Hello everyone

Can anyone recommend an LVD SCSI controller for the Ultra 10? From
what I've seen
there seem to be tons of HVD cards out there, but I require a very
simple setup, one internal
scsi drive only hanging off of the controller.

Thank you!

Y.

Yiannis <jandersunstar@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello everyone
>
> Can anyone recommend an LVD SCSI controller for the Ultra 10? From
> what I've seen
> there seem to be tons of HVD cards out there, but I require a very
> simple setup, one internal
> scsi drive only hanging off of the controller.

Do you need to boot from the drive?

--
Darren Dunham ddunham@taos.com
Senior Technical Consultant TAOS http://www.taos.com/
Got some Dr Pepper? San Francisco, CA bay area
< This line left intentionally blank to confuse you. >

On 17 Sep, 17:52, ddun...@taos.com (Darren Dunham) wrote:
> Yiannis <jandersuns...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello everyone
>
> > Can anyone recommend an LVD SCSI controller for the Ultra 10? From
> > what I've seen
> > there seem to be tons of HVD cards out there, but I require a very
> > simple setup, one internal
> > scsi drive only hanging off of the controller.
>
> Do you need to boot from the drive?
>
> --
> Darren Dunham ddun...@taos.com
> Senior Technical Consultant TAOS http://www.taos.com/
> Got some Dr Pepper? San Francisco, CA bay area
> < This line left intentionally blank to confuse you. >

Hi Darren,

I would like to yes, but I can live without it. I mainly want to avoid
the horrid performance of the IDE drives. At the moment
I have an Adaptec AHA-2940U2W in, with a drive, but Solaris 10 refuses
to detect it during installation. probe-scsi does the same
in openboot, however linux detects the card and drive quite happily...

Thank you,
Yiannis

Yiannis <jandersunstar@gmail.com> wrote:
> I would like to yes, but I can live without it. I mainly want to avoid
> the horrid performance of the IDE drives. At the moment
> I have an Adaptec AHA-2940U2W in, with a drive, but Solaris 10 refuses
> to detect it during installation. probe-scsi does the same
> in openboot, however linux detects the card and drive quite happily...

The LSI/Symbios cards used to be the best bets. You could often find
them with openfirmware drivers for boot, and they were a chipset with an
installed driver in Solaris.

I don't recall Adaptec having any Sparc driver support.

See also:
<http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.sun.hardware/browse_thread/thread/bf5482dec8a3c292>

--
Darren Dunham ddunham@taos.com
Senior Technical Consultant TAOS http://www.taos.com/
Got some Dr Pepper? San Francisco, CA bay area
< This line left intentionally blank to confuse you. >

Darren Dunham wrote:
> Yiannis <jandersunstar@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I would like to yes, but I can live without it. I mainly want to avoid
>> the horrid performance of the IDE drives. At the moment
>> I have an Adaptec AHA-2940U2W in, with a drive, but Solaris 10 refuses
>> to detect it during installation. probe-scsi does the same
>> in openboot, however linux detects the card and drive quite happily...
>
> The LSI/Symbios cards used to be the best bets. You could often find
> them with openfirmware drivers for boot, and they were a chipset with an
> installed driver in Solaris.
>
That's what I use for (non-boot) drives and they work well.

--
Ian Collins.

Yiannis wrote:
> Hello everyone
>
> Can anyone recommend an LVD SCSI controller for the Ultra 10? From
> what I've seen
> there seem to be tons of HVD cards out there, but I require a very
> simple setup, one internal
> scsi drive only hanging off of the controller.
>
> Thank you!
>
> Y.
>
I think you will find that Sun ones are pretty cheap now on eBay -
personaly I'd probably take that route, as the one with the least chance
of anything not being right.

I've got a Sun one, plus an IBM one, which uses the LSI chip set.
Booting might be more of a problem from one, but if you dont need that,
I suspect any card with the right chipset will probably work. I dont
think it would be too hard to find info on the web about the exact chip
set used in the Sun cards. I know some cards use LSI

As somone else said, I dont belive Adaptec will work, as they have their
own chipset and I dont think there are suitable drivers.

--
Dave (from the UK)

Please note my email address changes periodically to avoid spam.
It is always of the form: month-year@althorne.org
Hitting reply will work for a few months only - later set it manually.

http://chessdb.sourceforge.net/ - a Free open-source Chess Database

On 19 Sep, 22:26, Ian Collins <ian-n...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Darren Dunham wrote:
> > Yiannis <jandersuns...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> I would like to yes, but I can live without it. I mainly want to avoid
> >> the horrid performance of the IDE drives. At the moment
> >> I have an Adaptec AHA-2940U2W in, with a drive, but Solaris 10 refuses
> >> to detect it during installation. probe-scsi does the same
> >> in openboot, however linux detects the card and drive quite happily...
>
> > The LSI/Symbios cards used to be the best bets. You could often find
> > them with openfirmware drivers for boot, and they were a chipset with an
> > installed driver in Solaris.
>
> That's what I use for (non-boot) drives and they work well.
>
> --
> Ian Collins.

That's right but I can only seem to find HVD ones on eBay :-S

According to Yiannis <jandersunstar@gmail.com>:
> On 19 Sep, 22:26, Ian Collins <ian-n...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Darren Dunham wrote:
> > > Yiannis <jandersuns...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >> I would like to yes, but I can live without it. I mainly want to avoid
> > >> the horrid performance of the IDE drives. At the moment
> > >> I have an Adaptec AHA-2940U2W in, with a drive, but Solaris 10 refuses
> > >> to detect it during installation. probe-scsi does the same
> > >> in openboot, however linux detects the card and drive quite happily...
> >
> > > The LSI/Symbios cards used to be the best bets. You could often find
> > > them with openfirmware drivers for boot, and they were a chipset with an
> > > installed driver in Solaris.
> >
> > That's what I use for (non-boot) drives and they work well.
> >
> > --
> > Ian Collins.
>
> That's right but I can only seem to find HVD ones on eBay :-S

They (the LVD ones) show up from time to time, but tend to be
rather expensive most of the time.

