rob@genrad.UUCP (Rob Wood) (07/06/83)
We are in the process of configuring a new Vax. One of the questions is whether to go with the economical RA81/UDA50 or the proven RM05. You can tell by my adjectives what the major considerations are. If you were given the chance, what would you do? Any other thoughts? We have already decided definitely on DEC drives. I'd appreciate prompt replys. Thanks. Rob Wood (decvax!genrad!rob)
ron%brl-bmd@sri-unix.UUCP (07/09/83)
From: Ron Natalie <ron@brl-bmd> Actually, I'd go with the RA81/HSC50's that DEC just announced availability on. -Ron
gwyn%brl-vld@sri-unix.UUCP (07/10/83)
From: Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn@brl-vld> The only drawback to the HSC50 that I can see is that I suspect there are no device drivers for it! From what I've seen of UDA50 drivers so far, they were not designed to support the general Digital Storage Architecture. I would love to be proved wrong about this...
FRANK%utah-20@sri-unix.UUCP (07/10/83)
From: Randy Frank <FRANK@utah-20> Having talked to both people and DEC and Berkeley about potential support for CI bus (HSC50) based disks, the comments can be summarized as follows: 1) writing a driver for a CI based disk is more akin to writing a networking system than writing a device driver. In particular, you have to implement a protocol called MSCP (mass storage control protocol) which is used over the CI bus. 2) it isn't a trivial job (i.e., don't expect one from DEC in the next few weeks). It's substantially harder that simply hacking an existing disk device driver for a "new" disk. 3) no one will commit that they actually are going to do it, but that clearly it is DEC's future architecture, so in most probability it will be done at some time in the future, but don't hold your breath. 4) (this one's my own interpretation) Ideally what DEC would like to do is have Unix and VMS co-exist on the same CI bus, hopefully sharing disk structures. Clearly this is an enormous project, but given DEC's planned support of Vax Unix is probably an intelligent thing to do. Whether or not it is even a reasonable thing to implement remains to be seen. -------
ron%brl-bmd@sri-unix.UUCP (07/10/83)
From: Ron Natalie <ron@brl-bmd> The lack of device drives has never stopped the UNIX community before.. -Ron