[rescue] Prestoserve

[Al Potter]

rr at rits.com.au said:
> I found me a 370-1401, google tells me it's a Prestoserve card - yay!
> Q1: Are these things still useful in these Solaris 8/9 days?

I can't see why not.... they are NVRAM disk caches (write).  They 
"accelerate" all writes to all filesystems except those to the root ( / ).

The bugger is with the batteries....  if the card (or DIMM) was removed from 
the system, and the power not switched off on the card assembly, then the 
batteries are almost certainly dead or below min values.  For the Sbud card 
at least, this means tracking down the proper batteries (Eagle Pitchers from 
memory), desoldering and unmount the ones on the board, and mounting the new 
ones.  Not a hard job if you have average soldering skillz.  I have done 
this with the Sbus cards, but not with the NVSimms.

2d bugger is the drivers... they are NOT (or were not) in the OS, but had to 
be purchased from Sun ($50 last time I checked).  Several folks have 
"archival" copies.....


Hope this helps....


AL