emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) (01/11/90)
After the nth time of seeing usable information about exabytes go by in comp.sys.dec (when I really want to hook up an exabyte to my Sun), and the inevitable and plentiful questions of "will scsi drive xxx work on computer yyy with os n.m, can you send me a format.dat", I think it's high time for a spinoff from comp.periphs to handle questions regarding SCSI devices. Topics might include: scsi cables, where to buy, what parts to get if you're building your own, things to watch out for, "standard" connectors (hah!). scsi drives, the newest and the lastest, the oldest and the cheapest, who's coming out with what when and how much. guarantees. mtbfs. horror stories. what's inside sealed vendor boxes. scsi adapters, cards for pcs, vmebus, vax bi bus, name your bus there's a scsi bus adapter for it maybe. how to find them. what to expect to pay. what to watch out for. even how to design and build your own, what the hey might as well collect that info if it's out there. scsi formatting, format.dat (or equiv) tables for every drive under the moon, which ones don't work at all. scsi problems, soft ecc errors, head crashes, what to do, how to recover from partial failures. scsi tape units, where to get tapes, switch settings, what works where and how, new backup strategies for high capy media. scsi protocol details, scsi-1 vs scsi-2 vs sync scsi, how to get copies of standards, what looks like the future of the interface, what vendors have botched what, implementation details. scsi software interfaces, the /dev/scsi idea, drivers for disks and tapes, bugs of course and fixes. a scsi-archive-server that'll be armed with the relevant information and how to's, and an anonymous ftp site to collect the same info and archive the discussion. a frequently-asked-questions posting monthly. aggressive vendor support, but of course you know vendors don't quote prices. anything else I missed? I think comp.periphs.scsi is a good name. 12 of the last 43 postings in comp.periphs had the word "scsi" in them, so I think there's going to be traffic. (Here, I've asked at least a dozen questions, so we could start with all of the answers :-). I'll toss this out for general comments. If it's going to fly we need a vote-counter, an archive-server-keeper, and an ftp-site-keeper, and perhaps another disk to store all of the postings. --Ed