[KLUG Members] re: taken Nightshade

[Adam Williams]

>>What the pit-bull spit is going on?
>>How can three different SCSI controllers not work on this board?  Or
>>work but be hopelessly useless?  When everything works in the other
>>box.....  I did try moving boards to different slots, not using
>>various
>>boards, every possible combination.  Nothing had any effect.  Various
>>things would work for some short random period of time, and then the
>>whole contraption would dump again
>>Any idea?
>Well, just a couple of basic things.  Sorry, but they're all I can think 
>of.  Possibility 1:  I'm not familiar with the motherboards in question 
>here, so is it possible that they're using a different motherboard chipset? 

I'm certain they do.  One minor motivation for leaving the old board, 
the nightshade chipset is much more advanced than the consumer grade
chipset on the old board.

>If that's true, and you built a custom kernel for the old one it might not 
>work properly with the Nightshade.  

Hmmm.  Hadn't thought of that.  I never heard that kernels built on one
machine would have chipset dependencies.  Ok, I'll throw an IDE drive in
the nightshade, and see if I can get through an RH install and kernel
build.

>Possibility 2:  Sounds like you've got 
>a VERY heavily loaded machine there, with the multiple SCSI cards and a 

Most of the devices are in external cabinets which have their own (dual)
power supplies.  There are only four drives in the chassis itself (two
pair of 4.5gb fujitsus),  and it currently runs with the really huge
~300W ps in the ancient AT case.

>stack of drives.  A power supply "approved for the Nightshade" might not 
>have enough juice to run the Nightshade AND all that other stuff.  You 
>might try dropping in the biggest, beefiest power supply you can find.  I 
>have seen cases where a motherboard with a too-small power supply will boot 
>and install fine, but won't have enough power to run anything in the PCI 
>bus.  

I'll try that if the kernel build doesn't work.