rsm@math.arizona.edu (Robert S. Maier) (07/21/90)
I've got a Data General Aviion 300 on my desk, and it's got a problem.
It runs DG/UX 4.10 just fine, but it refuses to boot DG/UX 4.20. The
DG/UX 4.20 in question is located on a 662 megabyte third-party SCSI
disk, and I suspect that that's the source of the problem.
Data General did something to its SCSI interface between releases 4.10
and 4.20 of DG/UX; does anyone know exactly what? The 4.20 release
notes mention only that 4.20 ``now supports synchronous SCSI
transfers,'' but the changes must have been pretty substantial.
The local DG field engineer tells me that on some of DG's Maxtor
drives, the drive PROM actually had to be replaced. My own drive is a
Micropolis, though. And by talking to Micropolis I verified that its
PROM, though bearing a year-old date, is the most recent vanilla PROM
available. So I'm at sea.
Can anyone help? Does DG/UX 4.20 no longer talk standard SCSI out of
its SCSI port?
If so I'm going to think twice about keeping my Aviion. (I switched
to Data General from Sun in part because I had extreme doubts about
Sun's SCSI drivers...)
--
Robert S. Maier | Internet: rsm@math.arizona.edu [128.196.224.2]
Dept. of Math. | UUCP: ..{allegra,cmcl2,hao!noao}!arizona!amethyst!rsm
Univ. of Arizona | Bitnet: maier@arizrvax
Tucson, AZ 85721 | FAX: +1 602 621 8322
U.S.A. | Voice(POTS): +1 602 621 6893 / +1 602 621 2617fdc@materna.uucp (Frank D. Cringle) (07/21/90)
In article <RSM.90Jul20173228@coral.math.arizona.edu> rsm@math.arizona.edu (Robert S. Maier) writes: >I've got a Data General Aviion 300 on my desk, and it's got a problem. >It runs DG/UX 4.10 just fine, but it refuses to boot DG/UX 4.20. The >DG/UX 4.20 in question is located on a 662 megabyte third-party SCSI >disk, and I suspect that that's the source of the problem. > >Data General did something to its SCSI interface between releases 4.10 >and 4.20 of DG/UX; does anyone know exactly what? The 4.20 release >notes mention only that 4.20 ``now supports synchronous SCSI >transfers,'' but the changes must have been pretty substantial. Sorry I can't help with your problem, but I would like to put in a good word for DG and the Aviion. I have an AV300 and upgraded from DG/UX 4.10 to 4.20 some months ago with no problems. Since then I have installed a 1GB WREN VII in addition to the original 332MB disk and it works just fine. Installation was no trouble -- DG/UX understands that a SCSI device is an array of blocks, reads the capacity and gets on with it. I have also temporarily hooked up some smaller scsi disks (40MB Quantum, 30MB Seagate, don't have the model numbers handy), installed file systems on them and played around, again with no problems. All this was done with third party hardware without any involvment by DG, indeed without them even knowing about it. What I haven't tried is booting from anything but the original disk (or tape), but evidently the boot prom is not the source of your difficulties as you can still boot DG/UX 4.10. -- Frank D. Cringle | Tel. +49 231 5599 124 Dr. Materna GmbH | fdc@materna.uucp Vosskuhle 37 D-4600 Dortmund 1