sl@munnari (Steven Lynch) (10/27/89)
Is anyone out there using third party disks of around 700Mb (or more) on a 4D/20(25) ? If so what type of disk ? Did you have any problems ? What were the format parameters that you found successful ? What should I look out for ? Thanks Steven .......................................................................... Steven Lynch Mail: sl@cs.mu.OZ.AU Snail: The University of Melbourne, Phone: +61 3 344-4045 Department of Computer Science, Fax: +61 3 348-1184 Parkville, Vic, 3052, Australia ..........................................................................
ian@dgp.toronto.edu (Ian S. Small) (10/28/89)
A word of warning re third party disks - what works now may not work tomorrow. We have been running Wren V's on both Personal Irises and Power Irises without too much distress after some initial teething problems. One of the Personal Iris/Wren V combinations just upgraded to 3.2 and guess what? His Wren V doesn't behave any more. SGI's response appears to be: "We didn't support it, it's your problem." We have only tried to upgrade the one machine, so cannot determine if this problem is endemic across the entire line, or whether it is just Personal Irises, or just 4D/25's for that matter. But when the manufacturer breaks things that used to work (and doesn't offer any help in fixing the problem), that's good cause for customer dissatisfaction. While we are used to doing a lot of hacking, and aren't terribly bothered by the prospect of doing a little more, hacking to fix things that shouldn't have to be fixed is simply annoying. Seems to me that the glow that appeared about SGI products and SGI willing-to-pleaseness (gack, what a word!) around about the time of the Personal Iris introduction is fast disappearing. We should know better, of course, having been original owners of a 2400T, but hey, one could always hope. -- Ian S. Small (416) 978-6619 Dynamic Graphics Project Computer Systems Research Institute BITNET: ian@dgp.utoronto University of Toronto EAN: ian@dgp.toronto.cdn Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A4 UUCP/CSNET: ian@dgp.toronto.edu
khb%chiba@Sun.COM (Keith Bierman - SPD Advanced Languages) (10/28/89)
In article <1989Oct27.184925.13487@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> ian@dgp.toronto.edu (Ian S. Small) writes: > >... story of 3rd party drives.. > >But when the manufacturer breaks things that used to work (and doesn't >offer any help in fixing the problem), that's good cause for customer > I'm not in the habit of defending SGI :> , but here goes: 1) SGI offered to solve your problem originally; there is a disk drive (or several) in their price list. I have little doubt that SGI would ensure that it worked, and would continue to do so. 2) You chose to save money ... you bought a drive from someone else. That someone else gets to save money by not offering service, support, quality control, etc. 3) You blame SGI for not doing the job of #2. This seems unfair. In case there is any doubt; SunManagement does not endorse this, or any other defense of SGI (:>). Keith H. Bierman |*My thoughts are my own. !! kbierman@sun.com It's Not My Fault | MTS --Only my work belongs to Sun* I Voted for Bill & | Advanced Languages/Floating Point Group Opus | "When the going gets Weird .. the Weird turn PRO" "There is NO defense against the attack of the KILLER MICROS!" Eugene Brooks
lamy@ai.utoronto.ca (Jean-Francois Lamy) (10/28/89)
I have seen several cases where third party hardware was actually making bugs in the vendor's OS show up more dramatically. This may have actually saved the vendor some money and a lot of hair investigating irreproducible bug reports that where transient when their own equipment was being used (for example, Revision 14 of the Sun 4/280 CPU board was the first one that could support both X.25 (synchronous I/O) and stick to the VME specs well enough for a Ciprico Rimfire board (and no doubt others) to run at its design speed). Neither of these things were "supported" by Sun or done with Sun software, but there is no denying that the bugs were there, in the hardware, all along! I would fully expect a company touting a SCSI driver (which is part of Irix) to fix it in the event that a bug in the driver gets found, even if none of the device they sell triggers the bug, or else to be honest enough start calling the product an "SCSI-like driver" (that would have to happen for SCSI-like devices too :-). Part of the selling point for SCSI is the wide availability of useful devices. Exabytes caused customers to complain about bugs in the vendors' SCSI software, and in the drives' firmware. And the vendors who fixed their own bugs and worked around bugs in hardware their customers wanted got happier customers, and presumably more sales. And then some vendors even started supporting and selling them... If I was a vendor and someone I can reasonably trust told me that doing something reasonable with a reasonably common device used to work and doesn't, I'd have someone have a look under the hood. I fully understand that my definition of reasonable may bear little resemblance to that of a company with finite resources and trying to turn in a profit for this term. Jean-Francois Lamy lamy@ai.utoronto.ca, uunet!ai.utoronto.ca!lamy AI Group, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4
olson@anchor.sgi.com (Dave Olson) (10/28/89)
