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> It is my understanding that the built-in scsi adapter in the > Dock I is a proprietary design. It uses the 8-bit Future Domain TMC-950 chip. > Does anyone know if Linux will recognize the built-in scsi of the > Dock I? I.e. > (1) Can one build a Linux kernel by selecting an appropriate > scsi device driver during the configuration part of a > kernel build? If so, what scsi driver should one use? Yes, although with possible caveats -- see below. Here's a summary of my experience with the Dock I SCSI and older versions (1.2.x and 1.3.x) of Linux that I posted to the list in June 1996. I don't know how much of this still applies to more recent 2.0.x kernels. ================================================== First of all, I did my initial Linux install (a 1.2.13 kernel from a Slackware-based distribution) from a borrowed Adaptec 1542CF installed in the Dock I's slot (at the time, I didn't have the appropriate external cable for the Dock I's SCSI). Eventually I got a cable, and was able to get the dock's internal SCSI adapter recognized, using the bootstring of the form "tmc8xx=<addr>,<irq>" However, the adapter returned junk from the device identification bus probe at bootup, and none of the attached devices worked. After hacking around, I found that removing the compile-time "ARBITRATION" option from the tmc8xx driver allowed things to mostly work OK, and I was able to access an attached external 3x CD-ROM. So, I attached an an additional external SCSI hard drive as well, and built a filesystem, etc. However, that didn't work so well -- in particular, I'd observe bus hangs and file corruption on the SCSI hard disk when writing large files (16mb or so). Next, I investigated some of the development kernels. I noticed the changes summary for 1.3.50 mentioned some fixes for the seagate driver. (The Seagate ST0x and Future Domain TMC-950-based boards, which is what's in the Dock I, are almost identical, and are both implemented in the kernel source module "drivers/scsi/seagate.c".) So, I repeated my experiments with 1.3.85. I still had to remove the "ARBITRATION" option, but I didn't experience any bus hangs or file corruption, after working the SCSI devices fairly hard. I was also successful in attaching and using an external DAT drive (I didn't try that with 1.2.13 at all). Final summary: - I needed to remove the "ARBITRATION" option in all cases. - the driver in 1.2.13 is flakey under load, but seems solid under 1.3.85 (I picked 1.3.85 more-or-less at random, by the way; my guess is that it's solid in anything above 1.3.50). - performance is fairly poor; the hardware really isn't very capable. - you're very unlikely to be able to do an installation from the Dock 1 SCSI. Hope this helps somebody. BTW, all this was with a ThinkPad 360Cs with 20 megs of memory. -- Tim Tyhurst tim@excelsior.com