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- Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.hardware
- Path: sparky!uunet!caen!destroyer!terminator!pmj
- From: pmj@icpsr.umich.edu (Peter M. Joftis)
- Subject: SCSI disk on Sun 4/690MP
- Message-ID: <1992Sep14.225451.28216@terminator.cc.umich.edu>
- Originator: pmj@tdis.icpsr.umich.edu
- Keywords: Sun, disk, SCSI, SCSI-2, IPI
- Sender: news@terminator.cc.umich.edu (Usenet Owner)
- Organization: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research
- Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 22:54:51 GMT
- Lines: 34
-
- We are investigating adding disk drives to our Sun 4/690MP. We had
- been buying IPI drives but were interested in SCSI-2 drives given the
- smaller performance differences between SCSI-2 and IPI and the lower
- cost of the SCSI drives.
-
- The local Sun sales people are discouraging me from hanging scsi disks
- on the 690MP. They claim it isn't supported and while it will work
- now Sun will not commit to keeping the SBus SCSI and SCSI disks
- working with the 690MP. In the SunExpress catalog (Summer/Fall '92)
- on page 49 there is a X1054A SCSI-2/buffered ethernet card that the
- side bar claims will work in a 690. However there don't seem to be
- any SCSI disks in the "Storage Products" section of the catalog that
- aren't for the 630 or 670 (see the footnotes on p. 37).
- Local Sun field engineers claim they have installed the card in 690s
- but only for the high speed ethernet--no one locally had used the SCSI
- side of the card.
-
- So I called my usual 3rd party disk vendor to see what their prices
- and opinions might be. Their line is that IPI is NOT a good choice
- that Sun will be moving to "differential SCSI" technology and that I
- should buy the controller card from Sun and get SCSI-2 drives. This
- is a much cheaper solution and probably meets my performance needs,
- but I don't want to make trouble for myself down the road.
-
- Do any of you have experience with SCSI-2 drives and the new
- controller (X1054A) on a 690MP? Do any of you think you know what Sun
- is doing regarding IPI v SCSI v whatever on the 4/690MP? If there is
- a problem with SCSI on the 690, could some one explain it to me?
-
- ---
- Peter Joftis -- pmj@icpsr.umich.edu +1 313 764-6554
- Director, Computer Support Group
- Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research
- The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
-