CJT <abujlehc@prodigy.net> writes:

>On a related note, I'd like to find a way to use IDE disks on an AXi
>based machine, which doesn't have the IDE stuff in the OBP at all.
>It seems to me the patch you describe that allows a disk driver to
>work independently of the OBP ought to also allow what I want to do.

You can use any device independent of OBP support; you just cannot
use it to boot from. There are only a few controllers supported by the
SPARC drivers.

Casper
--
Expressed in this posting are my opinions. They are in no way related
to opinions held by my employer, Sun Microsystems.
Statements on Sun products included here are not gospel and may
be fiction rather than truth.

Torsten Kirschner wrote:
> Benjamin Gawert wrote on Sunday 18 July 2004 10:38 :
>
>>Sadly, the Solaris drivers take the disk size reports from
>>OFw when loeading, but long ago I somehwere found a description how to
>>make the driver requesting the disk size from the disk rather from OFw. I
>>just followed the description and it worked. The disk now contains two
>>80Gb /home and /home2 directories and a 40GB ftp directory.
>>
>>I can check if I still have the link.
>
>
> Please do. This "I can use very large (i.e. > 137 GB) IDE non-boot disks"
> is the most interesting bit in the perpetual "How large can U5/10 IDE
> disks be" threads for a long time.
Here here. If this is possible in the U10 and/or SB100, I think I will
need to do a little fileserver/workstation rebuilding

Casper H.S. Dik wrote:

> CJT <abujlehc@prodigy.net> writes:
>
>
>>On a related note, I'd like to find a way to use IDE disks on an AXi
>>based machine, which doesn't have the IDE stuff in the OBP at all.
>>It seems to me the patch you describe that allows a disk driver to
>>work independently of the OBP ought to also allow what I want to do.
>
>
> You can use any device independent of OBP support; you just cannot
> use it to boot from. There are only a few controllers supported by the
> SPARC drivers.
>
> Casper

Can you point to detailed instructions how to accomplish that, because
I've tried and failed?

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CJT <abujlehc@prodigy.net> writes:

>Can you point to detailed instructions how to accomplish that, because
>I've tried and failed?

You need one that is supported by Solaris:

See uata(7D):

Currently, the uata driver supports IDE controllers CMD646U
and Acer Southbridge M5229.

Of course, it was bad engineering to have two different sets of
ATA/IDE drivers. Added maintenance cost, and lack of orthogonality
and device support (in S10, we merged back the "sd" driver; we
should do something similar for the IDE/ATA stuff)

Casper

CJT wrote on Sunday 18 July 2004 17:31 :

> On a related note, I'd like to find a way to use IDE disks on an AXi
> based machine, which doesn't have the IDE stuff in the OBP at all.
> It seems to me the patch you describe that allows a disk driver to
> work independently of the OBP ought to also allow what I want to do.

Supposedly one can use certain compatible PCI CMD IDE controllers, again in
a non-boot situation.
I bought one of those, I have 120 GB IDE disks, I intend to put all of this
to a test in one my Suns Real Soon Now. ;-)

As always: there exist SCSI-IDE adapters made/sold by Acard; with these,
You can aledgedly use *any* size IDE drive transparently with a SCSI HBA.

Casper H.S. Dik wrote:

> CJT <abujlehc@prodigy.net> writes:
>
>
>>Can you point to detailed instructions how to accomplish that, because
>>I've tried and failed?
>
>
> You need one that is supported by Solaris:
>
> See uata(7D):
>
> Currently, the uata driver supports IDE controllers CMD646U
> and Acer Southbridge M5229.
>
> Of course, it was bad engineering to have two different sets of
> ATA/IDE drivers. Added maintenance cost, and lack of orthogonality
> and device support (in S10, we merged back the "sd" driver; we
> should do something similar for the IDE/ATA stuff)
>
> Casper

The CMD646 is the one I have, but I have not been successful getting
it to work. Disks attached to it don't go in the device tree on the
AXi (apparently because of the lack of OBP support) and my admittedly
uninformed attempts to get them recognized without that have been
unsuccessful.

I've read hundreds of pages of documentation on both the hardware and
software to try to understand why it won't work for me, but I must be
looking in the wrong place.

The closest thing I've had to an insight is noticing that the controller
shows up in the device tree as RAID rather than the way I expected it
to appear (CMD646 or some such thing), but I don't know how to alter
that.

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