[comp.sys.sun] Sun SCSI Disk Drive troubles

deboni@fernando.llnl.gov (10/19/89)

I do not regularly read this newsgroup, but I have a question one or more
of you may be able to answer, regarding Sun peripherals.

My group recetnly bought a SCSI disk drive for our file server - a CDC
Wren VI, made by Helios - and we're not having any luck getting it to
work. Not being a Unix wiz, I need some assistance. Does anyone out there
have any experience dealing with these things? We've got an Exabyte tap
drive hooked to our SCSI bus, and we've hooked the disk drive to the back
of it. The tape drive is not terminated (it seems to work fine that way,
all by itself, which I don't understand), but the disk drive is. The wierd
thing is, we can mount the disk drive, sometimes we can read from it, and
occasionally we can even write to it; however, any attempt to access it
always ends in some sort of lockup: the system load goes way up, and no
files get moved. I'm at a loss.  Please help. I'll summarize any answers
and successes I have to this group when they occur.

Reply to deboni@diego.llnl.gov.

Thanks in advance!
Tom DeBoni

mark@uunet.uu.net (mark galbraith) (11/09/89)

Be careful how you enable TERMPWR.  On some Sun workstations, TERMPWR is
*SHORTED* to ground.  This can, as you would expect, cause many problems;
including fried power supplies and motherboards.

Notably, the problems described occured here at Delta on our older
Sun-3/50 workstations.  I do not have any information on the newer
workstations.  The moral is, check pin 25 (TERMPWR) on your host adapter
connection, and if it is shorted to ground, do not allow TERMPWR to get
back to the Sun.

Mark Galbraith				Voice:  415-449-6881
Programmer/Postmaster			UUCP:   uunet!deltam!mark
"The opinions expressed are mine.	"Where were you during the 
 My employer's may be different!"	 Great Quake of `89??"