despoix@imag.imag.fr (Frederic DESPOIX) (10/23/90)
Hi, My friends and I would like to have some usefull hints about third party vendors for DG AViiON (4000). SCSI bus is supposed to be a standard but the number of articles in comp.periphs.scsi tells the contrary !!! DG's disks and I imagine, all major company add-ons (SUN, ...) are expensive. Do you know of hard disk, magneto-optical disk and exabyte that have been successfully plugged to an AViiON ? What about software problems ? Do you have the description (type, constructor, ...) of DG 1Gb disk so that I find a similar one ? Thanks in advance, fred. ___________________________________________________________________________ DESPOIX Frederic, despoix@imag.fr LGI-DU, B.P. 53x despoix@imag 38041 GRENOBLE cedex, FRANCE uunet.uu.net!imag!despoix Tel : (33)76.51.44.81 /------------------------------ Fax : (33)76.44.66.75 | NB : Usual disclaimer applies
newton@ggumby.cs.caltech.edu (Mike Newton) (10/26/90)
In <14494@imag.imag.fr> despoix@imag.imag.fr (Frederic DESPOIX) writes: > My friends and I would like to have some usefull hints about third > party vendors for DG AViiON (4000). > SCSI bus is supposed to be a standard but the number of articles in > comp.periphs.scsi tells the contrary !!! Just one comment -- at least as of 4.20 (havent tried 4.30) stay far far away from Newburry drives. Maybe the 4000's have a better SCSI than the 300's, but we _never_ got it to work. On the other hand, DG drastically improved the SCSI implementation in 4.30, so it may work now..... - mike -- newton@csvax.cs.caltech.edu Beach Bums Anonymous, Pasadena President Caltech 256-80 (Hilo -- it's not just another rainy day!) Pasadena CA 91125 Life's a beach. Then you graduate.
hardin@dg-rtp.dg.com (Paul Hardin) (10/29/90)
In article <newton.656917258@ggumby>, newton@ggumby.cs.caltech.edu (Mike Newton) writes: |> In <14494@imag.imag.fr> despoix@imag.imag.fr (Frederic DESPOIX) writes: |> > My friends and I would like to have some usefull hints about third |> > party vendors for DG AViiON (4000). |> > SCSI bus is supposed to be a standard but the number of articles in |> > comp.periphs.scsi tells the contrary !!! |> |> Just one comment -- at least as of 4.20 (havent tried 4.30) stay |> far far away from Newburry drives. Maybe the 4000's have a better |> SCSI than the 300's, but we _never_ got it to work. The only problem I've heard of, relating to Newburry drives, was a bootstrap problem where the drive took much longer to become ready after a SCSI reset than expected, and the bootstrap gave up. Since this problem only affected the bootstrap, you should have been able to use the drive for additional storage, or whatever, but just not boot from it. This problem has since been fixed, and I believe was released with 4.21. If you're up to rev, give it a try. The SCSI implementation for the AV 4000 is, for all practical purposes, the same as that on the AV 300. The implication that the AV 300 is somehow flawed is simply not true. We've made a very strong attempt to make sure that as many off-the-shelf SCSI disks would work as possible. However, as anyone who's worked closely with several different SCSI devices will tell you, there's probably a ill-behaved device out there just waiting to strike :-). Paul -- Speaking purely for myself... .----------------------------------------------------------------------- -. |Paul Hardin hardin@dg-rtp.dg.com | |Data General Corp., RTP NC {world}!mcnc!rti!xyzzy!hardin | `----------------------------------------------------------------------- -'
newton@ggumby.cs.caltech.edu (Mike Newton) (10/30/90)
In <1990O....j51.24348@dg-rtp.dg.com> hardin@dg-rtp.dg.com (Paul Hardin) writes: >In article <newt....@ggumby>, newton@ggumby.cs.caltech.edu (MikeNewton) writes: >|> In <144....imag.fr> despoix@imag.imag.fr (Frederic DESPOIX)writes: >|> > My friends and I would like to have some usefull hints about third >|> > party vendors for DG AViiON (4000). >|> >|> Just one comment -- at least as of 4.20 (havent tried 4.30) stay >|> far far away from Newburry drives. Maybe the 4000's have a better >|> SCSI than the 300's, but we _never_ got it to work. > The only problem I've heard of, relating to Newburry drives, > was a bootstrap problem where the drive took much longer to > become ready after a SCSI reset than expected, and the > bootstrap gave up. Since this problem only affected the bootstrap, > you should have been able to use the drive for additional storage, > or whatever, but just not boot from it. > This problem has since been fixed, and I believe was released > with 4.21. If you're up to rev, give it a try. I'm going to send a much longer reply to Paul by e-mail, but the essence is that that problems were much more severe than this. I would like to repeat, however, that [1] i have not tested it under 4.30 (i believe i tested 4.21) [2] it only showed up on Newbury drives. (but that is what we had and it took months to get the system running). Note that the older Newbury drives have a known select problem. This was made worse by the earlier DG scsi driver, but even with newer Newburry disks we never got any to work well (panics in 1-15 minutes). - mike -- newton@csvax.cs.caltech.edu Beach Bums Anonymous, Pasadena President Caltech 256-80 (Hilo -- it's not just another rainy day!) Pasadena CA 91125 Life's a beach. Then you graduate.