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I recently acquired a couple of 146 GB Seagate FC drives marked
with a "FCV" suffix, and with in large print on the label "12V ONLY".
(Full designation -- "ST3146807FCV")

These do not work in my Sun Fire 280R (where I am already using
two of the same drives except for the 'V' tag on the suffix.

They also don't work in an external FC housing -- Criiterion/EMC
-- which works fine with the 36 GB drives which came with it (in use as
a ZFS array) or with the 9GB drives which came in its companion -- but I
can't see paying the power costs to run 1.6" 9GB drives these days. :-)

Does anyone know what I would need to run these drives -- or
what modifications I might need in the drive cage for either the Sun
Fire 280R or a Sun Blade 1000 (I'm using both here)?

I don't really expect anyone to know what to do to the
Criiterion/DMC housing to make it accept such drives -- but if anyone
does know, that information would be welcome, too.

Thanks,
DoN.

--
Email: <dnichols@d-and-d.com> | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
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DoN. Nichols <dnichols@d-and-d.com> wrote:

> I recently acquired a couple of 146 GB Seagate FC drives marked
> with a "FCV" suffix, and with in large print on the label "12V ONLY".
> (Full designation -- "ST3146807FCV")

> These do not work in my Sun Fire 280R (where I am already using
> two of the same drives except for the 'V' tag on the suffix.


You really need to explain what "these do not work" means.

The only tidbits I can pass along with what little information you gave is

1) the 12V only sticker is meaningless.
2) the V at the end stands for Video which was some attempt from Seagate to
market drives with 16mb buffers over the 8mb as being "special".

If the drive seems to power up, you ran devfsadm then ran format and it
doesn't come up in the list, the drives are shot. Either the firmware is
blown out or there is a defective onboard controller.

In either case above, they are only handy for leveling tables or chairs.

If the problem is after "format", you'll need to explain what is happening.

-bruce
bje@ripco.com

"DoN. Nichols" <dnichols@d-and-d.com> wrote in message
news:slrng0itmr.5uf.dnichols@Katana.d-and-d.com...
> I recently acquired a couple of 146 GB Seagate FC drives marked
> with a "FCV" suffix, and with in large print on the label "12V ONLY".
> (Full designation -- "ST3146807FCV")
>
> These do not work in my Sun Fire 280R (where I am already using
> two of the same drives except for the 'V' tag on the suffix.
>
> They also don't work in an external FC housing -- Criiterion/EMC
> -- which works fine with the 36 GB drives which came with it (in use as
> a ZFS array) or with the 9GB drives which came in its companion -- but I
> can't see paying the power costs to run 1.6" 9GB drives these days. :-)
>
> Does anyone know what I would need to run these drives -- or
> what modifications I might need in the drive cage for either the Sun
> Fire 280R or a Sun Blade 1000 (I'm using both here)?

Are the drives recognized at the ok> prompt if you do a probe-scsi?
You may need to first set auto-boot? to false and do a reset-all.

Do the drives appear to even be spinning up?

Sun sells the ST3146807FC (minus the V) for use with the V480/V490/V880/V890
and several disk arrays.
A Sun Blade 1000 sees this model fine internally or in a fibre multipack.

Trinean

On 2008-04-19, Bruce Esquibel <bje@e4500.ripco.com> wrote:
> DoN. Nichols <dnichols@d-and-d.com> wrote:
>
>> I recently acquired a couple of 146 GB Seagate FC drives marked
>> with a "FCV" suffix, and with in large print on the label "12V ONLY".
>> (Full designation -- "ST3146807FCV")
>
>> These do not work in my Sun Fire 280R (where I am already using
>> two of the same drives except for the 'V' tag on the suffix.
>
>
> You really need to explain what "these do not work" means.

When inserted in either the Sun Fire 280R card cage in a spud,
or in the EMC 10-slot FC drive bay in the appropriate sled, the drive
remains invisible to devfsadm and to the "-scanbus" option to cdrecord
(which is a nice tool to see whether something is on the bus without
having to drop down to the OPB level and run probe-scsi-all).

When withdrawn, the drives do not give the typical inertial
behavior of a spinning drive.

