FA: DEC RF-71 Disk Drive

On Sat, 18 Mar 2006 11:46:37 +0800 "Wai-Sun Chia" <waisun.chia at gmail.com> wrote: Well. DSSI was still in use when PCI based Aphas had replaced VAXen. I got mine out of two AlphaServers that where VMS clustered together. They used DSSI to connect to two RAID arrays with several dozend 4 GB SCSI disks and two SCSI to DSSI RAID controllers. Some HSZ-/HSD-somthing in a BA350 like storage works shelf. In short: A "low boy" rack full of storage works shelfs filled with disks and RAID controllers. I don't have pictures. They look like an ordinary NCR / Symbios 53C825 based PCI SCSI adapter. Nothing special on that hardware. The interresting part is the software. The NCR / Symbios 53C825 has a programmable RISC (?) CPU core inside. The SCSI protocol seems to be implemented by programming this CPU with apropriate micocode. As Antonio pointed out the physical characteristics of SCSI and DSSI are similar. So all DEC needed was to programm a micocode that talks DSSI instead SCSI. And yes, it was an official DEC product. A PCI to SDI or a PCI to MFM adapter / controller? Not that I am aware of. And I doubt that this exists. MFM and SDI where dead when PCI got comon. -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/