[rescue] SATA on SPARC systems

Fri Oct 20 10:35:48 CDT 2017

There are a lot of alternative options for disks. I have a SCSI2SD 5, ACARD LVD TO IDE, SCSI SSD and a SCSI to PCCard.   For my Sun Ultra 5 I have a SCSI card which is a massive improvement over the built in IDE interface.   I would at some point like to pickup a Fast SCSI to SATA adapter, but I have enough options.     The SCSI2SD 5 isn't fast and in general is slightly slower than my physical SCSI drives.   The 6 promises to be a lot faster but I am okay not with a one drive per device.     I also kind of like have a removable media drive as I can swap OSs just by swapping the card.  You can do this with the new version of 6, but can't do it with the older version I have.

________________________________
From: rescue <rescue-bounces at sunhelp.org> on behalf of Stefan Skoglund <stefan.skoglund at agj.net>
Sent: Friday, October 20, 2017 4:09 AM
To: rescue at sunhelp.org
Subject: Re: [rescue] SATA on SPARC systems

fre 2017-10-20 klockan 05:12 -0400 skrev Eddie Cottongim:
> Mike Spooner wrote:
> >> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >> Message: 1
> >> Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2017 22:07:37 -0500
> >> From: Jerry Kemp <sun.mail.list47 at oryx.us>
> >> To: The Rescue List <rescue at sunhelp.org>
> >> Subject: [rescue] SATA on SPARC systems ::WAS:::::Re: Saved this Ultra
> >>         10 from Central Mich U Surplus Sale
> >> Message-ID: <0d45b63c-7393-96f6-bade-b42c3c852b7e at oryx.us>
> >> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
> >>
> >> I have them on my personal archive.
> >>
> >> Not that I have spent a significant sum, but I have purchased several SATA
> >> controllers, and have not had luck yet on SPARC base systems.
> >>
> >> I'm up for another round of this if everyone else is.
> >>
> >> If someone has a HDD controller in their SPARC system, with SATA drives
> >> *successfully* hanging off of it, please share.
> >>
> >> Jerry
> >>
> >
> >
> > Forgive this rather long post, but SATA-with-SPARC and the Ultra-10 in
> > general are worthy of it!
> >
> > Since 2013, I have been using a SUperSSpeed S301 SLC SATA drive as the
> > primary drive in my 1993 SPARCstation-10 (!), via
> > an ACARD ARS-2160S SATA-to-68pin-Ultra160-SCSI adaptor drive-size box, in
> > turn via an Antares Microsystems 20-050-0061
> > single-ended Wide-Ultra-SCSI SBus card, all mounted internally without any
> > case mods needed.
> >
> > This is *waaay* faster than even 68-pin Wide-Fast-SCSI rotating rust HDDs
> > attached to a SunSwift SBus card. This is in spite of
> > the fact that the SS10 (180MHz CPUs on 40 MHz mainbus with 20 MHz SBus)
> > cannot drive the SSD disk at anywhere near it's maximum
> > I/O rate... it is still vastly better than an HDD.
> >
> > Although there several makes of SATA-SCSI adaptor, due caution is needed.
> > Addonics made a truly awful one, couldn't get much better than 600Kb/s
> > and 75 IOPS through it, even with an SSD, which rendered it a rather
> > pointless item - my 1996 direct-attach SCSI HDDs (Quantum LPS525S) can do
> > that!
> >
> > There are also several models from ACARD, all are either pretty good or
> > *very* good. The ARS-2160 and ARS-3120 adaptors are handy because they are
> > compatible with both LVD SCSI and Single-Ended SCSI, which gives extra
> > flexibility when choosing the SCSI HBA card you'll need.
> >
> > Only thing to watch out for is to get the right connector-variant: the
> > ARS-2130S and ARS-2160H use 80-pin SCA SCSI connectors, whereas the
> > ARS-3120 (no "S")
> > and ARS-2160 (no "H") have 68-pin SCSI connectors - which is most likely
> > what you would want for internal drives/cables in an Ultra-10 etc.
> >
> > Downside is that these adaptors are not cheap (although compared to HDD
> > prices way back in 1993, they are!).
> >
> > https://www.span.com/product/Acard-Bridge-Box-ARS-2160-2-5-SATA-device-to-SCSI-LVD-160mb-68pin~26221
[https://www.span.com/images/products/i/productinfo/iael232h.jpg]<https://www.span.com/product/Acard-Bridge-Box-ARS-2160-2-5-SATA-device-to-SCSI-LVD-160mb-68pin~26221>

2.5" SATA device to SCSI-LVD/160mb 68pin - SPAN.COM<https://www.span.com/product/Acard-Bridge-Box-ARS-2160-2-5-SATA-device-to-SCSI-LVD-160mb-68pin~26221>
www.span.com
b Buy Acard Bridge Box ARS-2160 2.5" SATA device to SCSI-LVD/160mb 68pin at the best price B; Same / Next Day Delivery WorldWide -- FREE Business Quotes

