rfg@lupine.ncd.com (Ron Guilmette) (09/25/90)
Some time back, I was asking about SCSI disks & tapes for a Sun SLC I was planning to purchase. Well I got lots of very helpful responses, so I wanted to share what I had learned with others who read this group. I have my system now, and it is up and running, although I have not had a chance to get X-windows installed on it yet, and I understand that I may need to get a version of the X-server specifically for the SCL, and such may not exist yet (but I haven't investigated that thouroghly yet). Anyway, (for the moment) suntools works ok. Here's what I got, where I got it and how much it cost: Sun 4/20 (SLC) DataLease $3995.00 Archive 2150S 150-tape Datalease $595.00 Shoebox & cables Datalease $315.00 Fujitsu 2261SA US Mach $1450.00 SunOS media DataLease $350.00 It all seems to work, but you have to know a few tricks to get it there. First, there were many (including some at DataLease) who believed that an off-the-shelf Archive 2150S would not boot SunOS and that you needed to buy an (expensive) version of the 2150S from Sun with their own PROMS on it. (So much for the concept of `open systems' :-) Well, it seems that some recent non-Sun 2150S's may boot SunOS just fine. (Mine does anyway.) Older ones may not. If you need to be able to boot SunOS from tape in order to install it, be careful which 2150S you buy and check it out first. I got a 2261SA rather than a 2249 because I found out that the 2249's are an older Fujitsu model and that they do not have the 5 year warranty. If you get either a Fujitsu 2261SA or a 2263SA, get the latest ROMS for that. The latest rev-level is I. Level H will probably be alright also, but be sure to get at least level F. Apparently, there was a serious bug in the older roms for this type of drive. Varing reports have this bug causing trouble for DECstations 3100's and for high-end Sun systems. Anyway, best to play it safe and get the latest proms. The dealer I bought the disk drive from doesn't know squat, but (thank goodness) the distributor (Law/Cypress) and the Fujitsu regional sales office are both in San Jose. The distributor told me that the drive I would buy from his dealer definitely would have at least rev. F of the proms, but when I got it home it had rev. E. (Silly me... I should have checked before I got it out the door.) After that, I called Fujitsu sales in San Jose and they were very helpful and got me a new (rev. `I' PROM) right away. (The last letter stamped on the PROM is the software revision level.) Be sure to get a sheet with configuration jumper info about either the 2261 or the 2263. There are two jumpers that have to be changed from the factory defaults for the SLC (and other low-end Sun systems). I can give you that info also. The sheet I got (from both the distributor and from Fujitsu regional sales office) also gave high-level formatting parameters for the drive. (The drive comes already pre-low-level-formatted.) When hooking both an Archive 2150S and a Fujitsu 2261SA to an SLC it was necessary to leave the three yellow SCSI terminating resistors installed on the 2150S **and** leave the grey terminating resistor pak installed on the 2261. Normally, you should have only one SCSI termination, but when we tried it like that, we got lots of data errors. Now, with termination on both the disk and tape drives, everything works just fine. I'm also going to be getting two 4MB memory boards tomorrow so that I can get the machine up to 16MB of main. I understand that with anything less, I will get massive thrashing. I'm getting the memory from Parity, in Campbell, CA for $427 apiece. Clearpoint also sells the same items for $425 apiece, but their delivery was 1-2 weeks, whereas Parity's was 1-2 days. Parity's warranty is `lifetime'. I told them that I wanted something better because I don't plan to live that long. :-) I bought the Fujitsu drive partly (mainly?) because it had a 5 year warranty. Now as I understand it, this may not be worth diddly in some cases because, in the past, some manufacturers, while guaranteeing your drive, will, upon failure, take in back and fix it. Unfortunately, they may sometimes take upwards of 6 months to get the repaired drive back to you. The dearler I bought the drive from assured me that they (in conjunction with their distributor) could give me 48-hour turaround on a warranty repair (via a swap) if I was willing to pay $50.00 at the time of the swap. A call to the distributor confirmed that this was indeed their policy. I hope I never have to find out for sure. The 2261SA has 415MB (unformatted) and 357MB (formatted). If you need more space, consider a 2263SA which has 778MB (unformatted) and 671MB (formatted). The `S' stands for SCSI. The `A' stands for the type of low-level formatting that is performed at the factory. In particular, A = 512 bytes/block formatting. You could re-do the formatting for 1024 bytes/block yourself and get about 5% more storage out of these drives, but I think that is more trouble that it is worth. These drives have a read-ahead caching feature that sounds nice. Who knows how good that is in practice? They can also do (high-speed?) synchronous SCSI transfers, but the SLC and other low-end Sun's can't handle doing that from their end. (This accounts for one of the two required changes to the factory default jumper settings.) One important footnote. Configuring your own `custom' system is generally not for the faint-of-heart. My experience was good primarily for two reasons. First, I found some people at DataLease and at Fujitsu Regional Sales office who were willing to help me a lot and to put up with lots of phone calls from me and lots of stupid questions. Second, I am fortunate to work in a place where there are lots of very knowledgable people within shouting distance of me. Our local systems's manager helped me out a lot, and got SunOS up for me. I can't say enough good things about Gary Moreau, the sales guy I dealt with at DataLease in Southern California. He gave me rock bottom prices **and** better service that I could have hoped for in my dreams. I kinda expected that he would not want to talk to me much because I was not getting my disk drive from him, but he worked with me on the delivery terms (I insisted on deposit + COD) and he advised me of the potential problems with the Archive 2150S and booting SunOS. He also shipped me my system well *before* his original 2-3 week ARO lead time would have required him to. I have no connection with DataLease or with Gary other than as a satisfied customer.