How to install embedded SCSI drives on a Sun 3/260
Fritz B. Raab
fbraab at leuze-owen.de
Wed Feb 7 19:36:40 AEST 1990
Abstract
Encouraged through an article in comp.sys.sun from mccroy%almond.hepnet
@csa3.lbl.gov I want to show how I managed to install two SCSI - Drives
with embedded SCSI architecture on our Sun 3/260.
I did not go the way to use the builtin MD21 SCSI - ESDI Controller, but
bought a Sun 501-1217 host adapter. The drives I used are CDC Wren V
94181-702.
Recipe:
0) Read this 1st! Think of that you will have no support for your
drives from Sun.
1) Buy a Sun 501-1217 hostadapter. I paid DM 2950.- .
2) Buy one or two Wren V 94181-702 Full Height drives with
integrated SCSI - controller. I found them really cheap, they were DM
4760.- a piece. You will get out 529 MB netto with a single filesystem.
3) Install the host adapter in a free slot of your 3/260 card cage as
closest to the CPU as you can. Pull out the jumpers of BG3 and INT of this
new used slot behind the power supply (you have to flip out the power
supply, it is held by four screws behind the front cover) . Before
installation switch the dip - switches to 0x204000 . You read them binary
from upper left to lower right with the LSB on the upper left, if you look
onto the board in a way that the dip switches are in the lower right
corner. The switches have to represent 2040 hex.
4) Configure your new kernel. Go to /sys/sun3/conf and edit the appropriate
script. You should find the lines:
controller si0 at vme24d16 ? csr 0x200000 priority 2 vector siintr 0x40
disk sd0 at si0 drive 0 flags 0
disk sd1 at si0 drive 1 flags 0
tape st0 at si0 drive 32 flags 1
Add the lines:
controller si1 at vme24d16 ? csr 0x204000 priority 2 vector siintr 0x41
disk sd4 at si1 drive 0 flags 0
disk sd6 at si1 drive 8 flags 0
tape st1 at si1 drive 32 flags 1 (see step 14!)
right under the above. Make the kernel and copy it to /vmunix, after you
renamed the old /vmunix to /vmunix.old .
Instead of sd4 and sd6 you may also write sd2 and sd3, as you like. The
important thing is that you write drive 0 for the first and drive 8 for
the second drive. You cannot use numbers between 1 through 7 here, because
they mean lun (logical unit numbers) on the first disk controller. As you
bought a embedded SCSI- controller THERE ARE NO luns like in the MD21
SCSI-ESDI controller. The third drive would be a line like:
disk sd2 at si1 drive 16 flags 0
You could have up to drive 48, number 56 is the host adapter itself. There
is a physical limit of 8 devices on one SCSI-bus.
Flag 0 means that this is a hard disk drive.
5) When you boot with the new kernel the si1 host adapter should be found
(dmesg). If you run into trouble (don't know why), boot again with: b
/vmunix.old . Check your kernel config.
6) Connect the drives with a 50-wire ribbon cable and a Sun-SCSI type D-Sub
connector either direct to the hostadapter. Better buy a PC-clone mini
tower case with built in power supply, fix the drives into the case and
connect your homemade shoebox with a Sun-like Dsub - Dsub cable to your
3/260 host adapter. Jumper your drives as follows: The last drive on the
cable will have to have the terminators installed. Jumper the most left
jumper which means that you activate the terminator power supply. Jumper
nothing else. This drive will be drive 0, in my case sd4. Jumper the
second drive as drive 1, that ist jumper 3 from right, jumper nothing
else. Pull out the three terminator resitor networks of this drive.
Parity is not used by the sun machine, I guess it does not work, if you
try.
7) Switch on your shoebox. Take a multimeter and check if your cheap power
supply gives you the voltages within +- 5% of 5V and 12V, if not, blame
your PC clone dealer (sure you have one).
8) Make the entries in /dev with MAKEDEV sd4 and MAKEDEV sd6.
9) Boot. The kernel now should find your drives. If so, sit back and relax
a while, you got it ! If not, especially if you get crazy SCSI errors on
your console, check your cable, I had this problem, and it was a bad
contact in one of the Dsub - Connectors....
10)Run format. The format program should find your drives now. They are
already formatted but I did a new format. You must first -extract- the
manufacturer's error table and -commit- it valid, then you can go to
subcommand -format-. Well, I forgot. First you have to choose the drive
type with -select-. In my list it was number 13 for the Wren V.
11)Partition and -label- the drive. Caution: the partition information of
Sun microsystems is WRONG, it gives you only half of your drive capacity.
One block is a half kilobyte, so you should have over one million blocks
per drive (1110560 blocks in partition c).
12)Exit format program. Now you can run newfs /dev/rsdnx.
13)Then you can mount the new drives. Cry 'Yeah','heureka' or just be
happy that you saved a lot of money for your company !
14)Show it to your boss. Explain to him that you now have to...
15)Buy a Gigatape or Exabyte to manage your backup :-) .
So did I.
Fritz B. Raab
(-: Fritz B. Raab | email: fbraab at leuze-owen.de :-)
(-: Leuze electronic, Abt. TDV | old: ..uunet!unido!leuze!fbraab :-)
(-: In der Braike 1 | fbraab at leuze.uucp :-)
(-: D7311 Owen / Teck W.Germany | voice: +49 7021 573185 fax: 573200 :-)
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