whna@ciba-geigy.ch (Heinz Naef) (07/16/90)
Hello creative system integrators, This crazy question may have been asked before, but ... I'm wondering if a so-called industry-standard personal computer could be configured so that it acts as a 'shoebox' for a diskless Sun workstation. The question came up because two collegues and I own PC's for home usage, equipped with a large (unfortunately MFM) harddisk (130MB) and a Sun- compatible streamer tape drive. We are thinking about buying a real workstation but do not want to throw away what we have now. One could imagine a package containing a SCSI host adapter for the PC bus and a special DOS device driver or PC-bootable mini-operating system which could emulate the 'intelligence' of the 'shoebox'. Does anyone know about such a beast; or is it really a bad idea? Thanks in advance for any comments (consider the limited bandwith of the News system). This question has nothing to do with any design ideas my employer may have. Heinz Naef, CIBA-GEIGY AG, R-1045.3.37, P.O.Box, CH-4002 Basel, Switzerland E-mail: whna@ciba-geigy.ch - Phone: +41 61 697 2675 - Fax: +41 61 697 3288
CTH_CO@tekno.chalmers.se (Christer Olsson) (07/19/90)
In article <9959@brazos.Rice.edu>, whna@ciba-geigy.ch (Heinz Naef) writes: > > The question came up because two collegues and I own PC's for home usage, > equipped with a large (unfortunately MFM) harddisk (130MB) and a Sun- > compatible streamer tape drive. We are thinking about buying a real > workstation but do not want to throw away what we have now. > > One could imagine a package containing a SCSI host adapter for the PC bus > and a special DOS device driver or PC-bootable mini-operating system which > could emulate the 'intelligence' of the 'shoebox'. > > Does anyone know about such a beast; or is it really a bad idea? Thanks > in advance for any comments (consider the limited bandwith of the News > system). This question has nothing to do with any design ideas my > employer may have. I think it's better to use a MFM -> SCSI-controller (Adeptec 4000A or other). Use the PC-case as a shoebox and dedicate the disk to only using with the workstation. It gives better perfomance than using emulation and the PC-bus. Advantages: You don't need a new case or power. You can equip the PC with a small disk for dos. Maybe, you can share the tape streamer with the PC and workstation. You can run PC-programs. Disadvantages: You can't power off the PC when you need rebooting the PC. Attaching the tape maybe need restarting the box. You can't share the big disk with sun and pc.
feustel@well.sf.ca.us (David Alan Feustel) (07/21/90)
The Adaptec 1542a SCSI controller supports target mode. You could hook the
controller to the Sun's SCSI bus and then write a pc program to process
i/o commands from the Sun (assuming the Sun has a SCSI bus).
Phone: (work) 219-482-9631; MCI mail: DFEUSTEL
E-mail: feustel@well.sf.ca.us {ucbvax,apple,hplabs,pacbell}!well!feustel
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