Conference 7.286::digital

    Mike, I'm afraid you're hosed! This has been a known problem (known at
    least to the PCBU) for almost a year now. The PCXL has suffered greatly
    from the use of the NCR SCSI chip. I contacted the PCBU about this
    problem  back in Jan/Feb timeframe, when I hit this wall during a
    customer evaluation. The response was that OS/2 didn't provide enough
    market pull to fix this problem, so the PCBU wasn't going to do
    anything about it. Unless things have changed (and I doubt that they
    have) you and your friend are out of luck. There were and probably
    still are many other NCR SCSI controller related issues - applications
    that work on everyone elses PC's but DEC's. "Such is the nature of the
    business and customers shoould expect these types of problems" was one
    of the better PCBU replies that I got. 
    
    Perhaps yo can get your customer to return the PCXL's and get something
    from us thsat works with OS/2; although I don't know which (if any) of
    our PC's support OS/2.
    
    Sorry to be the bearer of more bad news, but at least I still care
    enought to reply!
    
    -OFWAMI-

    If this customer is valued, why not (a) disable the on-board
    piece-of-crap NCR chip, and (b) *GIVE* the customer an Adaptec SCSI host
    adapter?
    
    Just wonderin'...
    
    /dave

	disclaimers:

	1) you don't say which version of OS/2 your friend is attempting
	   to use...I have no experience with Warp but too much with
	   V2.x.........

	2) I also have no experience with XL 590's (or any of the XL
	   series running OS/2).....

	given that:

	1) I find numerous references to people running OS/2 (V2.x) on
	   XL's (other than speed there should be little difference
	   between the 56x's and the 590)....many say it was a "pain"
	   but I have found no reference to complete failure....note that
	   I consider OS/2 installation on most machines to be a pain:
	   in the release notes for V2.1, IBM has multiple pages on things
	   one should try to "fix" failing installs....these include:
	   turning off all mem and disk cache (makes for a slow install ;-)
	   then turning them back on after, using only standard VGA mode
	   during install then upgrading to better video after, etc...
	   I have frequently found these suggestions to be required on
	   "faster" machines (eg local bus, Pentium, etc)..............
	   also, make sure that you have the latest NCR SCSI drivers
	   (you say you do) *AND* the latest BIOS code (check in
	   product conferences mentioned below)....

	2) if all else fails, the suggestion in .2 is quite valid and
	   workable.....

	3) since I judge by your nodename that you are co-located with PCBU
	   engineers, why not talk to, say, Jerry Rogich about this...
	   he would probably know the whole story....

	4) why not take this up in one of the product conferences?
	   GIADEV::DECSTATION and NOTED::OS2 come to mind....

	hope this helps
	_kelley

	Tell them Windows 95 uses the NCR SCSI chip without a problem.
	(seen it firsthand)

							mike

>       Tell them Windows 95 uses the NCR SCSI chip without a problem.
>        (seen it firsthand)


	What good is that when you need to build OS/2 on them?  This is the
company that made Lotus Notes -  they need these system to run OS/2.   They
now the systems work with NT and DOS but they bought them to run OS/2 on.

	Thanks for all the helpful replies and mail.  Someone from PC support 
engineering is going to call them and see if he can help. 

Mike 

    reply .2 is a very valid solution.  If it's the best interest of saving
    a customer it would be a small price for DEC to pay.
    
    Has anyone spoken with NCR about this?
    
    Keep us posted, I'd like to know how this is resolved.
    
    

>        Tell them Windows 95 uses the NCR SCSI chip without a problem.
>        (seen it firsthand)

They can do that, but I bet it would be irrelevent to them.

I have customers who have set migration plans for Windows-NT and Windows 95 
as well. They are still toe-in-the-water on NT, so telling them to move to 
vapourware like Chicago is probably a poor thing. To date, most still run 
Microsoft OS/2, for LAN Manager. Other people run OS/2 for Notes or 
for IEF. Telling them to do this when your hardware blows up when the 
Compaq or Dell or ... doesnt is an even bigger no no.

Also, given that this customer is  the Lotus Notes developers, I would 
expect that there is probably a cultural bias to OS/2.

I think the customer is reasonable in expecting that all flavours of OS/2 
from IBM and Microsoft run on our systems. We should get the problem fixed. 

    I would also poke the PCBU as to whether we actually submitted hardware
    to IBM or otherwise attempted to get supported on OS/2 out of the box
    without drivers. being added manually to the install disks. Yes
    according to people who have it running with WARP it does work if you
    take the trouble to cahse the drivers down. This remains a classic
    problem when purcahsing any hardware, that is how mainstream is it's
    components. If its not say Adaptec, or and IDE drive its more risky.
    I own lots of hardware that they never quite got the drivers working
    100% correctly under any OS before the vendor abandons it for their
    next generation video card or SCSI card. OS installation with OS/2 is
    only hard if you have fringe hardware, or don't pay attention to the
    instructions carefully. Windows is just easy because it tends not to 
    stress the hardware as much as OS/2, and due to its wider popularity
    comes out of the box with more drivers than anything. So it has a 
    different definition of fringe hardware.   a  c
    
    Sorry for the stray characters on my phone connection.
    
    Dave
    

    
    	 Re .-1 and tracking down drivers -
    
    	Are you saying that NCR has a 32 bit OS2CAM driver now, or that
    OS/2 WARP doesn't need OS2CAM drivers for CD-ROMS and TAPEs?
    
    	INT13 access for the XL SCSI has always worked for systems running
    OS/2 with more than 16 megabytes of memory, and OS2CAM works fine
    for the systems running 16Megs or less.
    
    	So various configs of XL have always worked, its just the big
    systems with SCSI Tapes and CD-ROMS or more than 2 hard drives that
    used to suffer.                        
    
    					Bill

Please take this to GIADEV::DECSTATION....

			Steve