Device support under Ultrix 3.0

[George Robbins]

In article <2297 at aecom.yu.edu> naftoli at aecom.yu.edu (Robert N. Berlinger) writes:
> From the Ultrix 3.0 product description (SPD), it appears that
> DEC has dropped support of a number of MassBus disks from v2.X including
> the RM80.  Anyone know why?  We were preparing to bring up Ultrix
> on a 11/750 with an Emulex SC7000 disk controller and Fuji Eagle
> 2351A disks the combination of which emulates RM80s.  Am I
> out of luck?  Anyone out there have Fuji drives running under
> Ultrix 3.0?

Well, RP07's and RM80's definitely still work under 3.0.  I think the issue
is that these disks have a somewhat different format than "generic" massbus
drives in that they support "skip sectors" (sector slipping) in addition to
bad sector mapping.  This results in some semi-spurious errors when reading
tracks with skip sectors that the various standalone drivers don't deal with.

> Also from what I understand RP07s are supported "data only."  Does
> this indeed mean I can't boot from one?  Why is there this limitation?
> I'd think DEC would support it's own hardware vigorously especially
> considering it was supported in Ultrix 2.X.

Sure...  I'm afraid the one thing the DEC agressivly supports is moving
you into their various proprietary/closed architectures.  Luckily, they
aren't as agressive about desupporting antique hardware (like mine) as
they could be....

It's kind of sad - RM80's make excellent system disks, just about the
right size to hold everything without the temptation to stick on one
more filesystem and RP07's are amazingly cheap, if you've got the floor
space.  I almost bougt 4 more last year, but opted for some CDC Sabre 1.2GB
disks on an Emulex controller instead.

-- 
George Robbins - now working for,	uucp: {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr
but no way officially representing	arpa: cbmvax!grr at uunet.uu.net
Commodore, Engineering Department	fone: 215-431-9255 (only by moonlite)