[comp.sys.sgi] Seagate Drives for 4D2x

frank@contex.UUCP (Frank Perdicaro) (08/22/90)

   I recently talked a Seagate rep about drives.  He said a few interesting 
   things.  There is apparently a second version of the Wren 7 Elite.  This
   version fits form factor and dissipates 37 watts ( as opposed to the 
   original 45 ).  Its capacity is 1.6Gb unformatted.  It is my guess
   this will produce a 1350 Mb file system when the whole disk is used. 
   Also, the Wren 8 is just around the corner.  It has a 1.6Gb unformatted
   capacity, but is not as fast or as hot as the new Wren 7 Elite.

   These drives will be hard to get but available late this year.

   The question is, does the 3.3 fx deal with these drives as well as it
   deals with the rest of the Seagate line?

   Any words from the halls of SGI?
   
PS
   The 3.3 kernel is great.   When used with enough memory, it has a major
   impact on our disk-intensive image crunching.   Thanks.
-- 
	Frank E Perdicaro, Systems Admin, etc.		Xyvision Design Systems
   LEGALIZE Guns, drugs and cash...today.		101 Edgewater Drive
inhouse:  frank@bugs 					Wakefield MA
outhouse: contex!frank@uunet.uu.net			018801285

olson@anchor.esd.sgi.com (Dave Olson) (08/22/90)

In <1392@contex.UUCP> frank@contex.UUCP (Frank Perdicaro) writes:


|    I recently talked a Seagate rep about drives.  He said a few interesting 
|    things.  There is apparently a second version of the Wren 7 Elite.  This
|    version fits form factor and dissipates 37 watts ( as opposed to the 
|    original 45 ).  Its capacity is 1.6Gb unformatted.  It is my guess
|    this will produce a 1350 Mb file system when the whole disk is used. 
|    Also, the Wren 8 is just around the corner.  It has a 1.6Gb unformatted
|    capacity, but is not as fast or as hot as the new Wren 7 Elite.
| 
|    These drives will be hard to get but available late this year.

Well, since they leaked it to you, I will admit to having heard the same
thing (more or less :) ).  Overheating of the drive would almost certainly be
a problem in the PI line, and may also be a problem in the twin tower
systems also.

|    The question is, does the 3.3 fx deal with these drives as well as it
|    deals with the rest of the Seagate line?

Since we haven't seen the drive, we clearly can't say whether
it will work or not.  We frequently have had to have drive vendors make
firmware and even hardware changes in the past before they will work on
our systems...  We generally have fairly good luck with Seagate (formerly
Imprimis) drives, so there is a good chance that it will work.

Certainly in the 3.3 release, I did a fair amount of work to try to make
it work with most drives that file the SCSI 1 spec (and CCS) and SCSI 2
drives.   I still stumble on drives that do some pretty strange things
though!

--

	Dave Olson

Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.

andrew@alice.UUCP (Andrew Hume) (08/25/90)

not that my seagate rep is better than yours, but he claims
the new elites won't be shipping before january. and in any case,
they aren't wren 7 elites; they are just elites.