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- 1. OPENING REMARKS
-
- Larry Lamers, the chairman, called the meeting to order at 9:00 a.m., Monday
- January 8,1990. He thanked Robert Snively of Sun Microsystems for hosting the
- meeting.
-
- As is customary, the people attending introduced themselves. A form was
- provided to generate a list of attendees.
-
- For the benefit of those attending the Ad-hoc Cable Working Group meeting
- for the first time the chairman outlined the objectives of the group. The
- objective is to discover and define the appropriate parameters for cables used
- to integrate SCSI systems.
-
- The cable specifications in SCSI-1 have proved to be less than adequete in
- fully loaded systems. Extensive work has been done by HP and Sun Microsystems
- testing cables. As a result of this testing it has been decided that the
- current specifications may need revision and additional parameters may need to
- be specified.
-
- 2. ATTENDANCE
- Meeting Attendees
-
- Name Stat Organization
- ------------------------------ ---- ------------------------------
- Mr. Edward Bright V
- Mr. Allen Haigh V
- Ms. Nancy Waterman V
- Mr. Scott Ellis V
- Mr. Dan Hyer V
- Mr. James Fiala V 3M
- Mr. Denis D. Springer O 3M Company
- Mr. Bob Whiteman A AMP, Inc.
- Mr. Peter M. Blackford P Astro Cable Company
- Mr. Thomas Debiec O Belden Wire & Cable
- Mr. John A. Gibson P Berk-Tek, Inc.
- Mr. Wills Xu O C&M Corp.
- Mr. T. S. Lee V DTC
- Mr. John D. Walden P E.I. DuPont Inc.
- Mr. Stephen L. Clark A E.I. DuPont Inc.
- Mr. Bob Thornton O Fujitsu Components of America
- Mr. Terry Maezawa O Furukawa Electric Amer, Inc.
- Mr. Kurt Chan P Hewlett Packard Co.
- Mr. David McFadden P Honda Connector
- Mr. Hubert Lee V IBM Corp.
- Mr. Chuck Grant O Madison Cable Corp.
- Ms. Heide Wilson V Marketing Solutions
- Mr. Richard Wagner O Montrose Products Company
- Mr. Jim Giusso V Nicor
- Mr. Gene Milligan O Seagate Technology
- Mr. Robert N. Snively P Sun Microsystems, Inc.
- Mr. Vit Novak O Sun Microsystems, Inc.
- Mr. Armando Pauker V Tandem
- Mr. Duc Pham P Tandem Computer Inc.
- Mr. Kenneth Plourde O Tempflex Cable Inc.
- Mr. Warren Persak V Tempflex Cable Inc.
- Mr. D. W. Spence P Texas Instruments
- Mr. Harvey Waltersdorf P Thomas & Betts
- Mr. Keith Bean A Thomas & Betts
-
- 3. DOCUMENT DISTRIBUTION
-
- Documents distributed at the meeting will be included in the next X3T9.2
- mailing.
-
- 4. WORK ITEMS
-
- 4.1. Measurement Methods
- Jim Fiala made a proposal for cable testing methods. If you accurately
- measure capacitance and propagation delay impedance can be calculated. This
- calculated impedance closely matches the end termination resistive
- measurement. The TDR has much lower accuracy when measuring impedance.
-
- John Gibson sent out a proposed measurement technigqe for checking crosstalk
- on differential cables
-
- Chuck Grant has prepared a test measurements method for single-ended cable.
-
- 4.2. Impedance Measurements
-
- Kurt Chan compiled impendance data report at plenary. Simulations indicate
- the differences of 25 ohms are significant.
-
- 4.3. Crosstalk Measurements
-
- 4.3.1. John Gibson reported that testing of differential cables did not
- indicate that cross-talk impacted the data reliability. John Gibson
- and Chuck Grant will look at single-ended cables for cross talk
- measurements.
