Crashing under ASIP 6.3 w/ Miles2 card

[ChrisYip]

Hi all

Odd problem - so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

(1) 7300 w/ XLR8 G3/333 card installed
(2) OS 9.0.4
(3) ASIP 6.3.1
(4) Miles 2 card w/ latest firmware driving boot Raid 0 as well as a two RAID 1 arrays.
(5) SoftRAID 2.2.2
(6) full Granite cabling w/ Active terminator showing LVD on the external array (which has 4 x 36 GB 10K Cheetahs in it)..

Any time I try to copy files ON the actual computer, files between directories i.e. drag copy, or off the CD-ROM, I drop right into MacsBUG and it's frozen.

We can copy w/o a problem over the LAN / internet from our machines to this server box..

Any ideas?.

Chris

[trag]

Chris, hopefully some of the more up to date RAID users will be along in a while, but I'll just hit the simple things.

What is the configuration of your system? From your description, it sounds like you have four drives in an external enclosure. Those four drives are divided into two 2 drive RAID 1s? Then you have two internal drives forming a RAID 0? All six of these drives are on the Miles2 card? Is the above correct?

Are you sure that the internal drive at the end of the cable is properly terminated? Does the external enclosure(s) have LVD cabling internally? Assuming that you have both internal drives and external drives connected to the Miles 2, is termination on the Miles 2 either set to Automatic or turned off?

Which of the built-in SCSI busses is the CDROM drive on? Is the CDROM drive properly terminated? Do you have any devices on the other built-in SCSI bus or on the external 5 MB/s SCSI bus?

My first pass guess would be to double check the termination on any internal drive connected to the Miles 2, but all of the above could be important.

[ChrisYip]

Hi there.. thanks for the feedback (I think you're on the right track too)...

Config:

Miles2 -> 2 internal drives - split as two Raid 0 setups (I know = but I goofed when I first made it)
Miles2 -> 4 external drives - split as 2 RAID 1 arrays

Miles2 - using the stock LVD cabling that came with it on the internal bus; It's set for automatic termination.
Externally, it's all Granite LVD cabling, including the internal stuff, + the active diagnostic termination

Only thing on the internal bus is the CD-ROM and..yeah, I know - I think I *must* have not got the termination on since there's no drive attached to it.. :-(.. Same on my other 7300 that is giving me fits..

Question for all - if I swapped all those drives for the Plextors that do have TE pins on them, is that an expensive solution to this problem or is there an easier way around it?. (aside from bolting a small SCSI drive to it)...

<sigh> - I suppose I'll just order in two Plextors and resolve the problems completely...

(hopefully)

Chris

[ChrisYip]

Done deal - order in-bound for some Plextors... (I guess I may have been living life on the edge a bit too much)

BTW - Go Leafs Go... - must beat the Devils tonight..

Chris

[ChrisYip]

ARGH... Leafs lost..:-(

[trag]

Okay, so your Miles2 chain looks something like this:

xTerm==X1====X2====X3====X4=====Miles2===Int1===In t2===Term

Where the Xs are external drives, the Ints are internal drives, the xTerm is your external Granite terminator adn diagnostic, and the iTerm is the internal terminator you need with LVD drives. The numerals are just there to make it easy for me to point at which drive I mean, and have nothing to do with whatever SCSI ID numbers you chose.

Because you are using all LVD drives, you drives have no internal termination. So you need an external terminator on your external enclosure, which it sounds like you have. You also need an internal terminator at the end of your LVD ribbon cable after Int2. Make sure it is at the end of the cable and that there are no additional connectors after the terminator.

Your built in SCSI bus shoudl be very simple:

MB===CDROM:T

Where the MB represents your motherboard and the CDROM:T represents the CDROM drive with termination enabled. Any decent CDROM drive should have a jumper to enable termination. Getting the Plextors certainly won't hurt, they're great drives, and the termination jumper on them is clearly marked. Plus the documentation I've seen for them is well written.

Still, it should be possible to enable termination on the drives you have. There are some Apple CDROM models where they seem to have gone out of their way not to mark the termination jumper though.

[Louie]

trag; Apple actually went so far with Matsushita, Sony, et al to contract for no termination pins. Only reason that I can figure was to save a nickle.

[ChrisYip]

nice diagram - you nailed it - Termination is present on everything but that mobo SCSI bus which has the stock CD-ROM on it.. ergo - Plextor replacement.. (sigh)...

Thanks all

Chris

[trag]

Thanks, Louie. I would never have imagined that they would do that in a million years. That's just bizarre. Another one for the Apple file.

[ChrisYip]

O.K. - so maybe I was wrong... - I just pulled the 12X CD-ROM (stock) out of my 7300 and flipped it with a Plextor 40X from the 'Gurus... Looked at the backplane of the CD-ROM and wouldn't you know it - it has a Term Power pin and it was jumpered...

