[rescue] let's revisit the whole FC-AL thing

[Joshua Snyder]

Well take a look at http://www.tcnj.edu/~feuss2/fibre/fibre.html not much
info on how to wire the tcards(and SSA style boards) but many good pics.
When I last looked into making tcards I believe I determined that it would
take a minimum of 12 solder joints per tcard.  The reason I didn't go much
farther than just looking into making tcards was the cost of the controller.
Most of us will have a Scsi controller laying around, but I didn't have
FC-AL controller.  And at the time the cheapest one I could find was about
$140.  I figured by the time I got the controller and drives I would be
better off with plain scsi...

			josh

-----Original Message-----
From: rescue-admin at sunhelp.org [mailto:rescue-admin at sunhelp.org]On
Behalf Of George Adkins
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2002 9:27 PM
To: rescue at sunhelp.org
Subject: Re: [rescue] let's revisit the whole FC-AL thing


> > > Dude... Do you have any idea how bitchy these would be to hand
> > > assemble?  I'll help if it happens, but gah.  We're talking ~1600
> > > solder points ber disk board give or take.
> >
> > Umm, I don't think so.
> >
> > how about 40-60 solder joints per card, max.

> Erm, you're talking tcards.  I'm not terribly intrested in tcards.  I can
> provide the required connections though.

Okay, your SSA boards need to host what, 10 drives?

that's :

tx+, tx-, rx+, rx-, 8 ID pins, what, 8 power pins? 2 for activity LED, what
else?  that looks like about 20 per connector + discrete components, maybe
40+ the interconnects to whatever the backplane boards connect to?

Okay, maybe 300 per board at the most...  I've done more wire-wrap than that
on one board...

I don't think it'll be that difficult.  all I need is the physical layout
parameters for the board and time to lay out the traces so that they're all
the right length (signal) or width (power).

George