AHC(4) - Device Drivers Manual #
AHC(4) - Device Drivers Manual
NAME #
ahc - Adaptec VL/EISA/PCI SCSI interface
SYNOPSIS #
**ahc0 at isa? ** (VL) **ahc* at eisa? ** (EISA) **ahc* at pci? ** (PCI) option AHC_ALLOW_MEMIO option AHC_TMODE_ENABLE
DESCRIPTION #
This driver provides access to the
SCSI
bus(es) connected to Adaptec
AIC7770
,
AIC7850
,
AIC7860
,
AIC7870
,
AIC7880
,
AIC7890
,
AIC7891
,
AIC7892
,
AIC7895
,
AIC7896
,
AIC7897
and
AIC7899
host adapter chips.
These chips are found on many motherboards as well as the following
Adaptec SCSI controller cards:
274X(W)
,
274X(T)
,
284X
,
2910
,
2915
,
2920
,
2930C
,
2930U2
,
2940
,
2940J
,
2940N
,
2940U
,
2940AU
,
2940UW
,
2940UW Dual
,
2940UW Pro
,
2940U2W
,
2940U2B
,
2950U2W
,
2950U2B
,
19160B
,
29160B
,
29160N
,
3940
,
3940U
,
3940AU
,
3940UW
,
3940AUW
,
3940U2W
,
3950U2
,
3960
,
39160
,
3985
,
and
4944UW
.
Driver features include support for twin and wide buses, fast, ultra, ultra2 and ultra160 synchronous transfers depending on controller type, tagged queuing, and SCB paging, and target mode.
Memory mapped I/O can be enabled for PCI devices with the
“AHC_ALLOW_MEMIO
”
configuration option.
Memory mapped I/O is more efficient than the alternative, programmed I/O.
Most PCI BIOSes will map devices so that either technique for communicating
with the card is available.
In some cases,
usually when the PCI device is sitting behind a PCI->PCI bridge,
the BIOS may fail to properly initialize the chip for memory mapped I/O.
The typical symptom of this problem is a system hang if memory mapped I/O
is attempted.
Most modern motherboards perform the initialization correctly and work fine
with this option enabled.
This is the default mode of operation on every architecture except i386.
Individual controllers may be configured to operate in the target role through
the
“AHC_TMODE_ENABLE
”
configuration option.
The value assigned to this option should be a bitmap of all units where target
mode is desired.
For example, a value of 0x25, would enable target mode on units 0, 2, and 5.
A value of 0x8a enables it for units 1, 3, and 7.
Per target configuration performed in the
SCSI-Select
menu, accessible at boot
in
non-EISA
models,
or through an
EISA
configuration utility for
EISA
models,
is honored by this driver.
This includes synchronous/asynchronous transfers,
maximum synchronous negotiation rate,
wide transfers,
disconnection,
the host adapter’s SCSI ID,
and,
in the case of
EISA
Twin Channel controllers,
the primary channel selection.
For systems that store non-volatile settings in a system specific manner
rather than a serial eeprom directly connected to the aic7xxx controller,
the
BIOS
must be enabled for the driver to access this information.
This restriction applies to all
EISA
and many motherboard configurations.
Note that I/O addresses are determined automatically by the probe routines,
but care should be taken when using a 284x
(VESA
local bus controller)
in an
EISA
system.
The jumpers setting the I/O area for the 284x should match the
EISA
slot into which the card is inserted to prevent conflicts with other
EISA
cards.
Performance and feature sets vary throughout the aic7xxx product line. The following table provides a comparison of the different chips supported by the ahc driver. Note that wide and twin channel features, although always supported by a particular chip, may be disabled in a particular motherboard or card design.