I'm reluctant to bring the system down to the OBP level and run
probe-scsi-all, because my wife will be using it (the Sun Fire 280R is
our file server) even if I will be over at the console looking at the
results of the probe-scsi-all.

> The only tidbits I can pass along with what little information you gave is
>
> 1) the 12V only sticker is meaningless.

A search through google found at least one maker of PC boards
for driving FC drives which offers a special card to go between the
drive and the fc card to make a "12V Only" drive work when it otherwise
will not work.

> 2) the V at the end stands for Video which was some attempt from Seagate to
> market drives with 16mb buffers over the 8mb as being "special".

O.K.

> If the drive seems to power up, you ran devfsadm then ran format and it
> doesn't come up in the list, the drives are shot. Either the firmware is
> blown out or there is a defective onboard controller.

The drive does not seem to power up at all.

> In either case above, they are only handy for leveling tables or chairs.

At $55.00 each, that is a pain. Especially since they are a bit
too thick for most table or chair leveling tasks that I have
encountered. :-(

> If the problem is after "format", you'll need to explain what is happening.

The problem is long before format.

Thanks,
DoN.

--
Email: <dnichols@d-and-d.com> | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
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--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

On 2008-04-19, Trinean <trinean@yahoo.com> wrote:
> "DoN. Nichols" <dnichols@d-and-d.com> wrote in message
> news:slrng0itmr.5uf.dnichols@Katana.d-and-d.com...
>> I recently acquired a couple of 146 GB Seagate FC drives marked
>> with a "FCV" suffix, and with in large print on the label "12V ONLY".
>> (Full designation -- "ST3146807FCV")

[ ... ]

>> Does anyone know what I would need to run these drives -- or
>> what modifications I might need in the drive cage for either the Sun
>> Fire 280R or a Sun Blade 1000 (I'm using both here)?
>
> Are the drives recognized at the ok> prompt if you do a probe-scsi?
> You may need to first set auto-boot? to false and do a reset-all.

I'm reluctant to bring that system down to the OBP level, as it
is our file server, and my wife depends on it even when I am playing
with another system. :-)

But I did run the "cdrecord -scanbus" and it did not see them,
though it saw others which were on the same EMC housing. Here is the
output of that as an example:


================================================== ====================
Cdrecord-Clone 2.01 (sparc-sun-solaris2.10) Copyright (C) 1995-2004 Jörg Schilling
Warning: Using USCSI interface.
Warning: Volume management is running, medialess managed drives are invisible.
Using libscg version 'schily-0.8'.
scsibus0:
0,0,0 0) *
0,1,0 1) *
0,2,0 2) *
0,3,0 3) *
0,4,0 4) *
0,5,0 5) *
0,6,0 6) 'TOSHIBA ' 'DVD-ROM SD-M1401' '1009' Removable CD-ROM
0,7,0 7) *
scsibus1:
1,0,0 100) 'SEAGATE ' 'ST3146807FC ' 'MS06' Disk
1,1,0 101) 'SEAGATE ' 'ST3146807FC ' '0006' Disk
1,2,0 102) *
1,3,0 103) *
1,4,0 104) *
1,5,0 105) *
1,6,0 106) *
1,7,0 107) *
1,10,0 110) 'IBM ' 'DRHL36L CLAR36 ' '3347' Disk
1,11,0 111) 'IBM ' 'DRHL36L CLAR36 ' '3347' Disk
1,12,0 112) 'IBM ' 'DRHL36L CLAR36 ' '3347' Disk
1,13,0 113) 'IBM ' 'DRHL36L CLAR36 ' '3347' Disk
1,14,0 114) 'IBM ' 'DRHL36L CLAR36 ' '3347' Disk
1,15,0 115) 'IBM ' 'DRHL36L CLAR36 ' '3347' Disk
scsibus5:
5,0,0 500) 'SEAGATE ' 'ST39173W SUN9.0G' '2815' Disk
5,1,0 501) *
5,2,0 502) '' '' '' NON CCS Disk
5,3,0 503) *
5,4,0 504) 'SEAGATE ' 'SX336704LC ' 'BC10' Disk
5,5,0 505) *
5,6,0 506) *
5,7,0 507) *
5,8,0 508) 'SEAGATE ' 'ST318404LSUN18G ' '8590' Disk
5,9,0 509) 'SEAGATE ' 'ST318203LSUN18G ' '034A' Disk
5,10,0 510) 'FUJITSU ' 'MAG3182L SUN18G ' '1111' Disk
5,11,0 511) 'SEAGATE ' 'ST318305LSUN18G ' '0340' Disk
5,12,0 512) 'SEAGATE ' 'ST318404LSUN18G ' '4207' Disk
5,13,0 513) 'FUJITSU ' 'MAJ3182M SUN18G ' '0503' Disk
================================================== ====================