> > https://www.span.com/product/Acard-Bridge-Box-ARS-2320-2-5-SATA-device-to-SCSI-LVD-320mb-68pin~26223
[https://www.span.com/images/products/i/productinfo/iael232h.jpg]<https://www.span.com/product/Acard-Bridge-Box-ARS-2320-2-5-SATA-device-to-SCSI-LVD-320mb-68pin~26223>

2.5" SATA device to SCSI-LVD/320mb 68pin - SPAN.COM<https://www.span.com/product/Acard-Bridge-Box-ARS-2320-2-5-SATA-device-to-SCSI-LVD-320mb-68pin~26223>
www.span.com
b Buy Acard Bridge Box ARS-2320 2.5" SATA device to SCSI-LVD/320mb 68pin at the best price B; Same / Next Day Delivery WorldWide -- FREE Business Quotes

> >
> > You might be able to grovel some up on ebay or Amazon a little bit cheaper.
> >
> > At the risk of teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, you would want a
> > "Sun-bootable" SCSI card to go with it - one with OpenBOOT Forth ROM chip,
> > rather than a PC-BIOS ROM chip. Several "PC" SCSI PCI cards will work, but
> > only for secondary storage, not to boot the system. If you are going to
> > get a Sun-branded SCSI card, make sure it is LVD-SCSI or Single-ended SCSI:
> > HVD SCSI is not supported by the adaptors and will damage them.
> >
> > One thing to watch for when doing this in a Sun SPARC system, the Solaris
> > "poweroff" command doesn't explicitly flush SCSI device buffers, so will
> > sometimes
> > cause filesystem corruption. For my SS10, I wrote a small C program that
> > issues "SCSI flush device buffer" commands, and edited the /etc/rc5 script
> > to invoke it
> > as the last thing it does before "init" cuts the power - and then remember
> > to use "init 5" to power-off the system rather than "poweroff". Using "init
> > 0" then manually
> > flipping the power-switch is also OK, "init 0" *does* issue an explicit
> > "SCSI flush device buffer" command to SCSI disks.
> > The alternative to this all this malarkey would be to use an SSD with a
> > supercap.
> >
> > For the Ultra-10, there is also a rather complex graphics situation (two
> > differently-behaving versions of the on-board ATI Rage chipset, depending
> > on motherboard revision -
> > the original ones cannot do simultaneous 8-bit and 24-bit colour so can
> > result in colour-flashing; and some users maintain that the on-board
> > graphics performance is usable
> > but just barely).  Long and short of it is that getting either a (vertical)
> > Sun Creator UPA graphics card or a Raptor-GFX8P PCI graphics card (Solaris
> > 2.6 and later have built-in
> > drivers for those) is a much better bet. In principle you could even put a
> > single-board UPA Elite-3D card in there, but that might be going a bit too
> > far!
> >
> > Finally, if anyone wants to take my spare 440MHz Ultra-5/10 CPU (with 2Mb
> > L2 cache) off my hands, drop me a line. It reliably long-term overclocks to
> > 472MHz with just a couple of OBP commands.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Mike Spooner
> > http://mbus.sunhelp.org
The Rough Guide to MBus Modules<http://mbus.sunhelp.org/>
mbus.sunhelp.org
This site is a reference-guide to CPU configuration of MBus-based computers, and a reference-guide to the available MBus modules. This is not a general guide for the ...

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> >
> >
> Thanks, there's some really good info in there.
>
> As best I can tell, using these adapters mostly hinges on having or
> finding a LVD/single ended ultra SCSI sbus card, which seems pretty hard
> to find. The HVD X1065A is cheap and common but not much help.
>
> I haven't seen a way to use a SATA drive adapter yet for fast-wide scsi,
> which I think would be the situation on a SPARCStation-20 or using the
> fairly easy to find SunSwift card (the SS-20 having the further problem
> of the 80 pin SCA connector). On my SS-20, I used the 50 pin connector
> intended for the CDROM to run a SCSI2SD card, which seems to work.
>
> By the way, on the fast SCSI front, about a year ago a new rev (v6) of
> the SCSI2SD card came out which supports higher speeds and claims to
> come closer to the potential 10 mb/sec fast SCSI, whereas v5 came in at
> about 1.5 mb/sec. Either is probably fine for the slower SPARCs,
> especially given the cost and convenience of swapping SD cards easily,
> but I'd think a SATA drive would have better endurance, at least. I
> haven't tried this newer version yet but if I do I'll post a comparison.
>
> Eddie

The Narrow scsi connector is the narrow face of the same bus ie with
that one you basically have a wide-to-narrow adapter on the system card.
The computer's connection to the scsi-bus is between the wide one and
the wide-to-narrow adapter.
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