SCSI and Intaractive-related questions - new site

[Alex Beylin]

It showed up last Friday - finally, the 486-25 box from Tri-Star.
The rest of the weekend was spend assembling the system, installing 
Interactive Unix ver. 2.2 and testing things.  As the result, here 
are a few questions (with many more yet to come, I am sure),
I have not been able to puzzle-out myself.
Any and all help will be much apreciated.  RTFM responces are 
greatfully accepted, provided aproximate location is indicated.

1.  The system came with WD MFM controller.  I bought Adaptec 1542A 
controller and 300 MB disk from another source and was planning to use
it as the primary drive and two MFM disks as secondary storage. Alas,
I discovered later that the only supported configuration has MFM as
primary controller.  Obviously, I would not want to do that and place
my swap and root on a slower drive.  Am I missing a work-around?  Is
there a way to use my MFM drives for DOS, if not UNIX.  (The system
will not even boot now if I have any MFM drives connected to the 
controller).

2.  Another question about the Adaptec controller.  The manual that
came with it specifies that in order to use both internal and external
SCSI devices, I need to remove two terminating resistors from the card and
make sure both internal ane external chains are properly terminated.  Well,
the hard drive I have inside the machine has a row of 50 pin-slots above
the connector for the ribbon cable that I assume are for a terminating
resistor, but I have never seen anything a terminating resistor that long,
nor can any local vendors suggest a source.  Am I right in my guess that
I need to have the HD terminated in some way before I can ass external
devices and where do I get the proper terminator if I am?  I have tried
adding an external SCSI tape drive  and removing either on or both 
of the resistors on the 1542 card, but could not come up under UNIX.

3.  Is there a way to have console operate in 43-line mode?  I have
a Paradise 1024x768 card and NEC MultiSync II monitor, but do not
have disk or memory to install X (yet).

4.  From back when I had a 286-based Xenix system, I have an AST 4-port
card.  Now, the drivers that came with the card are useless on this 
system and AST tech support told me that they do not provide drivers 
for Interactive and rely on SCO for drivers in that enviroment.  Is 
there a way I could use this card?  The manual suffeed page attrition
over the years, so if someone in the net can tell me what I need to do
to set it up as COM3 or COM4 (already have COM1 and COM2), I would be very
greatfull.

5.  Is there ftp archive for 386-based unix software and patches?
For example, diffs for gcc, gcc+ and GNU emacs would save time and
effort if they existed.  (I have not tried to compile either of
those yet, but somehow  I can't belive it will all go with no hitch).

Thanks in advance for any help with the above,

-- Alex


 Alex Beylin, Systems Specialist| +1 313 759-7114
 alexb at cfctech.cfc.com          | Chrysler Corp.
 sharkey!cfctech!alexb          | MIS, Distributed Systems
 ATT Mail ID: attmail!abeylin   | Southfield, MI 48034