1,0,0 and 1,1,0 are the internal drives -- plain vanilla "ST3145607FC"s
as you can see. 1,10,0 through 1,15,0 are a zfs raidz2 array plus two
hot spares in the EMC housing which does not see the "FCV" drives.
5,0,0 and 5,4,0 are miscellaneous filesystems, and 5,8,0 through 5,13,0
are another zfs filesystem and one hot spare -- those (SCA drives) in a
D1000 hung on a HVD controller.

I was able to unmount the filesystems on 1,1,0 (and unexport
them) so I could pull that hot and plug in one of the FCV drives to see
whether it behaved any differently than the same drives in the EMC
drive bay. This drive which I pulled to test this one is a ST3145607FC
(without the 'V'), so I know that those work fine in the same bay.

> Do the drives appear to even be spinning up?

They do not -- based on the lack of a gyroscopic feel when I
pull them.

> Sun sells the ST3146807FC (minus the V) for use with the V480/V490/V880/V890
> and several disk arrays.

And they work fine in the Sun Fire 280R (I'm using two of them),
and when I bid on the eBay auction I didn't expect the 'V' suffix to
make a difference. It certainly did. :-(

> A Sun Blade 1000 sees this model fine internally or in a fibre multipack.

I would expect it to see the non-V drives fine, since the same
system board is used in both the SB-1000 and the Sun Fire 280R in which
I am using two of the non-V versions of the drives.

There is a fibre channel multipack? What is the model number so
I can search for them in eBay. They seem to have come out after my
Field Engineer's Handbook (2000 -- it covers the SB-1000 but not the
SB-2000, and not the Sun Fire 280R.)

Thanks,
DoN.

--
Email: <dnichols@d-and-d.com> | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

"DoN. Nichols" <dnichols@d-and-d.com> wrote in message
news:slrng0laku.mhe.dnichols@Katana.d-and-d.com...
> There is a fibre channel multipack? What is the model number so
> I can search for them in eBay. They seem to have come out after my
> Field Engineer's Handbook (2000 -- it covers the SB-1000 but not the
> SB-2000, and not the Sun Fire 280R.)

The specs for one of them is at:

http://www.dealtime.com/xPF-Sun-Stor...XFDSK060C-438G

And the handbook page is at:

http://www.sunshack.org/data/sh/2.1/...tiPack_FC.html

They're useful for testing disks on a SunBlade 1000/2000 since getting to
the internal disks requires shutting down the machine.

Trinean

DoN. Nichols <dnichols@d-and-d.com> wrote:

> When withdrawn, the drives do not give the typical inertial
> behavior of a spinning drive.

> I'm reluctant to bring the system down to the OBP level and run
> probe-scsi-all, because my wife will be using it (the Sun Fire 280R is
> our file server) even if I will be over at the console looking at the
> results of the probe-scsi-all.

> A search through google found at least one maker of PC boards
> for driving FC drives which offers a special card to go between the
> drive and the fc card to make a "12V Only" drive work when it otherwise
> will not work.


Well, might be time to send the better half out to the movies and check it
with the OBP but I still think you have a couple door stops.

Seagate appears to have buried or taken offline the white papers and
engineering stuff, but when this "12V only" subject came up before there was
a document they had available for the FC drives which broke down all the
options and variations in that line (guess its Cheetah, 10k, FC). There
wasn't a single one made that was 12V only, they all used the split 12v/5v
for power.

A while back I ran into the same thing, some ebay specials for 18GB's (which
were twice as expensive as what you paid for the 146GB, figure the timeline
out yourself) and they too had that sticker or imprint on the label.