ian@dgp.toronto.edu (Ian S. Small) writes: >A word of warning re third party disks - what works now may not >work tomorrow. We have been running Wren V's on both Personal Irises >and Power Irises without too much distress after some initial teething >problems. >One of the Personal Iris/Wren V combinations just upgraded to 3.2 and >guess what? His Wren V doesn't behave any more. SGI's response appears >to be: "We didn't support it, it's your problem." We have only tried to >upgrade the one machine, so cannot determine if this problem is endemic >across the entire line, or whether it is just Personal Irises, or >just 4D/25's for that matter. As I have replied to many people privately, we discovered the hard way that CDC made some mistakes in the firmware on the Wren IV, V, VI, and possibly VII SCSI drives. It was first discovered (by us) on the Wren VI 760 Mb drive; after we discovered it, it showed up in new releases of firmware for the IV and V models. If you are experiencing SCSI bus timeouts, this is almost certainly the problem. Contact your vendor to get your DRIVE firmware upgraded. CDC has released new firmware that resolves the problem for all the drives listed above. The 3.2 release supports synchronous SCSI if the drive also supports it (on the 4D/20 and 4D/25 only). All the Wren V drives do support it. On the 4D25 in particular, we have a very high transfer rate. This exposed the bugs in the CDC firmware. If you want to mail me which Wren V you have, and it's firmware rev (boot the system with bootmode set to d, or use the 'ide' program), I can try (unofficially) to determine if you have the faulty firmware. I would like to hear just who it was at SGI that gave you the reply you indicated above. Our support people generally contact me when SCSI issues arise, and I haven't had your problem referred to me. I'm posting this reply rather than mailing, specifically to let people know that we DO try to support our customers, even when unsupported hardware is used (as far as is reasonable, of course). Particularly in cases like this, where there is a known problem, we can try to help. Issues like this are one of the reasons why supported hardware costs more when purchased from a systems vendor; we DO support it with extensive, and continuing, testing and qualification work. Dave Olson It's important to keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out. -- Stephen A. Kallis, Jr.
markb@denali.sgi.com (Mark Bradley) (10/31/89)
In article <1989Oct27.184925.13487@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>, ian@dgp.toronto.edu (Ian S. Small) writes: > A word of warning re third party disks - what works now may not > work tomorrow. We have been running Wren V's on both Personal Irises > and Power Irises without too much distress after some initial teething > problems. > > One of the Personal Iris/Wren V combinations just upgraded to 3.2 and > guess what? His Wren V doesn't behave any more. SGI's response appears > to be: "We didn't support it, it's your problem." We have only tried to > upgrade the one machine, so cannot determine if this problem is endemic > across the entire line, or whether it is just Personal Irises, or > just 4D/25's for that matter. > > But when the manufacturer breaks things that used to work (and doesn't > offer any help in fixing the problem), that's good cause for customer > dissatisfaction. While we are used to doing a lot of hacking, and aren't > terribly bothered by the prospect of doing a little more, hacking to > fix things that shouldn't have to be fixed is simply annoying. > > Seems to me that the glow that appeared about SGI products and SGI > willing-to-pleaseness (gack, what a word!) around about the time of > the Personal Iris introduction is fast disappearing. We should know > better, of course, having been original owners of a 2400T, but hey, > one could always hope. > -- > Ian S. Small (416) 978-6619 Dynamic Graphics Project > Computer Systems Research Institute > BITNET: ian@dgp.utoronto University of Toronto > EAN: ian@dgp.toronto.cdn Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A4 > UUCP/CSNET: ian@dgp.toronto.edu You should probably have whomever sold you that drive upgrade the firmware. 3.2 has some performance enhancements that we found (rather painfully) bring out some bugs in old, braindead, buggy drive f/w. It would be really nice if everyone tried as hard to determine the problem and its solution as they do trying to find someone to blame. You may have noticed that there are some of us here on the net who actually DO want to help you solve your problems. As for someone telling you that we don't support your drive, that person was probably doing as they were told. Support is a cost/profit center, too. They are also not privy to all of the information they would have needed to help you solve your problem. Anyhow, try to get your drives' f/w upgraded to the latest rev. It will probably work just fine. markb -- Mark Bradley "Faster, faster, until the thrill of I/O Subsystems speed overcomes the fear of death." Silicon Graphics Computer Systems Mountain View, CA 94039-7311 ---Hunter S. Thompson ******************************************************************************** * Disclaimer: Anything I say is my opinion. If someone else wants to use it, * * it will cost... * ********************************************************************************