Subject: More adaptec 2842 problems

From: "Niels Bo Johansen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 1996 11:16:02 +0100

Now I have found bootdisk (.../buzz-updates/disks-i386/special-
kernels/boot/boot1440_2.0.5-1.bin) from wich I can boot. That's 
good, but now new problems has raised. After ``booting/rooting'' I 
tried to install the basedisks. While doing that the installation 
process sometimes stops telling that one of the basedisks (it's 
random witch one) is bad, but they are not, they are new and I have 
checked them with more disk utilities. Mustly I can read all the 
disks correctly, but when time comes to extracting the files new 
problems shows up. Each time when extracting the files each time I 
most likely get a new error. Typical I get a message somthing like:

general protection : 0000
CPU : 0
EIP : 0010:[<00118be4>]
EFLAGS : 00010206
.
.
.
several register, stack, ... dumps
.
.
.
Segmentation fault

One time I was actually lucky installing the basesystem. But (again) 
then a new problem showed up. I copied some *.gz files to my computer 
and then tried gzip's integrity test (on the file )

gzip -tv filename.gz   (file on the computer)

and sometimes I am told that the same file is OK and sometimes not 
(more or less random). But what is much worse is that I often get one 
of the ``Ooops'' and dumps like a I have just mentioned.

What I am telling is that something acts unstable and that's what I 
would like to ask some of the experts out there about. Is it

- Because of some bugs in the rather new kernel version or some of 
  the modules (aic7xxx or some other), or is it
  
- Because of my hardware (jumper settings, BIOS settings, etc) or 
  whatever one can imagine. Is there som thing special one should be 
  aware of installing on a PC machine with an adaptec 2842 host 
  adapter.

I am ready to give more details about my everything. I can tell that 
DOS (5.0 or 6.2) is running fine on my machine, but on the other side 
a real mode system as DOS does not require much of the host adapter.

Niels Bo Johansen