15 Oct
2000
15 Oct
'00
7:19 a.m.
Ok, lets try this way.
You want to use a disgustingly large drive (Larger than 8GB)
on a Qbus controller.
First problem, do you have a SCSI-(anything) that knows and
can handle drives larger 4 or 8GB regardless of the connector?
Assuming you have that covered, can you back it up in an
average lifetime?
Allison
From: Jerome Fine <jhfine(a)idirect.com>
Jerome Fine replies:
It seem like we agree. The question I was asking was whether or not
SCSI-2 drives with the 50 pin interface are made that have a capacity
of more than 9.2 Gbytes such as the ST410800N - preferably at
least 16 GBytes are maybe even 32 Gbytes. Since I already know
about this Seagate drive and I agree that is is reasonable in cost, it
is the larger drives that I am asking about - sorry if I was not clear
as to the question.
> It's limited to 4 or 8gb and SCSI-II so forget the reall monster drives.
Anyone out
there who wants to try? I would be very pleased to
swap some of my time for a couple of SCSI 32 GByte hard drives
to test out the software. The only problem is that the only SCSI
host adapters I have are the 50 pin type (CQD 220/M), so there
I've run my
PDP11 with SCSI CQD already as it's MSCP, Same
for VAX/VMS (it's in my MVII).
Are you sure? Is anyone aware of larger drives that still use the 50
pin
SCSI-2 interface?
The idea of such huge drive with RT11 and friends
is that is wasted.
I use D540s (31mb) and swap them like carts as I have a bunch of em
and they are plenty big enough. Drives in the 120-400MB range are
plentyful for me, one 200mb drive would take all the binaries and
sources I have with room to spare that aren't already on Tims CD.
Whats the point?
The point is that maybe you are not the only person who runs with
drives that are so small. And while I agree with you that probably
most RT-11 or TSX-PLUS users do not use drives even as large
as 2 GBytes (I use a 600 MByte drive myself and find that is normally
more than enough capacity), there may be a few who could benefit
from even larger drives. The problem with the standard MSCP
DU(X).SYS device driver in RT-11 is that the software limits the user
to easily using drives that are smaller than 8 GBytes. While I know
that you are aware of the limitation, the actual question I asked is
if MSCP allows the hardware use of drives up to a 32 bit block
number? Again, I obviously did not make my question clear
enough since you did not answer it. Namely, if the DU(X).SYS
device driver in RT-11 could handle sending more than a 24 bit
block number to the hard disk drive via the use of SET commands
(which would allow a partition number with more than 8 bits), could
the hardware handle that?
I did not say that everyone would want to make use of that feature
if it were possible - I know that you will not and I will not. I was
just asking if it were possible and maybe someone might want
to do so?
I guess that the point I am trying to make is that I enjoy a software
challenge whereas you enjoy a hardware challenge. I look a
some hardware and see what is. You look at the same hardware
and see what could be. I guess that I do the same with software.
Then I also go ahead and try make it work. Many times, I actually
can enhance or fix software just as you make changes to the hardware.
Can we agree on that?
Sincerely yours,
Jerome Fine