irwin@uiucdcsb.cs.uiuc.edu (12/17/87)
Now, for the other side of the coin. We have a Vax750, with a TC7000, handling a Kennedy tri-density 9400 tape drive. We HAD the same bug when we installed it. I called Tech Support at Emulex, and they said ahhhhh, I know what the bug is. We will send you a new firmware set (free) to put in your TC7000 and the bug will be gone. They did, we installed it and the bug went away. We have now been using this for two years, BUG FREE. It would seem that not everyone has had the same luck that you have. As a matter of fact, with nine Vaxen in house, almost all of the controllers are Emulex and we have had very good luck with them and their tech support group, when ever a question came up.
chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) (12/20/87)
In article <7544@elsie.UUCP> ado@elsie.UUCP (Arthur David Olson) writes: <... if you buy an Emulex TC7000 tape controller and a Cipher M990 <tape drive for your VAX running 4.3BSD, the controller will hang <(and be unusable until you reboot the computer) if the M990 ever <displays its "WRITE RETRIES EXCEEDED" message. ... [you can kludge <around it if you have source, but] I feel I received abysmal <"support" from Emulex; I'd advise you to get your equipment from <companies other than Emulex and Cipher. In article <165900002@uiucdcsb> irwin@uiucdcsb.cs.uiuc.edu answers: >... We have a Vax750, with a TC7000, handling a Kennedy tri-density >9400 tape drive. We HAD the same bug when we installed it. I called >Tech Support at Emulex, and they said ahhhhh, I know what the bug is. >We will send you a new firmware set (free) to put in your TC7000 and >the bug will be gone. They did, we installed it and the bug went away. Chances are you never mentioned that you were not running VMS, or if you did, that the bug had previously appeared under VMS. Emulex seems to believe that Unix customers are not worth extra effort. I hope they change their corporate mind; their products are generally quite good, if you can get past the lack of Unix support. (I have various war stories that, I think, support my assertion that Emulex believes `if they do not show under VMS, bugs in our hardware do not exist'. Unix tends to put more stress on hardware than most other O/Ses, hence we find the bugs first :-/ ....) -- In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7690) Domain: chris@mimsy.umd.edu Path: uunet!mimsy!chris
pavlov@hscfvax.harvard.edu (G.Pavlov) (12/21/87)
In article <9901@mimsy.UUCP>, chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) writes: > Chances are you never mentioned that you were not running VMS, or > if you did, that the bug had previously appeared under VMS. Emulex > seems to believe that Unix customers are not worth extra effort. > I hope they change their corporate mind; their products are generally > quite good, if you can get past the lack of Unix support. > Amen. greg pavlov, fstrf, amherst, ny
irwin@uiucdcsb.cs.uiuc.edu (12/24/87)
I did not mention which system we were running on our Vaxen, but I can, it is BSD 4.3. We were not at 4.3 at the time of the tape bug however, I believe at that time, we were at 4.1, have since gone to 4.2 and now to 4.3. We have three Emulex TC-11s, two SC-21s, four CS-11s and the TC7000. This hardware is all used under Berkley Unix and have never had any problems getting support from Emulex as we installed and debugged them. This hardware is spread around over 750s and 780s. We have two 780s and seven 750s for a total of nine Vaxen running 4.3.
mangler@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu (Don Speck) (12/27/87)
In article <9901@mimsy.UUCP>, chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) writes: > (I have various war stories that, I think, support my assertion that > Emulex believes `if they do not show under VMS, bugs in our hardware > do not exist'. Unix tends to put more stress on hardware than most > other O/Ses, hence we find the bugs first :-/ ....) Generally, it is almost impossible to track down a firmware bug unless they can reproduce the problem on their own machines; but if the bug only shows under Unix, they can't reproduce it, because Emulex has no in-house Unix systems. That's the real problem. The "Rev A" TC13 had a bug which made it fail to init when used with the GENERIC kernel on the 4.2bsd distribution tape. This, of course, is a useless description for Emulex, since they have no 4.2bsd distribution tape. So what I gave them instead was a page from the console Decwriter which demonstrated, with console examine and deposit commands, that the TC13 failed to init if the cmd buffer crossed a 256-byte boundary. THAT they could understand. Let's say that customer pressure convinced Emulex to get an in-house Unix system. Which Unix? System V? 4.2bsd? 4.3bsd? Ultrix? Don Speck speck@vlsi.caltech.edu {amdahl,scgvaxd}!cit-vax!speck