[rescue] Sun Sparcstation 20 hard disks

[Sandwich Maker]

" From: "J. Alexander Jacocks" <jjacocks at mac.com>
" 
" On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 4:13 PM, Oliver Cromwell
" <vintagehacker at gmail.com> wrote:
" > My big concern is the current state of the hard drives, and they range in
" > size and age it appears.  I would like to fully replace all disks on these
" > systems with new disks but need some guidance.  It looks like they are
" SCA-2
" > disks with a single-connector interface and a SS can use disks up to 2GB in
" > size.  Is there a source for these disks new?
" 
" Any SCA disk should be usable, no matter the size.  I'm not sure,
" offhand, what the maximum disk size that SunOS 4.1.x can address,

2G slices unless you get your hands on disksuite 1.0, so 16G/disk.

as noted, the ss2 is not sca but 50-pin narrow scsi.  i'm a little
surprised there aren't sca - 50-pin paddleboards that would fit on the
back of the drive.

also as noted, sun qualified their systems only with certain drives,
but if it's scsi it'll work - mod interface issues.  i ran my ss2 with
a pair of 4G hawks for many years; they were an excellent match for
4.1.4 and about equal to the sun0424/st1480n in power/heat.  worked up
an alternate alternate geometry so i could actually access every last
sector...

" but
" Solaris 2.5.1 can address 1tb disks, so I wouldn't worry too much
" about disks not being recognized.  At worst case, you may have to
" define fake disk geometry for SunOS 4.1.x, but that's not too hard.

there's even progs out there that will probe-scsi and [almost] make
one for you.  and there's a massive canonical format.dat which
probably already has the entry you need, on the net somewhere too.
________________________________________________________________________
Andrew Hay                                  the genius nature
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adh at an.bradford.ma.us                       and think what none thought