another area where SCSI CDROM manufacturers are cutting corners is
adherence to the SCSI
specification. Many SCSI CDROMs will respond to multiple LUNs for its target
address. Known violators include the 6x Teac CD-56S 1.0D.
* Other
* Other
* PCMCIA