need help configuring tmscp device (exabyte)

[Chris Torek]

In article <423 at uwslh.UUCP> dem at uwslh.UUCP (David E. Miran) writes:
>We have a VAX-11/750 running 4.3 BSD unix and are attempting to install
>an Exabyte tape system with a CMD Technologies controller which emulates a
>TMSCP device.

Bleah.  (I hate TMSCP almost as much as MSCP :-) )

The TMSCP driver in 4.3BSD (and in 4.3-tahoe) is based on an early
Ultrix driver and simply does not work.  (It works for a few special
cases.  It crashes with a TK70 on a uVAX 3x00, after about the third
operation.  Rather than fix it, I intend to replace it completely;
the current code is an unmaintainable mess, inherited from the old
UDA/RA driver.)

The crash you described sounds suspiciously like a 4.3BSD-tahoe bug
rather than a 4.3BSD bug; that bug is simply that someone accidently
changed

	dmf_uballoc[ui->ui_ubanum]

to

	dmf_uballoc[ui->ui_unit]

but that does not strike until open() time, not probe().

Looking at the tmscpprobe() code shows nothing helpful---if the board
is not installed, it should time out after about ten seconds.

>Someone suggested changing the order of my configuration file so the tmscp
>device is probed last.  However, the system still probes for devices in
>the same order.

This is very odd.  The system probes in the order of ubdinit[] (in
ioconf.c); ubdinit[] is built based on the order in the config file.
It sounds as though the kernels built in /sys/FOOVAX are not the
kernels being booted.
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris at mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris