[comp.sys.sun] Ciprico 3400 and 4.0.3

paula@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Paul Allen) (04/14/90)

We've got 7 3/200 class machines (soon to be 4/200) with Ciprico Rimfire
3400 ESDI controllers and 600M Maxtor drives.  Five of the machines are
servers that boot from XY 451 controllers running Super Eagles.  The other
two are workstations that boot from the Rimfire controllers.  The
workstations and the add-on drives on the servers were all purchased from
Artecon about a year and a half ago.  

With the help of a 4.0 support tape from Artecon, I've managed to get one
of the workstations upgraded to 4.0.1.  Sun made significant changes
between 4.0.1 and 4.0.3, rendering this tape unusable with 4.0.3.  (At
least, my attempt to fix up the bdevsw and cdevsw tables manually resulted
in spectacular failure!)  Artecon is telling me that they're not getting
the support they need from Ciprico and that I should switch to Interphase
Panther controllers.  I've had a couple conversations with folk at
Ciprico.  A tech support guy assured me that Ciprico could provide a
driver, but I should talk to sales.  A salesman listened to my story and
said he'd get back to me.  So far, I have no driver for 4.0.3.

I just called Ciprico's 800 number, but their machine told me they're
taking the day off.  (Perhaps they're superstitious about Friday the 13th?
:-) )  I'll try again on Monday, but in the meantime I'm taking my story
to the net.  Is anybody out there using Ciprico Rimfire 3400 controllers
under anything later than 4.0.1 on either Sun 3's or Sun 4's?  Who
provided your driver?

Thanks for any info!  Please send mail, and I'll follow up.

Paul Allen
..!uw-beaver!bcsaic!pallen
pallen@atc.boeing.com