Developer Forum

Does anyone know if the Sun Microsystems Differential Ultra/Wide SCSI
(UDWIS/S) SBUS card P/N 370-2443 (X1065A) is compatible with an older
Sparc 10 machine. I bought one of these on Ebay and I seem be be having
a difficult time getting it to work.

I don't know that I've seen sbus incompatibilies between hardware. More
common is that there's no driver in the OS for the card.

What OS are you running on the machine? If Solaris, what do you see in
'prtdiag' output?

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

arren Dunham wrote:


Im running Solaris 8. I think you mean prtconf? Here is the verbose output
of prtconf and also cfgadm after that. c4 is the controller in question.

stanford% prtconf -v
System Configuration: Sun Microsystems sun4m
Memory size: 224 Megabytes
System Peripherals (Software Nodes):

SUNW,SPARCstation-10
System properties:
name <zerocopy-capability> length <4>
value <0x00000003>.
name <relative-addressing> length <4>
value <0x00000001>.
name <MMU_PAGEOFFSET> length <4>
value <0x00000fff>.
name <MMU_PAGESIZE> length <4>
value <0x00001000>.
name <PAGESIZE> length <4>
value <0x00001000>.
packages (driver not attached)
disk-label (driver not attached)
deblocker (driver not attached)
obp-tftp (driver not attached)
options, instance #0
System properties:
name <ttymodes> length <36>
value
<0x0000250200001805000000bd00008a3b031c7f150400000011131a19120f171600000000>.

name <class> length <5>
value 'root'
aliases (driver not attached)
openprom (driver not attached)
iommu, instance #0
Driver properties:
name <pm-hardware-state> length <18>
value 'no-suspend-resume'
Register Specifications:
Bus Type=0xf, Address=0xe0000000, Size=0x300
sbus, instance #0
Register Specifications:
Bus Type=0xf, Address=0xe0001000, Size=0x20
Range Specifications:
Ch: 00,00000000 Pa: 0e,00000000, Sz: 10000000
Ch: 01,00000000 Pa: 0e,10000000, Sz: 10000000
Ch: 02,00000000 Pa: 0e,20000000, Sz: 10000000
Ch: 03,00000000 Pa: 0e,30000000, Sz: 10000000
Ch: 0f,00000000 Pa: 0e,f0000000, Sz: 10000000
espdma, instance #0
Register Specifications:
Bus Type=0xf, Address=0x400000, Size=0x10
esp, instance #0
Driver properties:
name <target6-sync-speed> length <4>
value <0x0000115d>.
name <target3-sync-speed> length <4>
value <0x00002710>.
name <target2-sync-speed> length <4>
value <0x00002710>.
name <target1-sync-speed> length <4>
value <0x00002710>.
name <target0-sync-speed> length <4>
value <0x00002710>.
name <target3-TQ> length <0> -- <no value>.
name <target2-TQ> length <0> -- <no value>.
name <target1-TQ> length <0> -- <no value>.
name <target0-TQ> length <0> -- <no value>.
name <scsi-selection-timeout> length <4>
value <0x000000fa>.
name <scsi-options> length <4>

According to Kurt Nowak < XXXX@XXXXX.COM >:

What are you trying to talk to with it? The SBus differential
cards are HVD (High Voltage Differential), not the more recent LVD (Low
Voltage Differential) which will also talk to single-ended SCSI.

Things like the A1000 and D1000 want HVD to talk to them. Many
other things want LVD, and unfortunately, there does not seem to be a
LVD card for the SBus. (This is what moved me from an Ultra-2 to an
Ultra-60 -- to be able to use PCI cards so I could get a LVD card to
talk to an Exabyte EXB-430 tape library.

This difference could be the source of your difficulties.

Good Luck,
DoN.
--
Email: < XXXX@XXXXX.COM > | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.yqcomputer.com/
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

I am trying to talk to a DDS-4 tape drive.

The SCSI card you have is a High Voltage Differential (HVD) card - *not*
to be confused with LVD, which is what most DDS-4 tape drives are. I've
never seen a DDS-4 tape drive that can use HVD, so it is not surprising
they are not working.

Also be aware that there is a risk of damage when connecting HVD to LVD
or single ended.

A SPARC 10 may not be able to send data to a DDS-4 tape drive at
sufficient rate to keep the drive writing all the time (steaming). That
would cause the drive to stop/start repeatedly and wear it out.

