herndon@sctc.com (William R. Herndon) (09/28/90)
I have the opportunity to purchase a DN3000 very inexpensively for use
as a personal workstation. This machine has 4 Mbytes of RAM onboard
and a 170 Mbyte Micropolis disk on an ESDI controller, but before I buy
it I'd like to try and get some questions answered.
1. What is likely make and model of this controller? The current owner
states that it will accept one more disk and at least one floppy.
HP/Apollo, on the other hand, states that it will not take another
disk, won't give me any information about what make or model
the controller is likely to be, and won't tell me where I can get
a compatibility list for the DN3000. They did say though that Apollo
machines ARE NOT compatible with Western Digital controllers
2. Is Apollo usually this hard to deal with?
3. Can anyone direct me to a compatability list for the machine?
4. I am given to understand that this machine has 5 16 bit AT compatible
slots. Is this correct? With a Motorola processor on the mother
board? The owner informs me that the ESDI controller as well as the
Token Ring controller are occupying two of these slots.
5. OK, assuming that it is possible, does this mean that off the shelf
AT compatable hardware can be expected to work in the DN3000
( assuming of course that the OS has correct drivers, and I can get the
jumpers set correctly )? I am primarily interested in these slots so
that I can expand the machine with a serial/parallel card and perhaps
a controller for a cartridge tape.
6. Does Apollo sell a hardware manual on this machine that I could
purchase seperately?
7. Does anyone have any general comments on the idea of using this
machine as a personal workstation. Note that I am counting on the
fact that Domain 10.2's varient of BSD 4.3 is good enough to allow
me to add a fair amount of PD software.
Any and all help is appreciated. Thanks in advance.
- Max
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
William R. Herndon
Secure Computing Technology Corp. The opinions expressed are
mine, ALL MINE! HEH, HEH,
herndon@sctc.com HEH, HEH!!!
(612) 482-7431 krowitz@RICHTER.MIT.EDU (David Krowitz) (09/28/90)
That's some list of questions ... The disk controller is probably an Ompti 8800/8810/8610. Apollo does not support the Western Digital WD7000 on the DN3000's. These Ompti controllers are used with Micropolis 1355 (150 Mb), Maxtor EXT-4380 (350 Mb, slow), or Micropolis 1558 (350 Mb, fast) drives. The controllers are physically capable of handing two ESDI drives, and Apollo's software supports two drives per controller on the DN4000 and DN3500/4500 as long as both drives on the controller are the same model. The DN3000 hardware configuration process (EX CONFIG from the hardware boot level) does not, however, give you the option of specifying a second disk drive on your controller. Whether there is a workaround to this arbitrary limitation is unknown, at least to me. The CPU is a 12 Mhz 68020 with a 12 Mhz 68881 FPU. If the machine is a model 3010 or 3010A, then it has a 68551 PMMU, otherwise it has a custom memory management unit daughter board which plugs into the socket for the 68551 (the first units came out prior to the availability of Motorola's chip). In the later case, processes are limited to a virtual address space of 64 Mb, including all system libraries (commonly ~4 to 6 MB). The system will run with the 4 Mb of RAM, but good performance under Domain/OS SR10.2 really requires 6 to 8 Mb. The system can hold a maximum of 4 2-Mb memory cards if it is a DN3000 or DN3010. If it is a DN3010A, then it has a single memory card which is either a 4 Mb or an 8 Mb card, in which case upgrading the memory requires that you swap out the existing card. The systems have a total of 7 XT/AT slots available. On earlier models, 2 slots were XT slots and 5 were AT slots. This was changed on later models to 1 XT and 6 AT slots. Unless your PC boards are hardware compatible with on of Apollo's supported devices, you will have to write your own I/O device driver. This is non trivial. It requires the GPIO (General Purpose I/O) package, which is an optional software product not included in the OS and which has *nothing* to do with BSD or SYS V device drivers. Be forwarned. This system was first introduced in early 1986, and is now over 4 years old. Although up until the introduction of the DN2500 roughly 12 months ago, the DN3000 was Apollo's bread and butter machine, HP is now pushing real hard to get its installed base to trade these machines in for HP 9000's. The rumors are that SR11 won't run on anything with less than 12 or 16 Mb, and that OSF will only be available on the HP 9000's -- not on any of the earlier Apollo- designed hardware. If you want a personal workstation for your home, and the price is right, go ahead and buy it ... but keep in mind that the DN3000 is a dead end machine, even though your particular unit may only be 12 months old. -- David Krowitz krowitz@richter.mit.edu (18.83.0.109) krowitz%richter.mit.edu@eddie.mit.edu krowitz%richter.mit.edu@mitvma.bitnet (in order of decreasing preference)