DPT(4)

💅 DPT(4) — dpt: DPT EATA SCSI adapter driver 💅

okay so this is the DPT(4) page from the Kernel Interfaces Manual, and it’s all about the dpt driver, bestie. Buckle up, it’s giving vintage SCSI realness. ✨

✨ NAME ✨

dpt — DPT EATA SCSI adapter driver. That’s the name, that’s the vibe. 🎀

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

dpt* at isa? port ? irq ? dma ?
dpt* at eisa? slot ?
dpt* at pci? dev ? function ?
scsibus* at dpt?

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

So the dpt driver is the supportive bestie for third and fourth generation DPT SCSI controllers. Every chat with those controllers happens via the EATA (Enhanced AT Bus Attachment) protocol. 💖

DPT adapters are main character energy: they examine and interpret all SCSI commands they receive before passing them along to any underlying physical device(s). That’s how caching, RAID and other transformations happen, and it all stays transparent to the host operating system. Slay. 🌈

✨ HARDWARE ✨

The dpt driver provides support for the adapters listed below. Later models are supported by the iop driver.

• DPT SmartCache III
• DPT SmartCache IV
• DPT SmartRAID III
• DPT SmartRAID IV

✨ FILES ✨

• /dev/dptu — control device for unit u

✨ DIAGNOSTICS ✨

Under normal circumstances you should never encounter any of these messages, bestie. Also, heads up: the list below is not complete.

• dpt%d: readcfg failed - see dpt(4) — The EATA configuration data did not appear upon request. This may be caused by older firmware. Generally the solution is to power-cycle the affected machine.
• dpt%d: spurious intr — A spurious interrupt was received from the HBA.
• dpt%d: bogus status (returned CCB id NNNN) — A corrupt or incomplete status packet was received from the HBA.

✨ SEE ALSO ✨

• cd(4), ch(4), dpti(4), intro(4), iop(4), scsi(4), sd(4), st(4)
• The sysutils/dptutil package.
• CAM committee standard CAM/89-004 - the EATA (Enhanced AT Bus Attachment) protocol.

✨ HISTORY ✨

The dpt driver first appeared in NetBSD 1.4.2. Look at her, a whole icon from the past. 👑

✨ BUGS ✨

• EATA adapters other than listed may function correctly with the dpt driver, however a definitive list is not available.
• Older boards that do not support scatter-gather I/O or DMA are not supported.
• ECC formatted disk and arrays (i.e. with a sector size of 528 bytes) do not work correctly with the PM2041 and certain firmware revisions of the PM3334.

Lowkey important: those caveats are real caveats, not cute little decorations. Do not ignore them. 💀

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💖 That’s the whole DPT(4) page, bestie — brought to you by Debian, dated December 7, 2002. Mwah! 💖