******************************************************************* NETWARE.TXT ******************************************************************* This file describes the features and use of the NCR SDMS device drivers for the Novell NetWare v3.1x and v4.x operating system environments. It is divided into the following sections: Introduction NetWare v3.1x, and v4.x Features Description Installation Command Line Options Troubleshooting ******************************************************************* *************************** Introduction ************************** The NCR SDMS 3.0 drivers allow the user to utilize an NCR SCSI controller or processor, controlled by an NCR SCSI BIOS, with NetWare. The SDMS 3.0 software, coupled with an NCR SCSI controller or processor, provides an NCR SCSI solution within the NetWare environment. Separate drivers are provided for Novell NetWare v3.1x, and Novell NetWare v4.x. The following information will assist in a successful installation of the NCR SDMS SCSI drivers. *********************** NetWare v3.1x, and v4.x ******************* * Features * Supports the ASPI interface Provides synchronous negotiation (including fast SCSI) Supports multiple host adapters Allows multiple logical unit number (LUN) Supports Disconnect/Reselect Supports scatter-gather Supports tagged command queuing Allows shared interrupts Supports Wide SCSI (single-ended and differential) Supports device exclusion Supports NWOS2 * Description * There is a separate NCR SDMS 3.0 device driver and ASPI manager for each of two major releases of NetWare. For NetWare v3.1x, the main SDMS device driver is NCRSDMS3.DSK, and the file ASPICAM3.NLM is loaded if support for the ASPI interface is desired (this is required for devices such as tape drives). For NetWare v4.x, the main SDMS device driver is NCRSDMS4.DSK, and the file ASPICAM4.NLM is loaded if support for the ASPI interface is desired. * Installation * Install NetWare as described in the Novell NetWare Installation Manual. The following information is provided to assist in the installation. For An Existing Installation Of NetWare With NCR SDMS Drivers: Replace the NCRSDMSx.DSK and ASPICAMx.NLM drivers with the ones supplied on the NCR device drivers diskette. No other actions should be repuired to use these new drivers. You may may want toreview the command line options to insure you are using the best options for your configuration. For NetWare v3.1x New Installations: 1. Create a directory to which the NetWare file server is to be installed. Change to that directory and copy all the files from the NetWare system disks into that directory. 2. Copy the file NCRSDMS3.DSK from the NCR device drivers diskette into this directory. If ASPI support is desired, also copy ASPICAM3.NLM. 3. To start NetWare and continue the installation, type: SERVER 4. When prompted, enter the name of the file server and network (IPX) number. See the chapter on file server installation in the NetWare Installation Manual for restrictions and further information. 5. At the NetWare prompt, type: LOAD NCRSDMS3 <options> This command will cause the main driver to be loaded. Without this command, NetWare will be unable to access the hard disk drive. If ASPI support is desired, also type: LOAD ASPICAM3 6. To bring up the Installation menu, at the NetWare prompt type: LOAD INSTALL Continue with the installation according to the file server installation chapter in the Novell NetWare Installation Manual. 7. At the Available System Options menu, select the EDIT STARTUP.NCF option and check to see that the line LOAD NCRSDMS3 is in the file. If not, add this line to the file. This eliminates the need to load drivers by hand every time the system is powered up. If the line appears more than once, the duplicate statements should be removed and all references to "port=xxxx", "slot=xxxx" and/or "mem=xxxx" should be removed. For NetWare v4.x New Installations: 1. Begin the file server installation as per the instuctions in the file server installation chapter in the Novell NetWare Installation Manual. 2. The NetWare installation procedure will prompt you for a Disk Driver. Insert the NCR device drivers diskette into drive a: or b:. Then select the INS key to select an unlisted driver, and F3 to specify the path to search for the driver, and finally enter the appropriate driver letter, A: or B: The NCRSDMS4.DSK driver should appear as a selection. Select the driver. 3. Next you will be prompted with the available command line options toload the driver. A description of each option will appear in the box at the bottom of the installation screen. A more detailed description is alsogiven later in this document, in the section titled Command Line Options. Select any options needed for your particular installation. 4. When asked to edit the STARTUP.NCF file, make sure NCRSDMS4 is loaded only once. If present, remove the "port=xxxx slot=xxxx mem=xxxx" options from the command line. 5. After the installation is complete, if ASPI support is also desired, down the server and copy the ASPICAM4.NLM file to the appropriate server directory, which is SERVER.40 by default. * Command Line Options * The NCRSDMS3.DSK and NCRSDMS4.DSK drivers have many tuning parameters. (At this time there are no command line options for the ASPICAM3.NLM or ASPICAM4. NLM drivers.) Following is a list of tuning parameters available, including the default option and a list of valid options. Following each parameter is a description of when a parameter should be used and any impact its use/disuse might incur. Please note applicable versions listed for each option. If an option is specified but the assignment is not valid, then the default value will be used. The NCRSDMS3.DSK and NCRSDMS4.DSK drivers will be referred to in the remainder of this section as NCRSDMSX.DSK, where X refers to the appropriate NetWare operating system version. The options described below