4 Dec
2011
4 Dec
'11
10:50 a.m.
On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 3:03 AM, Mouse <mouse at rodents-montreal.org> wrote:
I had VMS in mind. ?But my VMS experience does not include any SCSI
disks, nor anything over 1G in size, so I didn't actually know whether
it can be told to do anything like the partitioning typical Unices can
do (which would make it much easier to put everything accessed with the
ROM driver below the magic 1G boundary).
Even though, as Tony says, SCSI disks are commonly available, there
are several issues. First, shipping on SCSI disks is always high, due
to their weight. And, a significant portion of the used disks that I
have bought (eBay, Craigslist, Hamfests, etc.) have been bad. Also,
I've been noticing, lately, that a number of the disks that I have
stockpiled (SCSI-2 through Ultra 320) are now apparently bad, though
they've been carefully stored. I just pitched two (a WD Enterprise
4.3gb SCA, and a Seagate 9gb Fast SCSI-2), today.
I also own a good variety of the aforementioned SCSI-IDE converters
(Acard SATA/Ultra 160, Acard IDE/UW SCSI-2, ADTX 2.5" SCSI/IDE, Artmix
CF PowerMonster II, and others), and they are uniformly expensive.
Also, different models have significant limitations (such as the ADTX
not supporting more than 8gb disks). Also, if you can't/won't pay
retail ($200+ is more than my hobby can afford), the used pickings are
slim.
And last, quite a few of my vintage systems are thermally challenged
(especially my DEC Multia), and a flash SCSI solution would extend
their lives, significantly.
So, I would _love_ to see a good general-purpose SCSI/SCSI-2 to flash
memory adapter. I'd also be willing to do whatever I can to help
develop such a solution.
The timing on this discussion is particularly good, as I have spent
most of the morning trying (unsuccessfully) to get a DECstation 5000
to install onto either SCA-adapted or IDE-bridged disks.
- Alex
(This assumes software can be told to use only part of
a drive's
self-reported capacity, which of course may not be so [...].)
OpenVMS will [break]