26 Jun
2006
26 Jun
'06
3:01 p.m.
But why anyone would want to set up something with an
ST-412 interface on
the far end at this late date is beyond me.
If you didn't have to reformat the drive (not sure how the bridgeboards worked in this
respect), it would allow you to pull data off
of a ST412-interface drive onto a modern one for backup. I have an IRIS here that the PM2
is nonfunctional, yet I would still like to
see if I can salvage the O/S off the drive.
The other thing I could think of is perhaps SunOS would have a Data Systems Design driver
and I could drop the IRIS controller
in a VTM (VME to Multibus) adaptor and archive it that way . . . but a bridgeboard would
be nice if it worked.
2) How to set up the board in software; I expect the
kernel will get upset
if it can't query drive geometry at boot time - but it's going to do that as
part of driver set up, before any vendor-specific commands can be sent to the
board in order to set *it* up.
try scsiadd - Debian supports it, anyway. I use it to find drives that weren't
recognized at bootup (powered down) when I didn't want to restart the machine.
It also works for hot-swaps.
Scott Quinn
26 Jun
26 Jun
4:52 p.m.
On 6/26/2006 at 2:01 PM Scott Quinn wrote:
If you didn't have to reformat the drive (not sure
how the bridgeboards
worked in this respect), it would allow you to pull data off
of a ST412-interface drive onto a modern one for backup. I have an IRIS
here that the PM2 is nonfunctional, yet I would still like to
see if I can salvage the O/S off the drive.
That's a huge "if", particularly if the ST-412 drive didn't come from a
"like-controllered" system. Just my own experience talking.
Cheers,
Chuck
6:22 p.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 6/26/2006 at 2:01 PM Scott Quinn wrote:
If the same model bridge board with the same ROM is used though, I can't
imagine it'd be a problem. [1]
Formatting a new drive is a little more tricky, but still shouldn't be a
problem providing the drive parameters that were used to format the original
drive are known, and the correct bridge board is used.
Granted that moving drives between bridge boards (or even to the same board
with a different firmware revision) probably will cause various problems, as
it breaks the tight relationship between formatted drive and controller.
[1] You obviously need to know the drive geometry. Sometimes the host machine
stores that at block 0 (and offsets all future disk accesses by 1 block). Some
systems use bridge boards that can hold it in ROM, or NVRAM. The tricky ones
are the ones that hold it in their own NVRAM and get their firmware to issue
the necessary setup command to the bridge board at boot time.
cheers
Jules
If you didn't have to reformat the drive (not
sure how the bridgeboards
worked in this respect), it would allow you to pull data off
of a ST412-interface drive onto a modern one for backup. I have an IRIS
here that the PM2 is nonfunctional, yet I would still like to
see if I can salvage the O/S off the drive.
That's a huge "if", particularly if the ST-412 drive didn't come from
a
"like-controllered" system. Just my own experience talking.
6:30 p.m.
On 6/26/2006 at 10:22 PM Jules Richardson wrote:
If the same model bridge board with the same ROM is
used though, I can't
imagine it'd be a problem. [1]
True, and if I had that situation, I'd probably just hook up a parallel
port and write a driver to wiggle the signals rather than try to fool with
the onboard ROM. I recall trying(out of idle curiosity) to see if an
Adaptec 1540 host adapter would recognize the OMTI card and the result,
IIRC, was that it wouldn't.
Cheers,
Chuck
8:01 p.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 6/26/2006 at 10:22 PM Jules Richardson wrote:
Yes, that was my thought too - from memory, problem is that you really need
more data lines than are available (I can't remember if you run out of inputs
or outputs now) so it's not as trivial as an 8 bit data port and some SASI
control lines; you end up having to latch control signals and it gets a bit
messy :-(
Two parallel ports would make life easy, and I'm tempted to go that route
purely for my own situation - I just don't like the fact that it makes things
less portable (so I can't take cable + software to the museum, say, and do
archival work there)
If the same model bridge board with the same ROM
is used though, I can't
imagine it'd be a problem. [1]
True, and if I had that situation, I'd probably just hook up a parallel
port and write a driver to wiggle the signals rather than try to fool with
the onboard ROM. I recall trying(out of idle curiosity) to see if an
Adaptec 1540 host adapter would recognize the OMTI card and the result,
IIRC, was that it wouldn't.
Been there myself, and that's my recollection too. Newer Adaptecs aren't any
'better' in that respect. I think the couple of Future Domain boards I found
still used Adaptec chipsets so also didn't work. That left the SCSI interface
on my PAS16 sound card, but by that point I was fed up swapping boards around :-)
cheers
Jules
7:57 p.m.
On 6/27/2006 at 12:01 AM Jules Richardson wrote:
Been there myself, and that's my recollection too.
Newer Adaptecs aren't
any 'better' in that respect. I think the couple of Future Domain boards
I
found still used Adaptec chipsets so also didn't
work. That left the SCSI
interface on my PAS16 sound card, but by that point I was fed up swapping
boards
around :-)
Instead of that, why not take a really stupid SCSI card, say a
Trantor/Adaptec T-130B with a 53c400 chip on it and just hack the Linux
driver for it?
Cheers,
Chuck
6:14 p.m.
Scott Quinn wrote:
that's why I'm particularly interested in it - I've got several machines
around that use bridge boards where I don't have the original media and so
can't back them up (or even if I could back them up, can't format + restore
data to a new drive)
I read Chuck's message as asking why the Macs used such boards though, at a
stage when others were using more capable drives (IDE or SCSI) - in which case
the answer is probably "because they were cheap".
But why anyone would want to set up something
with an ST-412 interface on
the far end at this late date is beyond me.
it would allow you to pull data off
of a ST412-interface drive onto a modern one for backup. If you didn't have to reformat the drive (not sure
how the bridgeboards
worked in this respect),
ISTR that it's generally a 'format unit' SCSI command that you issue to the
bridge board, and it takes care of the rest. So in the case of no OS media or
native disk utils, I could in theory back up a drive up using a PC, and then
format a replacement drive via the PC to the system's expected geometry, copy
the raw data back on, and expect it to work on the target system (providing
the same model bridge board is used throughout)
In lieu of a generic ST506 PC interface that can mimic different bridge
boards, it seems the only way to deal with such systems where the install
media / tools have long gone.
The other thing I could think of is perhaps SunOS
would have a Data
Systems Design driver and I could drop the IRIS controller
in a VTM (VME to Multibus) adaptor and archive it that way . . . but a
bridgeboard would be nice if it worked.
Finding the different bridge boards isn't *that* difficult - the problem
really boils down to a software one in terms of Linux drivers.
try scsiadd - Debian supports it, anyway.
thanks - will take a look!
cheers
Jules
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