53C875 firmware hack?
Adam Stouffer
start to boot on a PC164 board but stops with a rom checksum error
because its not a genuine DEC part.
Has anyone had success flashing the firmware or even hacking the OpenVMS
drivers?
Adam
Benjamin Gawert
> I have a Tekram scsi controller with a 53C875 chipset. OpenVMS will
> start to boot on a PC164 board but stops with a rom checksum error
> because its not a genuine DEC part.
If I remember correctly Tekram used generic NEC/Symbios Logic/LSI
chipsets but in a non-standard configuration with non-NEC/Symbios
Logic/LSI firmware. This often caused problems when other NEC/Symbios
Logic/LSI-based controllers (which basically are all the same standard
design using NEC/Symbios Logic/LSI's SDMS firmware) worked fine. As far
as I remember because of the different configuration standard SDMS
firmware (which is also used in genuine DEC cards) does not work with
Tekram controllers.
I'd drop it and get a non-Tekram controller with the same chip.
Benjamin
Wolfgang Rupp
I never had success with Tekram's Symbios-based controllers and
Alpha. However, a "genuine noname" 53C875 worked out of the box
for me. OpenVMS just accepted it, Tru64 complained about an
"unsupported controller" but worked anyway.
Wolfgang Rupp
Adam Stouffer
>
> I never had success with Tekram's Symbios-based controllers and
> Alpha. However, a "genuine noname" 53C875 worked out of the box
> for me. OpenVMS just accepted it, Tru64 complained about an
> "unsupported controller" but worked anyway.
>
> Wolfgang Rupp
>
Doing some reading turned up a post claiming that OpenVMS checks the pci
id of the card before installing. I found an updated firmware version
for the Tekram card and tried to use a hex editor on the file to change
the vendor id to what DEC used. However I did not realize that to find
the string you had to reverse the order. I changed the wrong one and the
card still worked. I made the correct change and tried to flash the card
the next day but the program simply refused and the card would only hang
my PC indefinitely.
Would it have worked if I changed the right string? Not sure. But I did
locate a cheap DEC card on ebay. Amazing how the AGP versions of the
Elsa Synergy cards are dirt cheap while the PCI versions go for hundreds!
Adam