[rescue] SS1000E question...

[Skeezics Boondoggle]

On Tue, 14 Jun 2005, Mike Hebel wrote:

> How true is this about mixing boards between the SS1000E and SS1000?
> 
> http://mbus.sunhelp.org/systems/sun/ss1000.htm
> 
> I have a SS1000E with two boards and four SM61s in it (Thanks Steve!)  
> and two spare SS1000 boards.  All with full RAM on them. I'd like to use
> the SS1000 boards but I'm not sure if they will work. I heard somewhere
> that you could use them but they would be "ram only".
>   Or is that just a myth?

It's true; you cannot mix boards in the sun4d "E" vs. non-"E" machines.  
The control board and each system board have various ASICs (XDbus
interface chips, memory queue handlers, I/O cache, etc) on them that run
at 40Mhz (non-"E") or 50Mhz ("E") and they all have to match.

I've never tried putting 50Mhz boards into a 40Mhz chassis;  you might
think that would work, maybe, given that some people mix Mbus or UPA CPU
speeds "illegally" and the hardware just clocks them down to match the
slowest one... but *please* don't blow up an SS1000 to find out that I'm
wrong! :-)

-- Chris