are used by placing the specified characters on the load command line for the NCRSDMS driver. For example, if the Verbose Mode command line option is desired in NetWare 3.1X, the load command line should look like this: load NCRSDMS3 -v Using the Verbose Mode Option Command line option: -v Function: Display the current settings of all driver options. This option will indicate the option settings for this load of the driver. Using the Help Mode Option Command line option: -? or -h Function: Display the options available in the driver. Possible Impact: The driver will not load with -? or -h specified. This option may be specified on the command line for a brief description of each of the options available in the driver, as well as valid values for each option. If the -? and other options are specified, the help screen will be invoked, the other options will be ignored and the driver will not be loaded. Using the Tag Command Queuing Option Command line option: qtags=<option> Default value: enable Valid options: enable, disable Function: Enable/disable tag command queuing for the devices Possible Impact: Tagged commands may result in improved I/O throughput in devices that support such an option. Enabling the option results in the driver issuing tagged command requests to the devices that support tagged queuing. Devices that do not support tagged queuing are not issued tagged requests. Depending on the drive controller, throughput of the device may be increased by the use of queue tags, although an optimal number of queue tags is based on the specific device type. Using the Depth of Queue Tags Option Command line option: qdepth=<option> Default value: 10 Valid options: 0-128 Function: Set the depth of the queue for tag command queuing.This value designates the depth of the queue per LUN (I_T_L nexus), e.g. this value designates the depth of the queue per device, or per LUN, if a device has multiple LUNs. Possible Impact: Must be set to optimize the performance of tagged command queuing. This option is valid only when tag command queuing (qtags) is enabled, which it is by default. 0 is equivalent to qtags=disable, and takes precedence over the setting of the qtags option. While the actual depth of the queue depends on the specific drive controller, for single drives values of about 10-30 are typically most optimal. A greater number may be optimal for peripherals such as disk arrays. Users should experiment with various qdepth values to determine the most optimal performance of their particular setup. The optimal qdepth value is based on different aspects of the system, including but not limited to: the processor, the available memory, the disk drives, and other peripherals. Note: The driver supports a maximum of 128 qtags per controller at any given time. The driver may allocate fewer qtags per device if this limit is being reached. Using the Base Timeout Option Command line option: timeout=<option> Default value: 30 Valid options: Any integer value 30 to 999999999 Function: Specify the minimum value (in seconds) for command timeout. Possible Impact: Insure system integrity when using a slow device. Performance may be reduced. The amount of time, in seconds, allowed for a command is dynamically determined by the number of pending commands and a base offset, or base timeout. If a device is slow, this value may be increased to insure the device has adequate time to respond to a command issued to it before the command times out. This timeout is determined based on the number of outstanding IOs per device. Using the Sorting of Read requests Option Command line option: sort=<option> Default value: enable Valid options: enable, disable Function: Enable/disable sorting of read commands to be issued to devices. Possible Impact: Enabling will normally yield increased performance based on the target device controller. If the devices connected to the host adapter(s) are of a non-buffered architecture, such as AT&T's (formerly NCR) 6298 disk array, then sorting of reads may result in a performance degradation, since the absence of cache provides no benefit for sorted requests. In this instance the sort option should be disabled. On most disk drives, an on-board cache allows for reading ahead of data, and by sorting read requests, the probabilities of achieving a cache hit are greatly increased, thus increasing the overall performance of the driver. Using the Shared Interrupts Option Command line option: shared_int=<option> Default value: disable Valid options: enable, disable Function: Support shared interrupts. Possible Impact: Enabling may cause a performance degradation. The shared interrupt option should be enabled any time a PCI card other than NCR Host Adapters are added to a system which assigns all PCI cards the same interrupt value. The added card must be able to support shared interrupts. The driver automatically handles the case of more than one NCR host adapter sharing an interrupt. Using the Exclusion of Devices Option Command line option: xcl=<device>[:device ...] Default value: All devices recognized by the driver, i.e. no devices are excluded. Valid options: p,i,l (Multiple devices may be specified with a colon separator) where p is the Path designator, and is in the range 0-7, i is the SCSI ID designator, and is in the range 0-31, and l is the LUN designator, and in the range 0-7. The LUN parameter is optional. Multiple devices may be excluded so long as the string does not exceed 35 characters in length and devices are separated by colons. Examples: xcl=1,2,3 to exclude LUN 3 of the device at SCSI ID 2 on Path 1. xcl=1,2,3:2,5 to exclude LUN 3 of the device at SCSI ID 2 on Path 1, and all LUNs on the device at SCSI ID 5 on Path 2 Function: Allows for specifying certain devices not be recognized by the driver. Possible Impact: Device(s) may not be directly accessed via NCRSDMSX driver. This option is available so that specific devices may