rogden@uceng.UC.EDU (rob ogden) (04/23/89)
The Aerospace Eng. department is considering several DECstation 3100s.
Does anyone have experience with drives other than those sold
by DEC?
I would appreciate hearing from those with experience in this matter.
Items of concern I feel would be;
1) compatibility, who makes useable SCSI drives? are any and all useable?
2) cabinet and power supply (assuming external)
3) cables and connectors, are these uniquely DEC?
4) Does DEC provide programs to format a drive from ground zero?
5) Did you find this alternative to be worth the effort in both time and
materials?
Please email your reply. I will post a summary.
Thanks,
Rob Ogden, rogden@uceng.uc.edu
uccba!uceng!rogdenjwg1@bunny.gte.com (James W. Gish) (04/25/89)
According to our local DEC salesman, there are currently no third party drives available for the 3100, i.e., you might call it pseudo-SCSI. -- Jim Gish GTE Laboratories, Inc., Waltham, MA CSNET: jgish@gte.com UUCP: ..!harvard!bunny!jwg1
pdb@sei.cmu.edu (Patrick Barron) (04/25/89)
In article <JWG1.89Apr24142605@bunny.gte.com> jwg1@bunny.gte.com (James W. Gish) writes: >According to our local DEC salesman, there are currently no third >party drives available for the 3100, i.e., you might call it >pseudo-SCSI. Your local DEC salesman is probably wrong. We're getting CDC Wren V's for ours. I know that others are using those particular drives with success on the DECstation 3100. --Pat.
abstine@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Arthur Stine) (04/25/89)
From article <JWG1.89Apr24142605@bunny.gte.com>, by jwg1@bunny.gte.com (James W. Gish): > According to our local DEC salesman, there are currently no third > party drives available for the 3100, i.e., you might call it > pseudo-SCSI. > The SCSI in the 3100's is indeed ANSI SCSI. Your DEC rep is giving you a load of bull. Owners of 3100's out there are putting normal SCSI drives in their machines. Note that some of the older SCSI drives may not work, but certainly if you go to CDC (Imprisis) or Maxtor, the drives should work fine. Also note that DEC did not make the RZ series drives, they are from other manufacturers, so if you were to get ahold of the same drive from the OEM, then you would even have drives which match the same DEC drive #'s. It is my understanding that the VAXstation-3100 under VMS will only support the RZ drive types because of the VMS driver (to be fixed in the next release of VMS??). art stine sr network engineer clarkson u
avolio@decuac.dec.com (Frederick M. Avolio) (04/25/89)
In article <JWG1.89Apr24142605@bunny.gte.com>, jwg1@bunny.gte.com (James W. Gish) writes: > According to our local DEC salesman, there are currently no third > party drives available for the 3100, i.e., you might call it > pseudo-SCSI. Of course this is not true. Or maybe you were tongue-in-cheek? You just need to find a SCSI drive that sticks to the specs. We've run quite a few different company's SCSI devices. There was a discussion of this in comp.unix.ultrix a while back. Perhaps someone who saved the info could send it to you? I am cross-posting this reply to there. I am not in the above recommending nor guaranteeing nor suggesting any non-Digital SCSI interface. Nor am I writing for Digital. Fred
grr@cbmvax.UUCP (George Robbins) (04/26/89)
In article <2670@decuac.DEC.COM> avolio@decuac.dec.com (Frederick M. Avolio) writes: > In article <JWG1.89Apr24142605@bunny.gte.com>, jwg1@bunny.gte.com (James W. Gish) writes: > > According to our local DEC salesman, there are currently no third > > party drives available for the 3100, i.e., you might call it > > pseudo-SCSI. > > Of course this is not true. Or maybe you were tongue-in-cheek? You just > need to find a SCSI drive that sticks to the specs. We've run quite > a few different company's SCSI devices. There was a discussion of > this in comp.unix.ultrix a while back. Perhaps someone who saved the info > could send it to you? I am cross-posting this reply to there. It is worth pointing out that the SCSI standard is pretty successful at standardizing the hardware connection level (Apple excepted), but even with CCS (common command set) the software compatibility has a lot of problems. Sure the sequences for reading and writing are fairly uniform, but the sequences required required for "formatting" the drives, using bad block substitution, power up initialization vary widely. Also the values returned for reading capacity and geometry seem subject to random intrepretation. The general procdure for writing a SCSI driver is therefore to take a crack a writing a "generic SCSI" driver and then special case it until it works with each of the drives you feel your company is likely to use or that you have lying around and want to work. As a result, you can usually expect the same model drives, with the same or later ROM revision and hopefully their successors to work, but expect a new and random drive to work only somebody not only claims it works, but can demonstrate such from taking it from the box, formatting and using it. I suspect that once the "word" gets around about which drives do work and/or what tricks are required, the third party types will have lots of them. It takes a while. -- George Robbins - now working for, uucp: {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr but no way officially representing arpa: cbmvax!grr@uunet.uu.net Commodore, Engineering Department fone: 215-431-9255 (only by moonlite)
Chip_N_Oliver@cup.portal.com (04/26/89)
In <JWG1.89Apr24142605@bunny.get.com> jwg1@bunny.get.com writes: > According to our local DEC salesman, there are currently no third > party drives available for the 3100, i.e., you might call it > pseudo-SCSI. Your going to believe a DEC salesman about 3rd party drives (even if he knew what he was talking about)? My recollection is that the 3100 SCSI bus is SUPPOSED to be as standard as SCSI can get (whatever the H**L that means. In other words, just like any other 'standard' SCSI bus, SOME SCSI drives will work. The problem may be (as it always was in the past) is whether DEC is going to give you the facilities to format the drive - i.e. are they going to let you enter the drive geometries into the format utility or do you just specify "RZnn"? Of course you could always write you own formatter using the 'standard SCSI command set' (this actually would be feasible). One thing you can be sure of, the 3rd party guys are working on solutions, whatever they may be. Of course their prices, like always, will be somewhere between DECs outrageousness and rolling your own. Chip Oliver coliver@cup.portal.com Lockheed Missiles & Space sun!portal!cup.portal.com!coliver This line left Internationally Blank
rsp@decvax.dec.com (Ricky Palmer - (603)881-0370 - ZK3-3/T74) (04/28/89)
------- You should know that although our current SCSI code for the DS3100 is far from perfect as far as "genericness" goes we're making every effort now and for the future to tend toward "genericness". I took a first and I mean first stab at it last summer when I wrote the DS3100 code by defining some configuration bit fields to tell the driver to try things like synchronous versus asynchronous and the like, but I admit that it has a ways to go before it allows person A to hook up any SCSI peripheral B and have A and B plus the DS3100 all be happy! It's not a trivial feat by any means, but we're trying!!!! --- Ricky Palmer Ultrix Advanced Development --- Digital Equipment Corporation --- Nashua, New Hampshire --- ... One of the fathers of PMAX ...