rsm@math.arizona.edu (Robert S. Maier) (07/29/90)
A week ago I posted an article describing some serious problems I was having with my Data General Aviion 300. I was having trouble upgrading to DG/UX 4.20, because the Aviion, when running 4.20, didn't want to talk SCSI to my disk or tape. (I have an outboard 662 MB Micropolis disk, and a daisy-chained QIC-150 tape drive.) I could hardly ever boot the starter kernel, and was getting strange tape errors too. I got a lot of good advice from Data General people (thanks, guys!), but the fix turned out to be embarassingly simple. (No, it wasn't a missing terminator.) I replaced the disk<->tape cable (the one on the end of the SCSI bus) by a new, store-bought replacement, and the problem went away. The replaced cable was a bit long (6', compared to 3' for the system<->disk cable), but that may not be relevant. (6' + 3' is still a lot shorter than the SCSI spec allows, right?) I made sure that the replacement was no more than 3' long, though. And tossed the old one out. In conclusion: there is *nothing* wrong with DG's SCSI interface. In fact the new support in DG/UX 4.20 for synchronous SCSI transfers is great! -- Robert S. Maier | Internet: rsm@math.arizona.edu [128.196.224.2] Dept. of Math. | UUCP: uunet!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 2617