ScSi board on Ultra workstation

I appologize if this topic has been discussed ad-nausium. I have an
Ultra-5 workstation, which I use as a test-bed before installing
software onto the Netra-clones (Marathon cPCI chasses with CP1500
boards and ZNYX quad network boards, LSI Ultra ScSi boards). I am
trying to test out the Volume Manager in Solaris 10 on a small (2
drive) chassis before committing to attatching the Netras to a bigger
(8 drive) chassis. I did not have a standard PCI LSI board available
(the Netra clones take 6U cPCI euroboards) and a cow-orker suggested
that Adaptec AHA-2940UW was the same as the LSI board and could be used
in the Sun workstation.

When I try to probe-scsi-all from OBP, I do not get any response (but
also no errors). I have verified that the ScSi board is good and that
the drives and enclosure are good and that the enclosure assigns the
correct (unused) drive ID numbers and is terminated on the far side,
but I cannot get the board and drives to show up in OBP. I am not in
the lab right now, so I cannot tell you what revision of OBP the
machine uses.

Is there a certain minimum revision level required to see drives
hanging off of and Adaptec board? Was the coworker mistaken? If I have
not provided enough information, please let me know what other
information you need, and I will do my best to get that information
when I get back to the lab late tonight. If this is explained in
another article, a reference to that article would be helpful. I have
tried googling for this and have gotten inconclusive and contradictory
information.


Thanks.

squeakymaus@gmail.com wrote:

> a cow-orker suggested
> that Adaptec AHA-2940UW was the same as the LSI board and could be used
> in the Sun workstation.

I believe your co-worker is mistaken. Adaptec have their own chipset,
which is not the same as LSI. At least some Sun boards use the LSI chip
set, but I'm not aware of support for Adaptec cards in Solaris for SPARC.

You can get real Sun SCSI boards on eBay for very little. I've got an
IBM card working in one, but that has the LSI chip set - not an Adaptec
chip set.
--
Dave K MCSE.

MCSE = Minefield Consultant and Solitaire Expert.

Please note my email address changes periodically to avoid spam.
It is always of the form: month-year@domain. Hitting reply will work
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* squeakymaus@gmail.com:
> I did not have a standard PCI LSI board available
> (the Netra clones take 6U cPCI euroboards) and a cow-orker suggested
> that Adaptec AHA-2940UW was the same as the LSI board and could be used
> in the Sun workstation.

Your coworker was telling BS (saying that Adaptec and LSI are the same
is basically like saysing Windows and Solaris are the same). The Adaptec
AHA-2940UW simply has no LSI chipset and thus doesn't work in an Ultra 5...

Benjamin

Benjamin Gawert wrote:
> * squeakymaus@gmail.com:
> > I did not have a standard PCI LSI board available
> > (the Netra clones take 6U cPCI euroboards) and a cow-orker suggested
> > that Adaptec AHA-2940UW was the same as the LSI board and could be used
> > in the Sun workstation.
>
> Your coworker was telling BS (saying that Adaptec and LSI are the same
> is basically like saysing Windows and Solaris are the same). The Adaptec
> AHA-2940UW simply has no LSI chipset and thus doesn't work in an Ultra 5...
>
> Benjamin


Thanks for the explanation, guys. I will inform him of his mistake and
will order an LSI-based ScSi board.

<squeakymaus@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1153373769.210453.303710@p79g2000cwp.googlegr oups.com...
>
> Benjamin Gawert wrote:
> > * squeakymaus@gmail.com:
> > > I did not have a standard PCI LSI board available
> > > (the Netra clones take 6U cPCI euroboards) and a cow-orker suggested
> > > that Adaptec AHA-2940UW was the same as the LSI board and could be
used
> > > in the Sun workstation.
> >
> > Your coworker was telling BS (saying that Adaptec and LSI are the same
> > is basically like saysing Windows and Solaris are the same). The Adaptec
> > AHA-2940UW simply has no LSI chipset and thus doesn't work in an Ultra
5...
> >
> > Benjamin
>
>
> Thanks for the explanation, guys. I will inform him of his mistake and
> will order an LSI-based ScSi board.
>
Somewhere, maybe in one of the sun support manuals, I read that an
AHA-2940UW was supported in
and Ultra10. I could be mistaken though.
Anyway LSI and Adaptec are certainly not the same, that is for sure.

