[geeks] Seagate vendor-unique data?

[Jochen Kunz]

On Thu, 2 Feb 2012 11:19:51 -0600
Bill Bradford <mrbill at mrbill.net> wrote:

> I remember reading something quite recently about manually setting drive
> IDs on (DSSI?) hard drives on a VAX by talking to the drive's built-in
> controller via command line directly...
Yup. DEC did a lot of very cool things in its days. DSSI is actually a
"cheap" version of CI (Cluster Interconnect). A DSSI disk is basicly a
disk with build in HSC (Hirarchical Storage Controler) and thus just an
other cluster node. CI / DSSI is more a Storage Area Network then just
a storage bus like e.g. SCSI. - It was this at a time when the term SAN
wasn't invented yet.

It was quite common for some VAXen that the peripherals had more
horsepower then the actual main CPU. E.g. the RQDX3 MFM disk controller
used in low end QBus VAXen and PDP-11s is driven by a T11. (A PDP-11
micorcontoler.) IIRC the RA90 disks are controled by a NS32K CPU...
-- 


\end{Jochen}

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