Go figure...

Oh well - now I have a 40X rather than a 12X

Currently waiting on the InTech CD SpeedTools e-mail ..
Chris.

[Louie]

That's what we have to warn about when people want to pull their original HD's and leave the CD alone on the internal bus. No termination!

[ChrisYip]

Actually - reverse situation - in my case, this particular 7300's original CD-ROM had Term Power jumpers and they were enabled...so in this case, it was terminated..

I'll be pulling another one tomorrow and I'll see if it's the same situation

Chris

[magician]

whoa, Chris!

remember: term power and termination are not the same!

TE vs TP.

Termination Enable versus Term Power.

Apple CD-ROM typically DO run with TP enabled, which is very weird, as supposedly you're supposed to draw term power FROM the bus.

(we've seen other monuments fall here, though)

now that you can set the Plextors to actually terminate the logic board SCSI bus by placing a jumper on their TE pins, you will notice your machines settling down nicely.

sorry about the Leafs, my friend. I hate the Devils.

I think the Blues will crush them.

[ChrisYip]

AHHH - I get it - the Apple CD-ROM had the cryptic TERM and then the jumper so it wasn't totally clear.. I believe the Plextors ship with Termination Enabled so I just plugged it in and after I installed Intech's tools, the drive was up and running.

Will play with the other one today..

Then the question becomes what to do with the two spare, perfectly functional 12X CD-ROMs - time to build a tower I suspect.

Did you read that Joseph was playing goal for the Leafs with a broken thumb? ever since the series against the Senators...???

Man

Chris.

[Louie]

Apple CD players come with the Termination Power jumper in place. The unanswered question is, "what does that mean"? Jumpers on some devices can seem to be ass-backwards. Exaample: Seagate HD's; jumpering PD (parity) is actually Parity Disable.

I've never been able to find the definition of Termination Power setting on the Apple CD's. It almost has to be "Termination Power NOT from the device" in order to make sense.

Matsushita (Apple's source) is a branch of Panasonic, but the players labeled Panasonic have TE pins.

[ChrisYip]

...Thanks - gotta love those cryptic embossed labels..I'm sure it's clear to whomever designed the system...Anyways - the Plextors are in and I'm hoping that resolves the ASIP crashing problem. It's an odd one - if you're on the physical machine and you move / copy files around on the server, it locks up... Do the same thing by mounting the disk on your desktop and it's fine, copying works well.. no idea why...

Chris

[magician]

CUJO is The Man.

I hope and pray that you guys finally take Lindros off our hands. I am a huge fan of the Big E, but I want to see him play again, and I want to see Philly get someone good in exchange.

In fact....(this is how pathetic I am)...I think I will go down and fire up some old LeClair and Lindros games. They were always the best.

[ChrisYip]

YUp - hoping that we can re-sign Cujo up here...

As for my Plextor replacements - well - I have to use the Cmd-Option-Shift-Del to boot from the CD-ROM but otherwise all is well ... Need to resolve this Retrospect Type 10 error problem - it's killing me right now...

Chris

[magician]

Chris, what's up with Retrospect?

anything we can do?

[ChrisYip]

Hi Mag,

Retrospect is intermittantly failing to run my back-ups. Sometimes it will lock up the machine totally, and this usually happens when it starts to back-up (vs scanning) a network drive located on my ASIP server. Or it will just fail with a media erased error, mid-way through a back-up.. This is always to my Ecrix drives that are on my Miles2 card - the one that has two internal and one external drive.
Here's the set-up
7300:
Miles2 -> 2 internal drives -> 3 external ECRIX VXA drives -> granite terminator
built-in SCSI -> Plextor Ultra 40
built-in external SCSI -> (two drives / CD-RW) in external case -> external APS drive / granite terminator
2930U -> DAT / 230 MO external cases (APS Pro cases w/ termination).

Now - that was the set up that was giving me the Type 10 extension crashes.. I just pulled the external APS drive off the external SCSI and put the 50 pin terminator on the external case. Now it appears to be running the backup properly..BUT I also erased the old catalogue for the tape and did a Recycle Media back-up.

I guess the questions I have are
(1) is it a software corruption problem w/ Retrospect (?)
(2) SCSI hardware problems..

I should also add the Retrospect was crashing during the catalogue rebuilds too.

I suspect that the problem is the EOD marker that is supposed to be written to the tape during the back-up. If the back-up crashes, this gets mucked up and then the drives / software become more and more confused. You might be able to run a few more back-ups or partial back-ups but eventually this will die...

I'm contemplating buying an older G4 for the lab so I can pull this machine aside and set it up as a dedicated back-up server (right now it's also our FMPro server)...

Chris

Chris.