Emulex SC 7003, Ultrix 3.0, Emulex TC11, VAX 8650, & Ultrix v2.2

[George Robbins]

> I am looking for anyone with experience using the SC7003 and CDC 9773 disks
> under Ultrix (3.0, though 2.2 also relevant).  The SC7003 is the Massbus
> emulation SBI controller.

I just installed a couple of CDC Sabre 1.2Gbyte drives via an SC7003/V-master
on our 785.  There were some hassles, but nothing insurmountable.  I had to
patch hp.o a bit so that it would match up the drive parameters with one
of the remapped drives that I wasn't using and to change the geometry
information for that drive type to match the Sabre numbers.  I also changed
hpdata.c to provide a usable initial partition table. 

I also patched the old BSD/Ultrix 1.2 "format" program to format the
drives.  I am not sure if this format program is still included with
the new "improved" installation procedure, but you did keep those old
distribution media, right?

We have CDC service here, and they service both Emulex and the CDC
drives, though anything but VMS seems to be black magic to them.  They
were very helpful in resolving problems I had with a bad adapter board
and screwed up cables.  They also had the Emulex formatter package, but
for some reason although it claimed to have formatted the drive, it
didn't write out the bad sector file correctly.  Probably operator error,
but it didn't show up immediately and I only realized things were screwed
proper only after laying committing  my news spool to the minefield of
bad spots.  Ouch.

After patching in the right numbers, the BSD formatter seemed to do
a nice job, but I'd recommend buying the Emulex diagnostics/formatter
since it will greatly reduce the uncertainty factor in getting the
hardware working and the drive formatted before you have to throw in
the Ultrix card.

You might check with Emulex and see if they can provide a cookbook
approach for Ultrix.  I had to wing it because everything finally
started to work on a Friday and I didn't realize quite how stupid
BSD/Ultrix was about supporting random drives.   It happens that
/etc/disktab is pretty much for show, as the real values are hard-
coded elsewhere...

More information on demand, I guess...
-- 
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)