paul@eye.com (Paul B. Booth) (12/22/90)
Maybe someone knows (or can guess well)....
I'm upgrading hardware for a group of software developers. Currently, they're
running 360's - 375's all with hpib disks (7963's and 7937's). The hpib bus
is a major bottleneck for these guys, because they're doing a lot of disk
intensive work. It's been suggested that switching to scsi disks would help,
because the bus is ~4X faster than hpib (comments?). If I go this way, I
can't just trash 5Gb of hpib disks all at once, so they'll have to co-exist
with the scsi's for a time. That brings up some ?'s:
*Any problems running both hpib and scsi disks on 1 375?
*Does hp make a scsi disk interface that plugs into a DIO2 slot? Or,
can I hang disks off the interface I use for my o/m drives (98658a)?
Is either significantly faster or slower than the built-in scsi
interface on the 375?
*Does hp make a DIO or DIO2 hpib interface card that can handle more
than 4 disks (like the 98625b)? The real question here is whether or
not I can put 4 7963's (12 mechanisms) on a single 375.
Thanks in advance for any/all wisdom...
--
Paul B. Booth (paul@eye.com) (...!hplabs!hpfcla!eye!paul)
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3D/EYE, Inc., 2359 N. Triphammer Rd., Ithaca, NY 14850 voice: (607)257-1381
fax: (607)257-7335rjn@hpfcso.HP.COM (Bob Niland) (12/23/90)
re: >I'm upgrading hardware for a group of software developers. > *Any problems running both hpib and scsi disks on 1 375? No, in fact, I'm doing it. Just avoid the [very] old 98625A HP-IB card. Use a 98625B or 98262A (330/350/360/370 only). > *Does hp make a scsi disk interface that plugs into a DIO2 slot? No. But you can usually convert at least one DIO-II slot to DIO-I via a 98242A/B kit or by getting an expander with a slot already present. > can I hang disks off the interface I use for my o/m drives (98658a)? Yes. > Is either significantly faster or slower than the built-in scsi > interface on the 375? Not with current disk drives. > *Does hp make a DIO or DIO2 hpib interface card that can handle more > than 4 disks (like the 98625b)? The real question here is whether or > not I can put 4 7963's (12 mechanisms) on a single 375. The AMIGO protocol under the CS/80 command set limits disks to addresses 0..7 (one PPOLL response line per HP-IB "DIO" data line). Each mech in a 7963 uses one bus address. You can only put 3 7963s with 8 total mechs on a single HP-IB. You can have multiple HP-IBs and SCSIs, subject to considerations about contention for the two DMA channels. If you haven't bought the disks yet, get the C2213A instead. It has much more attractive econmics, doubles the max size of each mech and offers optional built-in DAT, CD and MO. Regards, Hewlett-Packard Bob Niland 3404 East Harmony Road Internet: rjn@hpfcrjn.FC.HP.COM Fort Collins UUCP: [hplabs|hpu*!hpfcse]!hpfcrjn!rjn CO 80525-9599