ejd@goanna.oz (Erick Delios) (08/30/88)
After suffering yet another head crash on our RA80/RA81 disc drives it has been decided to throw the UDA disc controller and RA series drives out. We are looking at replacing the UDA with an SC41 controller. I can find no explicit mention that this controller works with under 4.3. Will this controller work on a Vax 11/750 ? If so will it work as well as a UDA ? Thanks, Erick Delios UUCP: uunet!munnari!goanna.oz!ejd INTERNET: ejd@goana.oz.au ARPA: ejd%goanna.oz@uunet.uu.net
ejd@goanna.oz (Erick Delios) (08/30/88)
After suffering yet another head crash on our RA80/RA81 disc drives it has been decided to throw the UDA disc controller and RA series drives out. We are looking at replacing the UDA with an SC41 controller. I can find no explicit mention that this controller works under 4.3. Will this controller work on a Vax 11/750 with BSD 4.3 ? If so will it work as well as a UDA ? Thanks, Erick Delios UUCP: uunet!munnari!goanna.oz!ejd INTERNET: ejd@goana.oz.au ARPA: ejd%goanna.oz@uunet.uu.net
chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) (09/01/88)
In article <1508@goanna.oz> ejd@goanna.oz (Erick Delios) writes: >We are looking at replacing [a UDA50+RAxx] with an SC41 controller. >I can find no explicit mention that this controller works with under 4.3. > >Will this controller work on a Vax 11/750 ? >If so will it work as well as a UDA ? We have one on a VAX 8250 running 4.3BSD-tahoe. In a previous incarnation it was a VAX-11/750. Yes, it works; but maybe not with the stock 4.3BSD driver. (The 4.3BSD-tahoe driver is fine, obviously.) There is also a bug in early firmware revisions on the SC41/MS that causes it to hang a 750 such that only the little white `RESET' button, or power cycling, unhangs it. This bug shows only under heavy loads; Emulex would not believe it existed until VMS V4.4 was sped up enough that it showed there. We have three CDC9771s on the controller. Their maximum throughput (from `dd if=/dev/rra?c of=/dev/null bs=63k') is lower than that of a UDA50/RA81 (~600KB/s vs ~780KB/s) but their average transfer rates are about equal. Emulex support for the SC41/MS on the VAX 8250 is dismal. In particular, the EVM.EXE we have runs only on 750s, 780s, and uVAX-Is, so the formatter cannot be used. Emulex have told us that they will not do anything for us unless we buy their new controller, the UD33; they have not been very specific about what they will do if we do. (One of these days I have to finish reverse engineering the monitor and formatter, preferably *before* one of the CDCs dies.) The UD33 has a whole 51 or 52 sectors of buffering, as opposed to something like 10 or 20 on the SC41/MS. (When will drive manufacturers learn that an on board cache should mean numbers in *megabytes*, not mere tends of kilobytes?) It probably also handles XMD drives; the SC41/MS will only do SMD. Given the prospect of better support and the ability to use newer (XMD) drives, the UD33 is probably a better bet. -- In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163) Domain: chris@mimsy.umd.edu Path: uunet!mimsy!chris
muller@sdcc7.ucsd.EDU (Keith Muller) (09/01/88)
In article <1510@goanna.oz>, ejd@goanna.oz (Erick Delios) writes: > ...... > We are looking at replacing the UDA with an SC41 controller. I can find > no explicit mention that this controller works under 4.3. > > Will this controller work on a Vax 11/750 with BSD 4.3 ? > If so will it work as well as a UDA ? I use emulex sc7003 disk controllers on a 750. They are directly supported by 4.3BSD (and 4.3BSD-tahoe) and are CMI boards not unibus (they look like a massbus to the software). I have never had a single problem with them or the older SC750's they replaced. Keith Muller UC San Diego muller@ucsd.edu
grr@cbmvax.UUCP (George Robbins) (09/01/88)
In article <1082@sdcc7.ucsd.EDU> muller@sdcc7.ucsd.EDU (Keith Muller) writes: > In article <1510@goanna.oz>, ejd@goanna.oz (Erick Delios) writes: > > ...... > > We are looking at replacing the UDA with an SC41 controller. I can find > > no explicit mention that this controller works under 4.3. > > Will this controller work on a Vax 11/750 with BSD 4.3 ? > > If so will it work as well as a UDA ? > > I use emulex sc7003 disk controllers on a 750. They are directly supported > by 4.3BSD (and 4.3BSD-tahoe) and are CMI boards not unibus (they look like > a massbus to the software). I have never had a single problem with them or > the older SC750's they replaced. For sure - No earthly reason to use an Emulex unibus controller in a 750 unless you maybe happen to have one lying around. There's a SC750 somewhere in the guts our olde 750 and other than the drive cable paddleboard falling off cause somebody lost the bracket, it's been running since the machine was born - ~5 years, ~3 sites ago... SC750/7000 = 1.8 MByte/sec - Eagle Class, SC7002 = 2.5 MByte/sec - just about anything - SC7003 3.0 MByte/sec XMD-III and other scorchers... -- George Robbins - now working for, uucp: {uunet|ihnp4|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr but no way officially representing arpa: cbmvax!grr@uunet.uu.net Commodore, Engineering Department fone: 215-431-9255 (only by moonlite)