[mod.computers.vax] RTI's INGRES, Eagles, SI 9900's ....

JOHNSON@NUHUB.ACS.NORTHEASTERN.EDU.UUCP (03/27/87)

     Hi folks.

     I'm an unfortunate maintainer of RTI's INGRES.  Version 3 of INGRES 
worked as well as can be expected from people who forget about 
universities in their design efforts.  Then I got version 5 (please 
don't ask why I didn't get version 4, it's a long story).

     Up until this time INGRES had always worked and lived on a Fuji 
disk off an SI controller.  Everything worked fine.  Version 5 SEEMED to 
work for a time then it broke.  I tried everything I could think of from 
past failure modes.  Nothing worked so I called Tech Support at RTI.  

     One month later, after much hounding on my part, the answer was 
given from on high,

     RTI,  "Controller bug".  

     Me,   "Uh ... ok.. why did v 3 work?"

     RTI,  "Don't know.  Move INGRES to an HSC based disk."

     Me,   "But, but, but what's the problem?"

     The error I had been getting was something about the device not 
supporting byte-aligned transfers of data.  It was explained to me that 
my Eagles couldn't support this.  Not much help as I knew this from the 
error message.

     So I moved INGRES to an HSC based RA81 and it worked.  HOWEVER, I 
have my disks set up a certain way for a reason, performance mostly.  It 
is EXTREMELY inconvenient to move INGRES to an HSC based disk and I don't 
have room to keep it there.  It has to go back to the Fuji Eagle soon.  
They gave me an answer but it happens to be VERY unsatisfactory as far 
as I'm concerned.

     Anybody out there notice any problems with INGRES on Eagles with an 
SI 9900 unibus controller?  Anybody fix it?  If so, HOW?  HELP!

     In case the above isn't possible, does anyone have 1032 from 
Software House?  I'd like to hear any facts/inferences/impressions 
anyone has about it especially in a university setting.

     Thanks Much

Chris Johnson
Northeastern University

csnet:      johnson@nuhub.acs.northeastern.edu
arpa:       johnson%nuhub.acs.northeastern.edu@relay.cs.net
at&t:       (617) 437-2335