(SUMMARY) Re: Help adding CDC wren-v to DEC 3000/400 (osf-1.3a)

• to: alpha-osf-managers@xxxxxxxx
• Subject: (SUMMARY) Re: Help adding CDC wren-v to DEC 3000/400 (osf-1.3a)
• From: Ron Young <ron@xxxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Tue, 12 Apr 94 14:14:12 -0700
• cc: ron@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 28 Mar 94 11:00:31 PST." <199403281900.LAA00845@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

	A couple of weeks ago I posted the following question:
> 
> Hi:
> 
> 	I have several old disk drives (CDC wren-v 94181-151) that I
> 	would like to connect to our alphas. The one drive that I have been
> 	playing with seems to work (you can newfs, mount, read/write etc.)
> 	but sometimes it will hang busy until the system resets the scsi
> 	bus. This seems to be dependent on the request that the drive is
> 	processing (i.e. ls -lgR will hang it on a large directory). I have
> 	tried a couple different drives with the same result.
> 
> 	Does anyone have any idea what is happening and what can I do to
> 	fix it?
> 
> 	Thanks
> 
> 	-ron
> 
> -- Ron Young, Sr. Software Systems Analyst
>    System Computing Services


	I received two responses from the net and had discussions with
	DEC telephone support. It appears that the problem I was having
	was caused by my SCSI chain being too long (things seem much more
	reliable since I removed a device...).

	One interesting thing that DEC had me try was to tune the filesystem
	maxcontig parameter from 8 to 1 (tunefs -a 1 /dev/rrz9c). This cured
	the hang problem but then the machine started crashing with panics
	(usually freeing free frag during an rm -rf ./*).

	Here are the two responses:

From: "Selden E. Ball, Jr." <SEB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Help adding CDC wren-v to DEC 3000/400 (osf-1.3a)
To: ron@xxxxxxxxxx

Ron,

We have found that some old drives which do not speak SCSI II
don't work at all on Alphas (HP and Maxtor, for example).
You should make sure that you have the most recent firmware
in the drives.

then, there are all of the standard things to check for when
on has intermittant SCSI problems: cable seating, termination,
termination power, length of cables, etc.

Selden

From: root@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (System Manager)
Message-Id: <199403282213.IAA02775@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: ron@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re:  Help adding CDC wren-v to DEC 3000/400 (osf-1.3a)

	I have seem this type of problem when the SCSI cable starts getting
too long.  The manual says 13 feet for SCSI and 10 feet for SCSI/2. Depending
on you disk boxes, they can add 6" to a foot or two which must be considered
in the length. Try shortening the cables or removing a device.

						John Holden
						Department of Psychology
						University of Sydney
						Australia

	thanks for the help...

	-ron young

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