Adaptec 1522A SCSI Support (was re: New TestFDC Results Registry)

[jim stephens]

On 1/18/2018 5:44 PM, Jason T via cctalk wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 18, 2018 at 6:58 PM, Adrian Graham via cctalk
> <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>> I could, but I guess by the time I’ve sourced a replacement I might as well have bought an AHA-1522A instead, I have a couple of scouts out looking for them as we speak :) The 1522A is a full pass for TESTFDC.
> Has anyone using one of these cards made use of the SCSI function?  It
> has a Centronics 50 connector, which isn't terribly useful unless
> you've got the right cable, but if you're building an all-in-one
> imaging machine, it might be handy to have SCSI capability as well.
> It seems the driver hasn't been in Linux for quite a few versions.
> Not sure about the BSDs.
>
>
The 1522 was based on a lower cost chipset which Adaptec introduced to 
complement the 154x boards.  SCSI was suffering from being undercut by 
other interfaces in the market due to the nonstandard bios interface 
that the systems equipped with the 154x boards had to run with as bios 
got more complicated.

Also I think this was the first chip that could be in the system w/o 
having the bios initiate the interface.  The 154x (1542 for example) 
required having the bus initiated and reset at boot by the bios, since 
there was a lot of logic involved in that chip.  The 152x and the like 
could be fully integrated into a reasonable sized driver and only have 
to go the the time consuming process of resetting and enumerating 
devices and initiators, etc. when needed.

As Richard said for use with scanners and other peripheral media. The 
systems became very annoying if you didn't have boot media attached to 
the system controller to justify all the time it took to do that on 
every boot.

And this and the 151x controllers were priced lower.

I suspect the 154x and the PCI interface controllers Adaptec had should 
still be in the kernel.  You might be able to find the drivers and 
enable them in the Linux Kernel, unless some kernel driver rewrite had 
some feature that couldn't be implemented for this controller.

I don't have a lot of references for the above, and if anyone has 
updates or comments, please add them.  I'm still using the HP DL360 and 
DL380 and the like which have the higher end controllers integrated in 
for the only SCSI work I do, and have not followed these or other 
support for a long time for parallel scsi interfaces.

DL360's are so cheap that buying one with SCSI drives in the Generation 
5 or 6 or later is the best way I know of to run SCSI. Not great for 
power, but they are excellent and solid systems with a lot of OS support.
thanks
Jim