[KLUG Hardware] SCSI question.

[Bruce Smith]

Howdy,  I've been trying to get an old P5 box up and running for KLUG,
and I've been having one hell of a time with the hard drives.

The question is near the bottom, the rest is answer to questions about
the setup that I'm sure someone will want to know . . .

The box used to run fine as the KLUG web server awhile ago.  Then it was
collecting dust for a few months, until I recently fired it up again for
another project.  It booted up fine, and ran the old OS.  I then tried
to reinstall Linux on it and now I can't write to the hard drives . . .
. . . sort of. 

It has two OLD _full_height_ 5.25" Seagate SCSI 50 pin hard drives.
Adaptec 2940UW SCSI controller (only 50 pin internal cable hooked up).
A 50 pin internal SCSI cable with a ACTIVE terminator built into the 
end of the cable.

Redhat 7.3 & 8.0 installs have been failing, so I booted up the "hpa
super-rescue CD" (stand-along Redhat on CD), and here's what happens:

I can read and write the disk a little bit.  I can "fdisk" without a
problem, and it keeps my changes from reboot to reboot.

But as soon as I run "badblocks -w /dev/sdX", I start getting a ton of
SCSI bus errors.  (not bad sectors)  Then the PC locks up.  I get the
same behavior from BOTH HARD DRIVES.

Here's what I tried so far:

Only connecting one HDD to the bus at a time.
Replacing the SCSI cable with a new/different one (w/terminator).
Replacing the Adaptec controller with a different one that I know works.
Removing all other cards other than the Adaptec and video card.
Tried two different video cards, one ISA and one PCI.
Reseting BIOS to defaults, on the PC and Adaptec both.
Mucking around with different BIOS settings . . .

Nothing I tried above helps.  I keep getting bus errors.

I also tried connecting a different 68 pin SCSI HDD, and it works fine.
(I don't have any other 50 pin drives to try)

Anyway, here are the question:  (finally :-)

Can people with a good understanding of SCSI look at: 
  http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/scsi/st410800n.html
and tell me how you think J01 should be set?  Remember it has an
active terminator on the end of the cable.  I haven't changed it 
since it was running fine for years, but I'm almost out of ideas.

Any other suggestions are also appreciated.

Maybe both drives decided to die at the same time . . . weird!

--------------------------------------------
Bruce Smith                bruce@armintl.com
System Administrator / Network Administrator
Armstrong International, Inc.
Three Rivers, Michigan  49093  USA
http://www.armstrong-intl.com/
--------------------------------------------