SCSI weirdness

[Kendric Beachey]

Here's a weird one for you.

I had my box set up with all SCSI devices: two hard drives and one CD-ROM
drive.  I'm using an adapter card that can do old-school (50 pin) SCSI
connections as well as Wide SCSI (68 pin) connections.  The CD-ROM drive was
50 pin; the hard drives were one 50 pin, one 68 pin.

Today I got a new CD-RW drive that is also a 50 pin device.  I had to buy a new
cable so I'd have enough hookups for all those 50 pin devices.  Anyway, I put
the new CD-RW in the box, and Linux got really confused trying to boot.  The
part of the boot sequence that tries to make sense out of the stuff on the SCSI
bus kept having trouble.

I've spent all afternoon trying all kinds of combinations of which device is
last on the chain, SCSI termination, leaving some drives out, etc. etc. etc. 
Now Linux can't even boot with just my old CD-ROM drive in place anymore!  I'm
booted right now using only the hard drives.

Strangely enough, Bimbos 98 happily (if slowly) boots for every combination. 
It doesn't even seem to be bothered by weird stuff such as having the SCSI
termination in the middle of the chain instead of at the end.

Anyone got any ideas?  I'm now anxiously awaiting our February meeting, where
the topic will be "Getting Kendric's Box To Boot With His CD Drives Installed."
 ;-)

--
Kendric Beachey
ak at sound.net