|
The NWPA.NLM, NWPAIO.NLM, NWPAMS.NLM, NBI.NLM and CDROM.NLM files are the same revisions as what are found in Support Pack 6a for NetWare 4.11.
The HAMs and CDMs included in this download are the latest certified and release versions available at this time. They may or may not be newer that what is found in the IWSP6a.EXE update.
This download kit is provided so that 4.10 and 3.x customers can take advantage of the NWPA architecture.
Listed are some of the higher profile issues fixed by this update.
Issue:
Changes were made to front end the NEB calls for NWPAMS and NWPAIO. The APIs are just stubbed in the SFT3 modules because NEB is not supported in SFT3. This, however, allows drivers to load.
The command line parser was also fixed to allow more than 256 chars
in the command line string.
Issue:
Fixed SCSIHD.CDM, SCSICD.CDM, SCSICHGR.CDM and SCSIMO.CDM to pick appropriate disk geometry and capacity on media with unit sizes greater than 512Bytes/Sector and not initialized with any partitions.
Issue:
This new IDEATA.HAM fixes an issue where some Quantum drives sporadically are not being reported during ReturnDeviceInfo. In turn, that caused the Media Manager to assume that the device had gone away.
Issue:
The addition of the DIBIMM.NLM. DIBIMM allows SBACKUP to use the new Media Manager interface instead of the old DAI interface. This new interface allows for better error-handling as well as the use of NWPA drivers.
*******************
BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON NWPA (NetWare Peripheral Architecture):
The use of HAM's and CDM's on NetWare 4.1 SFTIII is not currently supported. If you need to mount CD's on a NetWare 4.1 SFTIII server, we suggest that you attempt this only with SCSI devices.
IDE CDROM devices are supported under NetWare 4.1 and 3.12 using the NWPA (NetWare Peripheral Architecture) layer of support. The files NWPA.NLM, NWPALOAD.NLM, and NPAPATCH (3.12 specific) provide this layer of support. NWPA.NLM, NWPALOAD.NLM, IDECD.CDM, IDEHD.CDM, IDEATA.HAM, and CDROM.NLM are now universal files meaning that they are not NetWare version specific.
They can be loaded on either 3.12 or 4.10. The NWPA layer uses *.HAM and *.CDM files instead of the normal *.DSK files. Breaking the monolithic *.DSK drivers out into *.HAM and *.CDM files makes them much easier to support and much easier to maintain from a development standpoint. The HAM (Host Adapter Module) extension refers to the driver that would be loaded to support a specific HBA (HostBus Adapter). The CDM (Custom Device Module) extension refers to the driver that would be loaded to support specific types of devices attached tothe HBA.
Features and Functions of NWPA:
Under the new NWPA the devices appear slightly differently than they did under the old *.DSK regime. Issuing a "List Devices" command from the server console could yield the following information: (this is for illustration only and most likely will not be exactly what you will see):
1. Device # 0 Quantum LPS540S (5E000000) (A SCSI hard drive attached).
19. [V025-A0-D1:1] NEC CD-ROM DRIVE:260 FW:1.01. (An IDE CDROM player).
The numbers to the far left of the above example are the Media Manager object numbers. These numbers are used internally in the OS and are simply reported here. Basically it is the order in which these devices registered themselves with the Media Manager. DOS partitions, NetWare partitions, logical partitions, physical partitions, Hot Fix areas, etc. are all examples of objects that the Media Manager has to manage. Consecutive numbers are very rare and usually found in the most basic server setups, sometimes not even then. Do not be alarmed if your server does not have consecutive numbers!
The NWPA also introduces an enhanced numbering sequence. In the above example you see a number within the []'s. This number is defined as follows [Sx-Vxxx-Ax-Dxx:x]:
Sx - denotes the server number. In non-SFTIII environments the "S" and it's following number will not appear. In a SFTIII environment you will see either a "0" (Primary Server) or "1" (Secondary Server) following the "S".
Vxxx - denotes the manufacturer ID. This was a two position number under the *.DSK drivers. The number has been expanded to 3 hexadecimal characters for use under NWPA. Numbers less than 100 have been assigned to Novell drivers.
Ax - denotes the NWPA assigned unique adapter number. This number increments by one for each load of a HAM.
Dxx:x - denotes the device number. This number has been expanded to handle the need to report more and more devices as technology advances. For IDE devices the first digit will be 1 if the port is 1F0, 2 if the port is 170, 3 if the port is 1E8 and 4 if the port is 168. In the case of SCSI the first digit denotes the SCSI id set on the device. For IDE the digit following the ":" denotes either Master (0) or slave (1). Under SCSI the digit following the ":" denotes the LUN (Logical Unit Number).
By default the HAM's will try and load any needed CDM's for devices that are attached to the HAM. If you do not want the HAM's to autoload all of the required CDM's then instead of loading the HAM's first, which then autoloads the NWPA layers, we suggest that you explicitly load the NWPA.NLM with the /naload flag before any HAM's are loaded in the Startup.ncf. This will tell the NWPA.NLM NOT to autoload the HAM's and CDM's that it normally would. You will then need to load the HAM's and CDM's manually.
For example: Startup.ncf where the CDM's are NOT autoloaded
load NWPA /naload
load ideata port=1f0 int=14
load idecd
NWPAUP1.EXE was revised to correct readme and file compatibility issues. No new issues were resolved with this new version of the download.
|
