Action

Verify that all cables measure no longer than six meters, total, and that all SCSI connections are properly terminated. If power surges are a problem, acquire a surge suppressor or uninterruptible power supply.

A machine's internal disk drive is usually SCSI target 3. Make sure that external and secondary disk drives are targeted to 1, 2, or 0, and do not conflict with each other. Also make sure that tape drives are targeted to 4 or 5, and CD drives to 6, avoiding any conflict with each other or with disk drives. If the targeting of the internal disk drive is in question, power off the machine, remove all external drives, turn the power on, and from the PROM monitor run the probe-scsi-all or probe-scsi command.

If SCSI device targeting is acceptable, memory configuration could be the problem, especially for machines with the sun4c architecture. Ensure that high-capacity memory chips (such as 4MB SIMMs) are in lower banks, while lower-capacity memory chips (such as 1MB SIMMs) are in the upper banks.

SPARC systems do not always support third party CD-ROM drives, and may generate a similar "unknown vendor" error message. Check with the CD-ROM vendor for specific configuration requirements.

Some third-party disk drives have a read-ahead cache that interferes with Solaris device drivers. Make sure that any existing read-ahead cache facility is turned off.