Actually, there may be incompatibilies between sun4c and newer
machines, but the SS10 is sun4m and counts as "new".

Dennis

--
Don't suffer from insanity...
Enjoy every minute of it.

Kurt Nowak < XXXX@XXXXX.COM > writes:




Which most likely is a SE SCSI device, and an HDV card may fry its
interface chips.. :(

You probably wanted to get a Sun SWIFT SBUS card instead.
X1018A, 501-2739

Thanks everyone for replying. I had no idea about the HVD vs the LVD.
Fortunately I didn't fry anything in the process. To Doug's point, yes,
I should have gotten the Sun SWIFT X1018A card instead. Currently I am
using a HD68 to HD50 cable and connecting the DDS-4 to my second narrow
scsi sbus card on the SS10. Everything Works like a charm now.

Since you are using a narrow SCSI controller, you will have to be
especially aware that the drive is 'streaming'. If the data does not
reach the drive fast enough, it will have to stop/start all the time,
which will wear the drive out.

Do recommend that I use an SE wide adapter instead? Like an X1063A
(370-1703)? Or something else?

I guess it does stream OK, then there would be nothing to be gained by
changing. But generally I suspect it might be more reliable.

ccording to Kurt Nowak < XXXX@XXXXX.COM >:

[ ... ]


I consider this to be unlikely to be HVD. LVD or SE are more
likely.

Is there a symbol on the drive's label showing what kind of SCSI
it is? They are all things like diamonds with various alternative
lines.

SE (single-ended) looks sort of like this:

/\
< ---
\/

(where the '<' indicates a closed corner.)

HVD (High Voltage Differential) sort of like this:

//\
<< ----
\\/

(The extra "<" is outside the primary diamond.)

and LVD (Low Voltage Differential) is sort of like this:
/\
// \
<< -----
\\ /
\/

(the extra "<" is *inside* the primary diamond, which I had to draw
larger here to make room.)

If you are lucky, the DDS-4 will also have the letters "LVD" or
"SE" near the symbol.

In eBay auction 160171723507 there is an HP SureStore DDS4 tape
drive which includes a photo of the back. This photo (the third)
includes the symbol for LVD and the letters "SCSI LVD/SE" bracketing the
symbol.

eBay auction 160171963245 explicitly states that their
IBM 09N0980 Seagate STD2401LW drive is LVD/SE.

220163374958 says only LVD, for what that may be worth.

230184620557 says LVD/SE

So -- based on this you *don't* want to use a HVD SCSI interface
(which is what you have), though you *might) be able to use a SE 68-pin
interface as long as your drive is a model which explicitly states that
it can handle SE as well as LVD.

The 370-1703 SBus card states that it can be used in the
following machines:

SS4
SS5
SS10 <****<<<
SS20
SS600
SS1000
SS2000
(machines which match A11, A12, and A14 which I won't bother
dereferencing, since you have an SS10.)
and E3000 through E6500 and E10000.

so -- *if* your drive admits to accepting SE as well as LVD, you can use
this card -- though as one of the other followups suggested, you may not
be able to keep up with the data rate that the drive wants.

Note that you may have already damaged either your HVD interface
or your drive. Try connecting through a 50-pin to 68-pin cable to see
whether you can talk to the drive with the 50-pin SCSI built into the
system. If so, then go for the SE card above -- it may take some time
to find one on eBay.

*Or* -- look for an Ultra-60 on eBay -- and for a LVD PCI card
to go with it. it will be significantly faster (probably dual 450 MHz
CPUs), and you can find the LVD cards in PCI format, even though you
can't find them in sBus.

But *stop* trying to connect the HVD interface to the drive. I
don't know which you are more likely to damage -- the interface, or the
drive, but it is bad news to mix them.

Good Luck,
DoN.
--
Email: < XXXX@XXXXX.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. Nichols wrote:

Don,

I have stopped attempting to fiddle with the HVD card since you all made
it very clear that it was not compatible and may cause damage. I now use
a 50-pin to 68-pin sun cable and connect it to my second 50-pin narrow
scsi card. Everything seems to work fine and it seems to stream well
too. Fortunately I didnt fry anything.
Thanks for all the detailed scsi explanation. I learned a lot.
/Kurt