We contacted the place they came from and they said (we took it with a grain
of salt) that they got them from a place that built disk cabinets which were
universal, sort of. They had their own internal non-standard bus and
supplied the appropiate carrier (spud bracket) to adapt whatever kind of
drive to it. So with minor changes to the back plane, the same cabinet could
be used for FC, scsi sca or plain old scsi drives.

The reason the drives were marked 12V because of this was some OTHER drives
made by maybe fujitsu or hitachi did in fact use 18 or 24v for the motor/arm
supply (still 5v for the logic) and those cabinets were not to be used with
the 12V drives.

Yes I know, it would make more sense to mark the cabinets "18V drives only"
but this is what they told us.

I don't know what you found on google about this adapter but my guess is
it's along the same lines. I'd say it's more likely there are some host
adapters out there that used it, not the other way around.

Anyway, the 18GB drives marked "12V only" worked just fine in a A5200
cabinet so I'd say they should work in the 280R as well.

If you don't think the motor is spinning up at all, that really is the kiss
of death I think. A bad firmware update can cause that but I never found a
way around it. Probably needs to go into a manufacturing mode using some
magic cable or secret combination of jumpers.

Still, I admit I can be wrong about all of this but after taking advantage
of several "ebay lots" over the past 6 or 7 years, I don't think so.

-bruce
bje@ripco.com

On 2008-04-20, Trinean <trinean@yahoo.com> wrote:
> "DoN. Nichols" <dnichols@d-and-d.com> wrote in message
> news:slrng0laku.mhe.dnichols@Katana.d-and-d.com...
>> There is a fibre channel multipack? What is the model number so
>> I can search for them in eBay. They seem to have come out after my
>> Field Engineer's Handbook (2000 -- it covers the SB-1000 but not the
>> SB-2000, and not the Sun Fire 280R.)
>
> The specs for one of them is at:
>
> http://www.dealtime.com/xPF-Sun-Stor...XFDSK060C-438G
>
> And the handbook page is at:
>
> http://www.sunshack.org/data/sh/2.1/...tiPack_FC.html

Thanks for both.

> They're useful for testing disks on a SunBlade 1000/2000 since getting to
> the internal disks requires shutting down the machine.

Except with the Sun Fire 280R, which does allow hot swapping --
as long as you can first umount the filesystems involved.

Thanks again,
DoN.

--
Email: <dnichols@d-and-d.com> | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

On 2008-04-20, Bruce Esquibel <bje@e4500.ripco.com> wrote:
> DoN. Nichols <dnichols@d-and-d.com> wrote:
>
>> When withdrawn, the drives do not give the typical inertial
>> behavior of a spinning drive.
>
>> I'm reluctant to bring the system down to the OBP level and run
>> probe-scsi-all, because my wife will be using it (the Sun Fire 280R is
>> our file server) even if I will be over at the console looking at the
>> results of the probe-scsi-all.
>
>> A search through google found at least one maker of PC boards
>> for driving FC drives which offers a special card to go between the
>> drive and the fc card to make a "12V Only" drive work when it otherwise
>> will not work.
>
>
> Well, might be time to send the better half out to the movies and check it
> with the OBP but I still think you have a couple door stops.

You know -- I think that it has probably been fifteen to twenty
years since we last saw a movie. I think that it was "Gremlins". :-)

> Seagate appears to have buried or taken offline the white papers and
> engineering stuff, but when this "12V only" subject came up before there was
> a document they had available for the FC drives which broke down all the
> options and variations in that line (guess its Cheetah, 10k, FC).

Yes -- that is precisely what it is. ST3145807FCV

> There
> wasn't a single one made that was 12V only, they all used the split 12v/5v
> for power.

Interesting -- since the label says (in the finer print to the
right of the bold-print ST3145807FCV:

VDC Amps
+5 -
+12 1.4

so at least the label seems to think that it draws nothing from the +5V
pins.

If I had a spare connector pair to match the 40-pin SCA style
connector, I would try hooking it up and using a clamp-on ammeter to
verify whether this is truly so.

> A while back I ran into the same thing, some ebay specials for 18GB's (which
> were twice as expensive as what you paid for the 146GB,

Ouch!

