[SunRescue] Starter systems...

[James Lockwood]

On Tue, 10 Apr 2001, Jonathan Katz wrote:

> IIRC, If you drop a VSIMM in an SS20 and don't have a keyboard/monitor
> attached it acts as a cache for your HD.

No.  The VSIMMs used for enabling the SX video processor and the NVSIMMs
used for PrestoServe are completely different.

Both use the same slots including the small "outboard" slot next to 2 of
the SS10/SS20 memory slots.  Therefore you can only have a max of 2
NVSIMMs or VSIMMs combined in a system.  NVSIMMs are easily recognizable
by the large 3V lithium cell at one end and a jumper nearby to enable
battery backup.  If one is left jumpered outside of a powered system it
will slowly discharge as the battery maintains the SRAM on board.

SS10/SS20 NVSIMMs have 2MB SRAM each.  Sun never officially supported more
than one per system but two seem to work fine for 4MB.  Disk write
performance is noticably boosted, I ran 2 of these in my SS20/812 when I
used it as a fileserver.  I still have the latest rev of the PrestoServe
software if anyone digs up one of these NVSIMMs and needs it.

-James