be excluded from being recognized and directly accessed by the NCRSDMSX.DSK drivers. These devices are not registered with the operating system for use by the driver. Other applications/drivers can then take over the control of such devices. This option is available for support of third party vendors who write their own SCSI control applications. Using the Wide SCSI Option Command line option: wide=<option> Default value: enable Valid options: enable, disable Function: Enable/Disable support of Wide SCSI. This option specifically allows the user to disable support of wide SCSI when using a wide SCSI controller. This option should be set to "disable" if a wide SCSI device is present on the system, but a narrow SCSI cable is connected somewhere on the bus between the wide SCSI host adapter and the wide device, thus prohibiting the transfer of wide data. If this option is set to "disable", the wide device may still be used, but all data transferred to/from the device will be narrow (8 bit). The driver will not initiate a wide SCSI transfer request negotiation. The following three options affect the amount of memory used by the driver. Please see the section on memory allocation for information on how memory is allocated by the driver, and to get an approximate feel for the amount of memory which may be saved by invoking these parameters. Using the Maximum Host Adapters Option Command line option: max_hbas=<option> Default value: 8 Valid options: 1-8 Function: Specify the maximum number of Host Bus Adapters to support. Possible Impact: If number is reduced, may allow for reduction in memory used by the driver. This parameter may be used to optimize the use of dynamically allocated memory by the driver. If less than 8 NCR based PCI host adapters, including any on board (built in to) the motherboard, are being used, this parameter will allow for a reduction in the total memory being used for the driver. Using the Maximum SCSI IDs Option Command line option: max_id=<option> Default value: 32 Valid options: 8-32 Function: Specify the maximum number of SCSI IDs each host adapter board should support. Possible Impact: If number is reduced, may allow for reduction in memory used by the driver. This parameter may be used to optimize the use of dynamically allocated memory by the driver. If all the host adapters, including any SCSI controllers on the motherboard are connected to less than 31 devices, a user can reduce the size of the dynamically allocated memory by setting this value to the maximum number of devices on any of the SCSI controllers. Using the Maximum LUNs Option Command line option: max_lun=<option> Default value: 4 Valid options: 1-8 Function: Specify the maximum number of LUNs each host adapter board should support per SCSI id. Possible Impact: If number is reduced, may allow for reduction in memory used by the driver. This parameter may be used to optimize the use of dynamically allocated memory by the driver. If less than 8 LUNs are being used per NCR based PCI host adapter SCSI id, this parameter will allow for a reduction in the total memory being used for the driver. Using the Maximum Block Size for Concatenation Option Command line option: max_kb=<option> Default value: 32767 Valid options: 0-32767 Function: Set the maximum number of KB that may be written to disk at one time. Possible Impact: A high number may result in more data being transferred in a single data phase. Specify the maximum size block in Kilobytes which may be written to disk in one data transfer phase. This ensures that when requests are being concatenated, the maximum size of the concatenated request would not exceed the specified value. If individual requests themselves are greater than this specified value, no action would be taken. Information Pertaining to a Specific Driver This document addresses options available on the NCR SDMS NetWare drivers, version 3.05.00. For information pertaining to a specific driver, please do one of the following: For NetWare version 4.XX, consult the NCRSDMS4.DDI file for options available for NCRSDMS4.DSK. This may be accessed via the NetWare install utility. For versions of the driver 3.05.00 and later, use the -? option on the command line of the NCRSDMSX.DSK driver *************** Important Additional Information ****************** * Memory Allocation * The driver allocates memory for certain structures based upon the maximum number of SCSI IDs (max_id), LUNs (max_lun), and paths (max_hbas) that may be used in the system. The amount of memory allocated is based on the following formula: 437 bytes of memory are allocated for the structure, so Memory Allocated = 437 * max_hbas * max_lun * max_id. So for default allocations, the amount of memory allocated is: Memory Allocated = 437 * 8 * 4 * 32 = 447,448 bytes (437 KB). If, for example, 1. only one host adapter is installed (or when using an NCR based PCI SCSI embedded controller and no add in HBAs), 2. only one LUN per device will be used, and 3. the bus is narrow (up to 8 SCSI IDs), then by setting the appropriate command line options, the amount of memory allocated will be: Memory Allocated = 437 * 1 * 1 * 8 = 3,496 bytes (3.4 KB).Download Driver Pack
After your driver has been downloaded, follow these simple steps to install it.
Expand the archive file (if the download file is in zip or rar format).
If the expanded file has an .exe extension, double click it and follow the installation instructions.
Otherwise, open Device Manager by right-clicking the Start menu and selecting Device Manager.
Find the device and model you want to update in the device list.
Double-click on it to open the Properties dialog box.
From the Properties dialog box, select the Driver tab.
Click the Update Driver button, then follow the instructions.
Very important: You must reboot your system to ensure that any driver updates have taken effect.
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