> figure the timeline
> out yourself) and they too had that sticker or imprint on the label.
>
> We contacted the place they came from and they said (we took it with a grain
> of salt) that they got them from a place that built disk cabinets which were
> universal, sort of. They had their own internal non-standard bus and
> supplied the appropiate carrier (spud bracket) to adapt whatever kind of
> drive to it. So with minor changes to the back plane, the same cabinet could
> be used for FC, scsi sca or plain old scsi drives.

Hmm ... sort of useful cabinet, if it it turned out to be
reliable.

> The reason the drives were marked 12V because of this was some OTHER drives
> made by maybe fujitsu or hitachi did in fact use 18 or 24v for the motor/arm
> supply (still 5v for the logic) and those cabinets were not to be used with
> the 12V drives.

Interesting. Reminds me of my first personally owned Sun -- a
2/120. It used a MFM (or was it ESDI) disk with a controller board to
turn that into SCSI. And -- it used an open-frame QIC style tape drive
for loading the OS and for backups. Both used the same connector (the
common +5V/+12V D shaped nylon connector still used on 5.25" and 3.5"
drives -- but the connector to the disk drive had 24V in place of the
12V - no such thing as using a different connector to prevent frying
drives by mixing them up. :-)

> Yes I know, it would make more sense to mark the cabinets "18V drives only"
> but this is what they told us.

What would make even more sense would be to key the connectors
so you could not plug the 12V drives into the 18V backplane. :-)

> I don't know what you found on google about this adapter but my guess is
> it's along the same lines. I'd say it's more likely there are some host
> adapters out there that used it, not the other way around.

Folded URL to the item which I found, FWIW.

http://store.ckcomputersystems.com/i...roduct_info&c\
Path=1_9&products_id=219&zenid=47fb1910dc4cf0e9f12 58b40c230ef88

Interesting that this thread is what comes up at the top on the search
today. :-) The search string on Google is:

How to "12V ONLY" (FC,"Fibre Channel")

The next hit of interest is:

http://www.fold4life.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1051

But it is pretty useless other than to confirm that someone else has
some "12V ONLY" drives -- and fairly recently -- 18 March 2008. :-)

> Anyway, the 18GB drives marked "12V only" worked just fine in a A5200
> cabinet so I'd say they should work in the 280R as well.

Well ... both don't work in the EMC/Criiterion cabinet, and the
only one which I tested directly in the 280R also did not work. I guess
that it is time to upset my wife and bring the system fully down and
test both drives at once.

The EMC cabinet is old enough so it only supports the 1 GHz
Fibre Channel, but the drives are supposed to be able to switch, and the
internal card cage should handle it as well.

A pity that the 280R won't accept the 1.6" high drives that the
SB-[12]000 will.

> If you don't think the motor is spinning up at all, that really is the kiss
> of death I think. A bad firmware update can cause that but I never found a
> way around it. Probably needs to go into a manufacturing mode using some
> magic cable or secret combination of jumpers.

Since these were two of something like 58 drives that the vendor
had -- either his source zapped them all, or there is something else
wrong.

Given how low the price for the "12 ONLY" fix that the offer, I
could believe that it could be something as simple as a resistor to draw
current from the 5V line to convince the port switching that there was a
drive there to talk to.

> Still, I admit I can be wrong about all of this but after taking advantage
> of several "ebay lots" over the past 6 or 7 years, I don't think so.

Most of them work out -- but not all. A pity that I don't have
a single drive chassis for FC so I could power up the drive and feel for
gyroscopic effects while measuring current drain.

I presume that contacting Seagate won't do much good? :-)

Thanks much,
DoN.

--
Email: <dnichols@d-and-d.com> | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

DoN. Nichols wrote:

<snip>
> Most of them work out -- but not all. A pity that I don't have
> a single drive chassis for FC so I could power up the drive and feel for
> gyroscopic effects while measuring current drain.

There used to be a guy selling single FCAL copper adapters on ebay,
basically a tiny backplane, for about $15 IIRC. These were without
a cage, which he also sold separately. He promoted them for bench-testing
drives and for interfacing single drives to PCs as this was after the
bubble burst and ebay was flooded with FC drives.

I never bought one as I preferred the cheap Dell Storage Vault enclosures
that were plentiful for quite some time, and I haven't searched for them
for a few years.

Michael