*Chip MIPS Bus MaxSync MaxWidth SCBs Features*
aic7770 10 EISA/VL 10MHz 16Bit 4 1
aic7850 10 PCI/32 10MHz 8Bit 3
aic7860 10 PCI/32 20MHz 8Bit 3
aic7870 10 PCI/32 10MHz 16Bit 16
aic7880 10 PCI/32 20MHz 16Bit 16
aic7890 20 PCI/32 40MHz 16Bit 16 3 4 5 6 7 8
aic7891 20 PCI/64 40MHz 16Bit 16 3 4 5 6 7 8
aic7892 20 PCI/64 80MHz 16Bit 16 3 4 5 6 7 8
aic7895 15 PCI/32 20MHz 16Bit 16 2 3 4 5
aic7895C 15 PCI/32 20MHz 16Bit 16 2 3 4 5 8
aic7896 20 PCI/32 40MHz 16Bit 16 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
aic7897 20 PCI/64 40MHz 16Bit 16 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
aic7899 20 PCI/64 80MHz 16Bit 16 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
- Multiplexed Twin Channel Device - One controller servicing two buses.
- Multi-function Twin Channel Device - Two controllers on one chip.
- Command Channel Secondary DMA Engine - Allows scatter gather list and SCB prefetch.
- 64 Byte SCB Support - SCSI CDB is embedded in the SCB to eliminate an extra DMA.
- Block Move Instruction Support - Doubles the speed of certain sequencer operations.
- ‘Bayonet’ style Scatter Gather Engine - Improves S/G prefetch performance.
- Queuing Registers - Allows queuing of new transactions without pausing the sequencer.
- Ultra160 support.
- Multiple Target IDs - Allows the controller to respond to selection as a target on multiple SCSI IDs.
SCSI CONTROL BLOCKS (SCBs) #
Every transaction sent to a device on the SCSI bus is assigned a ‘SCSI Control Block’ (SCB). The SCB contains all of the information required by the controller to process a transaction. The chip feature table lists the number of SCBs that can be stored in on-chip memory. All chips with model numbers greater than or equal to 7870 allow for the on-chip SCB space to be augmented with external SRAM up to a maximum of 255 SCBs. Very few Adaptec controller configurations have external SRAM.
If external SRAM is not available, SCBs are a limited resource. Using the SCBs in a straight forward manner would only allow the driver to handle as many concurrent transactions as there are physical SCBs. To fully utilize the SCSI bus and the devices on it, requires much more concurrency. The solution to this problem is SCB Paging, a concept similar to memory paging. SCB paging takes advantage of the fact that devices usually disconnect from the SCSI bus for long periods of time without talking to the controller. The SCBs for disconnected transactions are only of use to the controller when the transfer is resumed. When the host queues another transaction for the controller to execute, the controller firmware will use a free SCB if one is available. Otherwise, the state of the most recently disconnected (and therefore most likely to stay disconnected) SCB is saved, via DMA, to host memory, and the local SCB reused to start the new transaction. This allows the controller to queue up to 255 transactions regardless of the amount of SCB space. Since the local SCB space serves as a cache for disconnected transactions, the more SCB space available, the less host bus traffic consumed saving and restoring SCB data.
SEE ALSO #
ahd(4), cd(4), ch(4), [eisa(4)](/man/man4/eisa.4), intro(4), isa(4), pci(4), scsi(4), sd(4), st(4), uk(4)
AUTHORS #
The core
ahc
driver, the
AIC7xxx
sequencer-code assembler, and the firmware running on the aic7xxx chips
were written by
Justin T. Gibbs.
The OpenBSD platform dependent code was written by Steve P. Murphree, Jr and Kenneth R. Westerback.
BUGS #
Some Quantum drives (at least the Empire 2100 and 1080s) will not run on an
AIC7870
Rev B in synchronous mode at 10MHz.
Controllers with this problem have a 42 MHz clock crystal on them and run
slightly above 10MHz.
This confuses the drive and hangs the bus.
Setting a maximum synchronous negotiation rate of 8MHz in the
SCSI-Select
utility will allow normal operation.
Although the Ultra2 and Ultra160 products have sufficient instruction RAM space to support both the initiator and target roles concurrently, this configuration is disabled in favor of allowing the target role to respond on multiple target ids. A method for configuring dual role mode should be provided.
Tagged Queuing is not supported in target mode.
Reselection in target mode fails to function correctly on all high voltage differential boards as shipped by Adaptec. Information on how to modify HVD board to work correctly in target mode is available from Adaptec.
OpenBSD 7.5 - August 14, 2012