What kind of problems might I encounter installing my SCSI system?
Typical problems with SCSI drives are termination and SCSI IDs. You'llhave flakey behavior if there's no termination resistor on the
drive at the end of a SCSI "chain". Worse are double termination resistors.
Some people mistakenly leave a resistor jumper on a drive when it's not at
the end of a SCSI "chain." This also makes the system flakey.
Carefully read your SCSI adapter manual on termination if you're unsure
about it. A SCSI drive can run for hours with no problems--then boom, you
get a panic. Always check cabling, pins, and connections and use the
*shortest* cable possible. The first thing I do when I have a problem
with a SCSI device is to reseat the SCSI cables
(with the machine powered off).
With SCSI IDs, a common problem is that the IDs on the drive, usually set with
dip switches or a button, don't match the settings with your software
(Solaris) or it's a duplicate ID. Check the IDs carefully when adding
or upgrading SCSI devices. The boot drive must be ID 0.
Other more obscure problems are setting the BIOS address space for the disk
controller the same as the network card address space, and the PCI video
card address conflicting with PCI SCSI disk controller BIOS address space.
SCSI ISA adapter support has been removed in Solaris 8--use PCI.
[Adapted from Bob Palowoda's Solaris 2.4 x86 FAQ]
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