cyberstorm mk3 and scsi speed

[Whaka]

Hi,

i have a little problem from long time now... but today, i want to understand what happend.

so, i have a CS MK3 and i use the onboard scsi with a 10k rpm 18 GB drive.
the chain is well terminated, as it should be. no problem with that.
but i have a little problem with transfer speed.

the controller is given for 40 MB/s, but in the firmware, it stuck at 20 MB max.
so, by defaut, i get half of the possibilites, syspeed give around 15 MB/s.

i can enable 40 MB/s transfer rate only by using the "unit control" utility from the workbench, and i can get full speed by this way (syspeed give around 30 MB/s)
but of course, it's not reboot resistant... i have to do this after every reboot.

all Mk3/ppc work this way ? or there's a problem with the firmware ?
i use the last available (44.71)

someone with an Mk3/ppc can check the scsi in the firmware to compare scsi option ?

thanks

[Pat the Cat]

I don't know if changing firmware to default to max speed is a good idea with SCSI. It might make the controller incompatible with lower spec devices.

A better method would be to work out the sequence of commands sent to the controller to turn it to the higher speed mode, and stick such a command in your startup-sequence. How this could be done is beyond my knowledge, I must admit. I haven't booted a SCSI device for some time now.

But it saves the risk of messing up the firmware, or maybe making it incompatible in other ways. If it ain't broke, don't "fix" it.

Others may disagree of course.

[zipper]

Is it running on synchronous mode?

[Whaka]

I don't know if changing firmware to default  to max speed is a good idea with SCSI. It might make the controller  incompatible with lower spec devices.

i think it's for that case, that everything can be set on "auto" mode
but i don't understand why the firmware don't allow the max...
and the phase 5 manual say nothing about advanced configuration, they just talk about termination...

your idea sounds good about finding the "thing" which  can activate the fastest mode with the unit control utility, but i have  no clue how to do this...

Is it running on synchronous mode?

yep. otherwise things really go down.

[zipper]

I did have a stubborn IBM drive that didn't want to go synchron on Auto, it had to be forced to synchron on the Early Boot screen and worked then w/o problems. And Unit Control has been used on startup-sequence to handle drives from there. Here's the output and options for UnitControl:

[Whaka]

thank you zipper
i'll investigate how to use it that way, but i think the "Period" option should do the trick.

but to be sure of one thing, can you check in the firmware if you can go above 20 Mhz ?

[klx300r]

@ Whaka

hmm it's probably staring at me right now but where do i check the firmware version ?

[Whaka]

you can simply use hdtoolbox for that, the cybppc.device give you the version number

[klx300r]

you can simply use hdtoolbox for that, the cybppc.device give you the version number

ah thanks! seems I need to update my cybppc.device as mine is v44.24 though for my needs speed isn't an issue as I got rid of all my 'real' scsi drivesd and now only have a cd-rom and a scsi2sd board (which is very slow compared to real scsi drive)

[zipper]

Yes, that's really ancient. 44.71 here:
http://phase5.a1k.org/download.php?f=a12c7b93e0a936ab933791543da26d84&countonly=1