[Sunhelp] which disks for a sparc 5

[Bjrn Ramqvist]

Robert.Cross at scottish-newcastle.co.uk wrote:
> 
> >I know the connector is SCA, but is the interface SCSI ? Ultra SCSI ? or
> >doesnt it matter ?
> 
> Hmm, I was told that the SS5 uses standard SCSI-Wide disks. I certainly
> know of someone who's managed to put a (pair of?) 18.2GB Fujitsu disks
> in one. Basically, any Wide disk other than one of the 10K RPM disks,
> and that's only because of the cooling.

While this is somewhat possible, the SS5 is not equipped with fancy
Wide-SCSI. :-(
It's standard Narrow Fast-SCSI. Nor Ultra, nor Wide.

The SCA-connector is 80-pin, and can hold either Wide or Narrow
SCSI-devices without any kind of adapters. Generally, you can always put
Wide devices on a Narrow chain, and vice versa. You just loose some of
the performance on your equipment, or should I say, you don't take any
advantage of it. :-)

The Ultra 1/140 and Ultra 1/170 used Narrow SCSI, along til the Ultra
1/170E (and the 200E?) came with wopping Wide-SCSI, and UPA. Ofcourse,
you can feel the difference when you're working with the machine. I
don't know if that's Ultra-SCSI (doubled bus frequency) or just plain
Fast-SCSI on that bus.

> I quite fancy the idea of a pair of 36GB IBM UltraStars. Besides even if
> it *is* SCA, you know that you can get convertor cards quite cheaply.

Don't expect a SCA-adapter to fit in there without "hardware-hacking"...

Any low-profile SCA-drive would fit like a charm in that box. I managed
to get a "SUN4.2G" drive (3.5" HH) in there, but had to cut the upper
SCA-connector away from the backplane, and tried forcing/ramming/pushing
the handle over the drive to make it slide into position. Evil thing to
do. Not even worth it unless you're really desperate, and have some
spare SCA-backplanes for Aurora-chassies. :-)

Check the size of those drives. If they are 1.6" high (HH - Half
Height), that's too big to fit in there nicely. These drive carriers
were made for 1" drives. (All newer drives in low- to middle-end
capacities are either 1" or 0.75" high)
I know all 36GB drives we buy here are Half Height.


I know for one thing; since I "lost" my desktop Alpha at work, and
gained a (*katwoiee*) PeeCee I will certainly never EVER go back to
IDE-drives on a GNU/Linux-box, ever. Today Ultra2 and Ultra160 drives
and cards gets more and more attention in the PeeCee-world, but just the
simple combination of an IBM Ultrastar 9ES with an Adaptec 2940-UW Pro,
sent every IDE-drive I've ever laid my hands on straight to the moon.
I just will not be without SCSI again. Period.
:-)


	/Regards, Bjorn