On Thu, 20 Jul 2006, Gerry Sinkiewicz wrote:

> Somewhere, maybe in one of the sun support manuals, I read that an
> AHA-2940UW was supported in and Ultra10. I could be mistaken though.

I vaguely remember somehting about Adaptec controllers working at
some time, but IIRC, they were 32-bit only. And probably not tested
on more recent versions of Solaris.

> Anyway LSI and Adaptec are certainly not the same, that is for sure.

Agreed. For SCSI on Solaris, LSI-based HBAs are the way to go.

--
Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA, OpenSolaris CAB member

President,
Rite Online Inc.

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-group.com/rich

Rich Teer <rich.teer@rite-group.com> writes:
>On Thu, 20 Jul 2006, Gerry Sinkiewicz wrote:
>> Somewhere, maybe in one of the sun support manuals, I read that an
>> AHA-2940UW was supported in and Ultra10. I could be mistaken though.

>I vaguely remember somehting about Adaptec controllers working at
>some time, but IIRC, they were 32-bit only. And probably not tested
>on more recent versions of Solaris.

Adaptec did once make an OpenFirmware version of their 2940 card, but
it was very rare. And they did only do 32-bit drivers for
Solaris 2.5.1 & Solaris 2.6.

http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/speed/o...200_sol_dd.htm

But you can't use a stock AHA-2940UW to boot from, only the OF one.

According to Rich Teer <rich.teer@rite-group.com>:
> On Thu, 20 Jul 2006, Gerry Sinkiewicz wrote:
>
> > Somewhere, maybe in one of the sun support manuals, I read that an
> > AHA-2940UW was supported in and Ultra10. I could be mistaken though.
>
> I vaguely remember somehting about Adaptec controllers working at
> some time, but IIRC, they were 32-bit only. And probably not tested
> on more recent versions of Solaris.
>
> > Anyway LSI and Adaptec are certainly not the same, that is for sure.
>
> Agreed. For SCSI on Solaris, LSI-based HBAs are the way to go.

Looking at the recently downloaded sources for Solaris-10, I
find quite a few entries for Adaptec -- but only in the Intel branch of
the source tree. Here is the list out of uts/intel/os/master:

================================================== ====================
Adaptec SCSI Card 29320A(H1B)
Adaptec SCSI Card 39320
Adaptec SCSI Card 39320D
Adaptec SCSI Card 29320
Adaptec SCSI Card 29320LP
Adaptec SCSI Card 39320(H2B)
Adaptec SCSI Card 39320A
Adaptec SCSI Card 29320ALP(H1B)
Adaptec SCSI Card AIC-7902B
Adaptec SCSI Card AIC-7901A
Adaptec AIC-7902
Adaptec AdvancedRAID Controller
================================================== ====================

I've edited out all but the description string, so I don't give away
actual code to people who have not registered to download it, but it is
free to download if you go through the registration process.

This suggests that it might be possible to move the code into
the SPARC side and compile it in -- but I don't know what problems that
might trigger. It would be convenient to have these cards work in any
PCI slotted machine.

Out of curiosity, -- Why is the original poster spelling "SCSI"
as "ScSi" (as in the Subject: " header?

All four letters should be upper-case, as it is an acronym,
although it has been so long since anyone remembered anything but the
acronym itself that other capitalization patterns have been creeping in.
This one is unique, however. :-)

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 ---

DoN. Nichols wrote:

> This suggests that it might be possible to move the code into
> the SPARC side and compile it in -- but I don't know what problems that
> might trigger. It would be convenient to have these cards work in any
> PCI slotted machine.

Although given the age of the cards and the costs of LSI ones on eBay
etc, I'm not sure anyone would want to devote the time to it.


--
Dave K MCSE.

MCSE = Minefield Consultant and Solitaire Expert.

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

http://witm.sourceforge.net/ (Web based Mathematica front end)