I found mine at a hamfest for about $35.00 IIRC. (Sorry, I
can't remember the number -- it is too new to be in my FEH (Field
Engineer's Handbook).

But -- can't you use a SE one instead? Almost all LVD drives
will talk to a SE controller and vice versa -- just with the restriction
that if you have a SE device or controller on the bus, it will talk to
*everything* as SE instead of LVD. Since you want to talk to a drive
inside your computer (IIRC), the length of the cable certainly does not
call for LVD.

The only LVD device which I know of which will not work properly
on a SE bus is the Exabyte Mammoth-2 tape drive. If the drive says LVD,
it *needs* LVD. Even the jukebox which it was in (an EXB-430) would
communicate nicely with a SE controller, but the drives would not.

Enjoy,
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 25 Sep, 07:03, dnich...@d-and-d.com (DoN. Nichols) wrote:
> According to Yiannis <jandersuns...@gmail.com>:
>
>
>
> > On 19 Sep, 22:26, Ian Collins <ian-n...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > Darren Dunham wrote:
> > > > Yiannis <jandersuns...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >> I would like to yes, but I can live without it. I mainly want to avoid
> > > >> the horrid performance of the IDE drives. At the moment
> > > >> I have an Adaptec AHA-2940U2W in, with a drive, but Solaris 10 refuses
> > > >> to detect it during installation. probe-scsi does the same
> > > >> in openboot, however linux detects the card and drive quite happily...
>
> > > > The LSI/Symbios cards used to be the best bets. You could often find
> > > > them with openfirmware drivers for boot, and they were a chipset with an
> > > > installed driver in Solaris.
>
> > > That's what I use for (non-boot) drives and they work well.
>
> > > --
> > > Ian Collins.
>
> > That's right but I can only seem to find HVD ones on eBay :-S
>
> They (the LVD ones) show up from time to time, but tend to be
> rather expensive most of the time.
>
> I found mine at a hamfest for about $35.00 IIRC. (Sorry, I
> can't remember the number -- it is too new to be in my FEH (Field
> Engineer's Handbook).
>
> But -- can't you use a SE one instead? Almost all LVD drives
> will talk to a SE controller and vice versa -- just with the restriction
> that if you have a SE device or controller on the bus, it will talk to
> *everything* as SE instead of LVD. Since you want to talk to a drive
> inside your computer (IIRC), the length of the cable certainly does not
> call for LVD.
>
> The only LVD device which I know of which will not work properly
> on a SE bus is the Exabyte Mammoth-2 tape drive. If the drive says LVD,
> it *needs* LVD. Even the jukebox which it was in (an EXB-430) would
> communicate nicely with a SE controller, but the drives would not.
>
> Enjoy,
> DoN.
> --
> Email: <dnich...@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 ---

If this works then this is what I will do can you suggest any
particulars cards for this?

Thank you,
Y.

According to Yiannis <jandersunstar@gmail.com>:
> On 25 Sep, 07:03, dnich...@d-and-d.com (DoN. Nichols) wrote:
> > According to Yiannis <jandersuns...@gmail.com>:
> > > That's right but I can only seem to find HVD ones on eBay :-S
> >
> > They (the LVD ones) show up from time to time, but tend to be
> > rather expensive most of the time.
> >
> > I found mine at a hamfest for about $35.00 IIRC. (Sorry, I
> > can't remember the number -- it is too new to be in my FEH (Field
> > Engineer's Handbook).
> >
> > But -- can't you use a SE one instead? Almost all LVD drives
> > will talk to a SE controller and vice versa -- just with the restriction
> > that if you have a SE device or controller on the bus, it will talk to
> > *everything* as SE instead of LVD. Since you want to talk to a drive
> > inside your computer (IIRC), the length of the cable certainly does not
> > call for LVD.
> >
> > The only LVD device which I know of which will not work properly
> > on a SE bus is the Exabyte Mammoth-2 tape drive. If the drive says LVD,
> > it *needs* LVD. Even the jukebox which it was in (an EXB-430) would
> > communicate nicely with a SE controller, but the drives would not.

[ ... ]

> If this works then this is what I will do can you suggest any
> particulars cards for this?

Well ... the most common SE card for Suns (and the one which I
use for SE SCSI) is marked 375-0005 by Sun, and is the Symbios SYM22801.
There is a version marked 375-0013 which has a FCode ROM on it for use
with systems which don't already know about it -- but I've never needed
them with my Ultra-60 systems. the 375-0005 can usually be found by a
search on eBay -- and most of the time you can find quite reasonable
final prices.

It is a dual SCSI card, with VHDCI 68-pin connectors for both
controllers on the card bracket to feed to the outside, and both
50-pin IDC and HD68-pin internal for each controller. There are quad
DIP switches for each, with switch element 1 enabling the 50-pin SCSI,
switch element 2 enabling the internal 68-pin connector, switch element
three labeled "upper address bits" (I guess making the 50-pin connector
think that it is talking to SCSI-IDs 8-15 instead of 0-7. And switch
element 4 enables the external 68-pin VHDCI.

So -- you could enable one for the internal 68-pin for your
internal drives and still have the other to connect to to external drives
if you wish to add them later.

Note that it should go in a 33 MHz PCI slot, not a 66 MHz one if
your computer has one. (Not likely in the Ultra-10. :-)

Good Luck,
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 ---