-
- 4.3.2. Vit Novak reported on his testing of crosstalk in high density
- cables, in a fully loaded, full length cable. The testing was done on an
- emphirical basis. There are influeances due to mutual and intrinsic
- capacitance. Low skew seems to be more important than impedance in
- determining which cable provides satisfactory results. He asked what the
- relationship is between crosstalk and skew. Cross talk does not seem to
- be data pattern sensitive (data patterns of 00,FF, and 00 were tested).
- The criterea used was the minimum termpwr level at whick reliable data
- transfers could be made. The cables were grouped around 75 ohms and
- around 100 ohms. A write and compare of a six Mb file was done. There
- was no obserable difference in cables until terminators are de-coupled.
- The alternative one 220/330 termination was used. A given cable does
- not seem to be data pattern sensitive. However different cables had
- different Vterms at failure. Lower cross talk cables (50mv) failed at
- lower Vterms. Amoung lower cross talk cables the impedance did not make
- a difference in Vterm failure. There was higher cross talk at 150mv.
- The next step is to look at longer cables and with alternative two
- termination and check the long term reliablitiy. Asynch passes at Vterm
- of 4.25-5.0 volts. Synchronous mode failed at 4.6v, with no decoupling.
- The skew vales were taken from manufacturers specifications.
-
- 4.3.3. Jim Filia stated that low skew is due to better manufacturing
- control, which lowers crosstalk, but is skew is not related in an
- engineering sense to crosstalk. Bill Spence supported this with a
- statement that skew and cross-talk are not related, however the layout of
- the data lines in a round cable will affect cross-talk. Cross-talk is
- design engineering parameter, while the amount of skew is the result
- manufacturing control.
-
- 4.4. Nomographs
-
- Jim Filia gave a tutorial on cable problems. He recommended that
- attenuation and rise time specifications be added to document. Attenuation of
- voltage affects both the signal and the reflections and the cross-talk. Rise
- time degradation has an affect on uncertainty of signal level. Signal
- grounds and shield should be de-coupled to avoid two different propagation
- delays.
-
- 4.5. Marketing Issues
-
- The chair raised the issue of whether or not this ad-hoc meeting desired to
- make recommendations to the X3T9.2 plenary regarding the specifications
- currently in the SCSI-2 document. He advised them that the current public
- review comment period would close on February 16, 1990, and changes to SCSI-2
- may be impossible to achieve after that date. The cable suppliers were asked
- what if they were feeling any marketing pressure to supply SCSI-2 compliant
- cables. The response was that so far they were dealing with the OEM market
- which was capable of making decisions on cable requirements that guaranteed
- system integrity without the help of a standard. However, they as the
- secondary market develops there will be a demand for SCSI-2 compliant cables.
-
- 4.6. System requirements
-
- Jim Filia stated that the system requirements need to be defined as well as
- the cable specifications if data integrity is to be insured. He is willing
- work on establishing the system requirements and invited systems integrators
- to participate.
-
- 5. RECOMMENDATIONS
-
- 5.1. That the 90 ohm requirement not be a 'shall' requirement in SCSI-2.
-
- 5.2. That warnings to implementors be increased awareness of
- attenutation, rise time and noise parameters that impact cable
- performance and reliabitlity.
-
- 5.3. Clarify in SCSI-2 that the AWG 28 diameter requirement should apply
- to termpwr and that the 90 ohm characteristic impedance applies to signal
- pairs.
-
- 6. MEETING SCHEDULE
-
- The next meeting of the Ad-hoc Cable Working Group is set for 9:00 am, March
- 5, 1990 at the Red Lion Inn in Costa Mesa, CA. The meeting is hosted by
- WESTERN DIGITAL CORPORATION.
-
- LOCATION: Red Lion Inn
- 3050 Bristol Street
- Costa Mesa, CA
- (714) 540-7000
- ROOM RATE: $75.00 Single, $80.00 Double
- GROUP NAME: WD/SCSI
- RESERVATION CUTOFF DATE is February 28, 1990
-
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