grunwald@foobar.colorado.edu (Dirk Grunwald) (10/24/90)
has anyone put HP disks, in particular, HP97-548S, 5.25 inch SCSI, 793->663mb, 16.5ms seek HP97-549P, 5.25 inch SCSI2, 1180->1000mb, 17.5ms seek on a DECstation 3100? Will the DECstation handle the SCSI2, as long as it's wire compatible with the older SCSI-1 connectors? thanks, Dirk Grunwald -- Univ. of Colorado at Boulder (grunwald@foobar.colorado.edu) (grunwald@boulder.colorado.edu)
pavlov@canisius.UUCP (Greg Pavlov) (10/25/90)
In article <28549@boulder.Colorado.EDU>, grunwald@foobar.colorado.edu (Dirk Grunwald) writes: > > has anyone put HP disks, in particular, > HP97-548S, 5.25 inch SCSI, 793->663mb, 16.5ms seek > HP97-549P, 5.25 inch SCSI2, 1180->1000mb, 17.5ms seek > on a DECstation 3100? Will the DECstation handle the SCSI2, as long as > it's wire compatible with the older SCSI-1 connectors? I have an answer to this, as well as a Big Question. We have been using the 663 MB HP disks on DEC 3100's with good success. BUT (mainly for the HP people out there): We just purchased a batch of DEC 5000's and have been evaluating both the HP 663 MB disks and their Seagate/Imprimus/CDC counterparts and have noted the following: 1. the HP disks cannot be used, at the moment, as boot disks. This has been verified for us by other parties. The rumor is that HP is about to release firmware that will solve this problem. Anyone know anything solid about this ? 2. in many simple tests that we performed, the HP and the Seagate perfor- med comparably. Except in one area: large bulk transfers. For in- stance: cp foobar /dev/null : HP: apx. 650 KB/sec; Seagate: apx. 1450 KB/sec Is there any obvious explanation for this ? Our assumption is that the HPs and the Seagates are comparable capability-wise, but there is some sort of mismatch/miscommunication between the HP SCSI and the DEC SCSI interfaces. We see apx. the same results on both the DEC 3100 and the DEC 5000, albeit the Seagate is apx. 25% "slower" on the 3100 (we assume that we are seeing that system's SCSI interface limit). - to be honest, we would prefer to go with the HP's. But the above are acting as a major deterrent. We have tried to contact HP directly on this issue, but haven't got past the secretaries anywhere. greg pavlov, fstrf, amherst, ny pavlov@stewart.fstrf.org 716-834-0900
burdick@hpspdra.HP.COM (Matt Burdick) (10/27/90)
> to be honest, we would prefer to go with the HP's. But the above > are acting as a major deterrent. We have tried to contact HP > directly on this issue, but haven't got past the secretaries > anywhere. You should ask your question in comp.sys.hp. I know zero about HP drives, but I know that some engineers from HP's disk division read comp.sys.hp (I've seen them post there). -matt -- Matt Burdick | Hewlett-Packard burdick@hpspd.spd.hp.com | Intelligent Networks Operation