Re: LOR on current

On 3/24/2004 5:07 PM, Scott Long wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Mar 2004, Jon Noack wrote:
>>On 3/24/2004 4:04 PM, Scott Long wrote:
>>>Don Bowman wrote:
>>>>can i switch asr to aac without reformatting my disks?
>>>
>>>I beleive so, but I'll have to get back to you on the details.
>>>There might be some gotchas.
>>
>>I looked through the whole thread, so if I missed something and this is
>>a stupid question, I apologize:
>>I have an Adaptec 2100S (uses an i960RS according to the ASR source) --
>>does the above mean I can use the AAC driver instead of the ASR driver
>>(after adding the device id, of course)?
> 
> No.  The difference with these cards (and all of the other cards that use
> an i960 processor) is not in the chips themselves, but in the firmware
> that runs on them.  The part that I'm unsure of (and I'll find out in the
> next day) is whether the AAC 2120/2200 cards can migrate the on-disk
> metadata from an ASR array.  Having reviewed the firmware, I'm pretty sure
> that it can, but I want to make sure before I jeoprodize Don's data =-)

OK, I thought it sounded too good to be true.

You seem to be in the know, perhaps you can answer this question 
(without violating an NDA):
Are the older cards capable of running the new firmware but Adaptec has 
just not updated them (nearing EOL, etc.), or is there more to it than 
just having an i960?

>>If you're not sure but optimistic, I'd be happy to give it a shot and
>>report back.  I have free disk space on one of my machines at home
>>(primarily Windows but I've run FreeBSD on it before).  I'd prefer if it
>>wouldn't nuke other partitions, but it's mostly games so it wouldn't be
>>a huge loss if it did.
> 
> Feel free to experiment, but don't be surprised if it eats your disks,
> dogs, children, etc.

Are they fundamentally different, or would you think this possible with 
a decent amount of work?  If you don't have any idea, fair enough -- I'm 
just trying to figure out how much effort this will take and if it's 
worthwhile for me to try.

Disks (backups) and children (whoa there -- I'm only 24) I don't mind, 
but I draw the line at dogs.  That's just plain hateful ;-).

>>Jon
>>
>>P.S. Just be thankful you're not running Windows 9x.  The 2100S has
>>Windows 9x drivers, but even the most recently released version causes
>>extensive file corruption.  An IDE drive on the same machine is fine
>>with Windows 9x.  It seems to work fine with Windows 2000/XP, however.
> 
> Have you reported this to Adaptec tech support?  I can't say that I'm
> overly thrilled with many things that relate to ASR, but this is worse
> than normal.

I did not report it to Adaptec tech support -- at the time I experienced 
the corruption, I thought it was just Win98 being its inferior self. 
Only months later (when I had a renewed hankering for the awesome game 
Tie Fighter) did I consider the 2100S might be causing it and try IDE 
instead.  IDE worked fine, so I assumed the 2100S was to blame. 
Considering all things were not equal (same basic machine but I think I 
had a new video card), it may not have been the 2100S.  In any case, I 
no longer want/need to put Win98 on the 2100S, so it's not an issue for me.

> P.S. My other email address (for the next week) is scott_long_at_adaptec.com

Nice...

Jon