razzell@cs.ubc.ca (Dan Razzell) (08/04/90)
We are in the process of installing some Maxtor 200MB SCSI disk drives into Sparcstations. The drives are shipped without documentation, so while we wait for the installation manual to arrive, I thought I'd ask if anyone can readily provide the necessary setup to put these drives into service. In particular: 1) How is the SCSI address jumpered? 2) I also heard some mention of parity and spinup delay, if anyone can suggest appropriate jumper settings. 3) Does anyone have a format.dat entry for this drive that they would like to share? I can confirm at this point that these drives do indeed run very hot. Not hot enough to fry eggs, but almost too hot to touch. Don't know that I would want to be reincarnated as a Maxtor controller chip. It might almost be worth drilling out the ventilation holes under these drives, just to give the fan a bit of a chance, always bearing in mind that a good mass of air still needs to flow over the SIMM area.
hargen@pdn.paradyne.com (Bill Hargen) (08/07/90)
In article <1990Aug5.165649.11896@rice.edu> razzell@cs.ubc.ca (Dan Razzell) writes: > >We are in the process of installing some Maxtor 200MB SCSI disk drives >into Sparcstations. The drives are shipped without documentation, so >while we wait for the installation manual to arrive, I thought I'd ask if >anyone can readily provide the necessary setup to put these drives into >service. In particular: > >1) How is the SCSI address jumpered? Jumper settings (J6): 9 7 5 3 1 x x x x x x x x x x 10 8 6 4 2 9-10: The parity disable jumper is not currently supported. When it is it will enable (in) or disable (out) odd parity detection in the disk drive. Currently, odd parity is always generated by the disk drive and provided to the SCSI bus. 7-8: With no jumper, the disk drive does not spin up until the initiator issues a START/STOP UNIT command with the start bit equal to one. (This option is not implemented.) With a jumper, the motor starts as soon as power is applied. 5-6: SCSI ID (most significant bit, in=1, out=0) 3-4: SCSI ID 1-2: SCSI ID (least significant bit) 7-8: motor start on >2) I also heard some mention of parity and spinup delay, if anyone can > suggest appropriate jumper settings. Other than the above, I don't have any info. >3) Does anyone have a format.dat entry for this drive that they would like > to share? I'm working on writing a SCSI driver and the LXT-200S is one of the drives that I'm testing with. I'm including both the "raw info" as well as a format.dat entry. But beware: I have not tested the format.dat entry. (It was easier to write it then to explain *how* to compute some of the info. See the Sun Sys Admin Guide and the man page for format.dat for details.) Note that you should add this to format.dat - don't just let the format program prompt you for this. "format" doesn't ask all of the questions. # accessable cylinders = 1314 # data heads = 7 sectors/track = ** varies based on recording zone ** tracks / defect zone = 1 alt sectors / defect zone = 1 (can be larger, but 1 should be enough) alt tracks / defect zone = 0 alt tracks / volume = 0 interleave = 1 capacity (with 1 alt sector/track) = 392056 512-byte sectors disk_type = "Maxtor LXT-200S" \ : ctlr = MD21 : fmt_time = 1 \ : trks_zone = 1 : atrks = 0 : asect = 1 \ : ncyl = 1300 : acyl = 2 : pcyl = 1314 : nhead = 7 : nsect = 43 \ : rpm = 3600 : bpt = 17000 Note that the number of sectors/track varies (the drive puts more sectors per track in the outer cylinders). nsect and ncyl have been fudged so that the computed capacity is less than 392056 - 2 cylinders. Also, bpt is rather bogus since it varies depending on the recording zone. >I can confirm at this point that these drives do indeed run very hot. Not >hot enough to fry eggs, but almost too hot to touch. Don't know that I >would want to be reincarnated as a Maxtor controller chip. It might >almost be worth drilling out the ventilation holes under these drives, >just to give the fan a bit of a chance, always bearing in mind that a good >mass of air still needs to flow over the SIMM area. Just what SIMM's need: a good mass of pre-heated air flowing over them! :-( (Keep in mind that the SIMM's are somewhat between the hard disk(s) and the fan.) I prefer to keep the toasters out of the system cabinet. I'd be more concerned about the drive baking the system board than cooking itself. The drive is a lot cheaper! Bill Hargen AT&T Paradyne {uunet,peora}!pdn!hargen Mail stop LG-132 Phone: (813) 530-8655 P.O. Box 2826 Largo, FL 34649-2826
razzell@cs.ubc.ca (Dan Razzell) (08/08/90)
Thanks for the information on the Maxtor 200MB SCSI disk drive. The format.dat entry was especially useful because of the fudging required for the variable disk geometry. You commented that you had not tested this entry, but I have just finished doing so and built filesystems on top, so I can now confirm that it works. -*- Concerning heat problems, we needed a drive that would install in the Sparcstation enclosure, and Maxtor had a product. Consequently, we bought these, and we'll just have to see how everything bears up. I have since heard that Hitachi, Connor, and perhaps HP also make similar drives. Perhaps they might run a bit cooler, but who knows. Anyone care to comment? I still hold that it would be valuable to get more air moving under the Maxtor drive, one way for those not faint of heart being by drilling out the ventilation holes to a larger cross section. My earlier comments about airflow were made with the idea that most of the air inside the Sparcstation enclosure flows across the chassis from the vent holes on the lefthand side and finds its way, more or less, over the frame buffers, processor and memory. Some also enters under the SCSI drives, but the airway is considerably more restricted once a drive is in place. The point of changing the ventilation is to improve things for the controller board which hangs under the drive, never mind the Head Disk Assembly itself which is actually producing most of the heat. I think we agree that the main threat to the Sparcstation is simply from the heat radiated by the HDA, which is more or less sitting in still air no matter what you do. I've been trying to come up with a way of getting Pop Tarts in through the unused floppy cutout and soak up some of the heat that way, but I'm worried about the jam getting all over everything :-).
gibson@uunet.uu.net (Stanley Gibson) (08/09/90)
In article <1990Aug7.003304.1753@rice.edu> hargen@pdn.paradyne.com (Bill Hargen) writes: >X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 295, message 2 Maxtor LXT200 jumper information > >9-10: The parity disable jumper is not currently supported. When it is >7-8: With no jumper, the disk drive does not spin up until the initiator > issues a START/STOP UNIT command with the start bit equal to one. > (This option is not implemented.) On the latest revision of the drive these features are supported AND note that they are reversed. 9-10 are start/stop and 7-8 are parity enable. By the way Maxtor plans to replace the 200MB product with a 213MB. The new product will have 6 zones instead of 3.