SCSI MEDIUM_ERROR

[John Lohmeyer - SCSI]

* From the SCSI Reflector (scsi at symbios.com), posted by:
* John Lohmeyer - SCSI <jlohmeye>
*
Somehow majordomo got confused about the attached message and sent it
to the reflector admin account.  Here it is a couple weeks late...

Hi all,

Sorry for reposting this again, but so far I've gotten no help from the
vendors or anyone else and I still cannot reliably use our backup
system. All Cheyenne could tell me was to buy ANOTHER $300 SCSI card,
after the previous one they recommended didn't fix anything. Nearly
every time I load the backup software the server HARD crashes, or at the
very least the entire SCSI external tower is deactivated.

If ANYONE has any idea what these error messages mean, I would be
forever gratefull. One of you SCSI engineers HAS to know what this
means, you guys wrote the darn specs :-)

(grovelling before the SCSI masters.........)

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Hiya. I am having some strange errors that nobody seems to know how to
fix.

It all started when one of our SCSI drives failed and had to be
replaced. After this occurance I moved the SCSI tape drive from a
workstation to the SCSI Tower on the server and installed ARCSERVE 6
|from Cheyenne on the server.

I then moved the tape drive to an internal SCSI channel on the server
using an Adaptec 1520 scsi card, to see if this was causing the problem
but the problem remains even with two scsi buses.

Now when I load ARCSERVE I get periodic SCSI error messages at the
server console. The following message pops up every 13 minutes when
ARCSERVE is loaded:

10/3/96 9:56:25 am  Severity = 5.
0.0.0 (SDMSNET3) SCSI Check Condition: SenseKey=MEDIUM_ERROR (8D000003)

The external SCSI tower has 5 drives:

ID      Model                   SIZE

00      Seagate ST31200N        1 gig   
01      Quantum DSP3210S        2.14 gig
02      Fujitsu M2694ES-512     1 gig
03      Micropolis      2105    500 meg
04      Seagate ST32155N        2.1 gig    <--- terminated

The tape drive is as follows:

01      Conner  CTMS 3200       2 gig   -TAPE BACKUP-


Tech support for every part of this system wasn't able to help, from
Cheyenne to the SCSI card manufacturer to the PC manufacturer.

I am using a DFI SHA-1500P PCI SCSI card on the server scsi drive tower
with the latest drivers (NCRSDMS3.DSK)

The Adaptec 1520 card is using the latest AHA1520.DSK and ASPITRAN.DSK

The server is a Netware 3.11 P90 system with the entire SCSI system in
an external tower. (except for the tape drive)

I also received the following error messages last week which are
probably a symptom of the same problem:

10/3/96 8:22:47 am  Severity = 5.
0.0.0 (SDMSNET3) CAM Error: CMD_TIMEOUT (8D000003)

10/3/96 8:22:47 am  Severity = 4.
1.1.10 Device #3 (8D030) MICROP  :2105-08MQ1068605:2401 deactivated due
to drive failure.

At this point the server had to be downed and rebooted. After I unloaded
ARCSERVE however none of these messages has appeared.

Any help resolving these issues will be greatly appreciated, I have
gotten no help from anyone responsible for this hardware and am getting
desperate, I really need to know what is causing this. I believe it has
something to do with the power on the SCSI bus, but am just guessing.
All my SCSI drives have many options for SCSI Term power, etc. but I
cannot find *anywhere* information on how an external SCSI tower should
be setup with many drives.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions you may have,

Micah Nerren

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