BIG problem with 1542B and Quantum disks

[Tom Manos]

Hello netters,

I need help in a big way.

I've started having problems with my UNIX system since I installed an
Adaptec AHA-1542B and two Quantum SCSI disks: a ProDrive 210S and a ProDrive
105S, both internal.  I'm running with the following h/w & s/w:
Zeos 386/20, 8MB RAM, no coprocessor, generic VGA card.
Microport SysV/386 r3.2.2 with the Columbia Data Products driver set.

I'm experiencing the following symptoms:

When both drives are installed and mounted doing:
find <drive1> -depth -print | cpio -pd > <drive2>
will hang the system after a random but small number of copies.  The disks
will seem to slow down for a few seconds, until they come to a complete halt
from which there is no return save the reset button.  The second disk is
totally unusable. As long as I'm only accessing one disk, everything works.

When only the 210S is mounted, the system will run, but disk throughput
seems slow, and when there is intense disk activity (like when news is being
processed), keyboard response is agonizingly slow while waiting for the
disk.  Sometimes it takes more than a minute for a response.  Also, even
with only one drive mounted, I've noticed that when using the floppy
(with cpio for instance), the floppy head will do wierd seeks, like it got
a read error and is retrying, when there is SCSI disk activity.  I'm
running the floppy off the 1542B. 

The AHA-1542B is configured as follows:
SCSI id 7
Synchronous transfer enabled
SCSI parity enabled
DMA channel 5
DMA request 5
DMA acknowledge 5
Interrupt channel 11
DMA speed 5MB/s
Adaptec bios enabled
bios base addr DC00
auto sense enabled

The drives are configured as SCSI id 0 & 1, with parity enabled.  I've got
terminators on the 1542B and the farthest drive from the card (the 105S).

Can anyone tell me what my problem could be?  Microport can't.  Alliance
Peripheral Systems (my retailer) can't.  I've got a 105MB doorstop right
now that I need to make useful.

Please help!
Thanks!

Tom  (tmanos at wyvern or ...!uunet!xanth!wyvern!tmanos)
-- 
Tom Manos      Norfolk, VA      tmanos at wyvern       (...!xanth!wyvern!tmanos)
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