I have an older 500 Mhz PC164 Alpha with an NCR-53c810 type scsi card (not exactly sure which one). I made the apparent mistake at version 2.4.14->2.4.16 of the kernel to change my scsi driver to the newer sym53c8xx_2. I am now using the 2.4.21 kernel since it's release and I recently discovered while trying to restore from amanda backup tapes, that this driver gives me problems.
I have 4 hard drives, 1 tape drive, and 1 CD-ROM all connected to this scsi chain.
Fortunately, this driver correctly writes data to the tape using amanda ! However, the read operation using amrestore or dd, or any tool gave me inconsistent results. I finally figured out it was the driver and reverted back to the old ncr53c7,8xx driver with 10 Mhz transfer and disconnect enabled. This is now working fine for me.
Now the question is: There are two other drivers for this card in the kernel. The sym53c8xx version 1, and the ncr53c8xx. Of the four, which should I be using ? If version2 is supposed to be the one, then it needs to get fixed !
Any other Alpha users with this problem ? I suspect it is an alpha-specific problem as surely it would have been fixed by now in the stable kernel (on i386) !
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James D. Freels, Ph.D.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
freelsjd@ornl.gov