Robert Diggle wrote in a message to Craig Healy:
 CH> I just picked up an Adaptec AHA-3985W SCSI RAID card.  One of
 CH> those "too cheap to pass up" deals at the Boston Computer
 CH> Show yesterday.
 CH> It is designed to work primarily with Novell 3.11, 3.12 or
 CH> 4.xx server software.  Does anyone know if it can be used with
 CH> anything else like WinNT or Linux?
 RD> Of course it's an Adaptec! If it has a BIOS on board then
 RD> it'll overide the computer BIOS and add the SCSI devices to
 RD> the drive chain for Novell. And since that Novell uses DOS
 RD> to boot up....
 RD> It should work with Linux (everthing else does!).
No.  All protected mode operationg systems, including Linux, NT, NetWare, and 
OS/2, will switch to their own native drivers once booted, even if they use 
the BIOS to boot.  If native drivers do not exist, there will be trouble.
In the case of Linux, the situation is somewhat worse than most because 
Adaptec will not release their proprietary sequencer code except under 
non-disclosure, so it had to be cloned for FreeBSD and Linux.  Although we 
think that this clone is now of rather high quality, it is often very hard to 
know for sure where blame lies when problems occur.
In additon to the concerns about the sequencer code, the 3985 RAID controller 
has limited support under Linux at present, simply because writing the full 
support was not a high priority due to the rarity of the controller.
 
-- Mike
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