3rd Party Drives in VAXstation 3100's
Usually the 3100 series will take any SCSI drive... read below for
discussions on this...
From mandrewsbob.Wittenberg.EDU Fri Dec 22 13:48:09 1995
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From: Mike Andrews bob.Wittenberg.EDU>
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To: edwardliverpool.ac.uk
Subject: Re: SCSI on VS3100
Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec
References: csc.liv.ac.uk>
Organization: Wittenberg University, Springfield OH
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In comp.sys.dec you write:
>Hi there
>I have a VS-3100/38 with only a 50mb Internal SCSI drive. Can I put any
>SCSI drive in this machine or does it have to be a DEC RZ series?? if
>it does have to be an RZ drive what models can i put in?? thanks???
Sure, put anything you want in, as long as your boot disk isn't over 1.08 gig.
(Secondary disks can be bigger.)
The 100 meg drive (RZ23??) that came with my VS3100/30 is actually a Conner
3100S, not built by DEC. I've had a number of different drives in it,
including Maxtor, Quantum, and various Seagates, all of fairly recent vintage.
(There's probably not enough cooling inside to install a Barracuda, though. :)
The only glitch is that VMS 6.1 has problems with Seagate disks. 6.0, 6.2,
and 5.x don't have the problem.
--
-- Mike Andrews * mandrewswittenberg.edu * mandrewstermfrost.org (NeXT)
-- Programmer/Analyst, Wittenberg Univ * http://www.termfrost.org/~mandrews
From leinbergeraxp621.gsi.de Mon Dec 18 20:55:15 1995
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Date: Mon, 18 Dec 1995 21:54:42 +0200
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From: leinbergeraxp621.gsi.de (Uwe Leinberger GSI Darmstadt T. 06159/71-2148
Fax -2155)
To: edwardliverpool.ac.uk
Subject: Re: SCSI on VS3100
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In article csc.liv.ac.uk> you write:
>Hi there
>
>
>I have a VS-3100/38 with only a 50mb Internal SCSI drive. Can I put any
>SCSI drive in this machine or does it have to be a DEC RZ series?? if
>it does have to be an RZ drive what models can i put in?? thanks???
>
>I'm a student and can't afford DEC drives especially when I can get similar
>SCSI drives with the same capacity for half the price :-)
>
>
>eddy
>
>please cc: any replies to: edwardliv.ac.uk thanks!!!!!
>
>--Eddy Austin In a dog eat dog world
>edwardliverpool.ac.uk you gotta eat some dog!
>
>
You can add any scsi device, of course.
However, be aware that a BOOT disk (ie the syetm disk) should be 1GB max with
a VS3100. The console firmware (the equivalent to a bios on a PC) does not
know how to handle larger disk in these boxes.....
As pure data disk up to about 8GB are ok with VMS 5.x or lower, and starting
with 6.x you can use even larger disks (up to I *think* 64 GB at least, no
good for a student's purse ;-)
I just bought a VS3100 myself to be able to play a bit at home.....here
for work I have plenty fast alphas to use (but no real privs)
Uwe
From asiairmail.net Mon Dec 18 20:28:20 1995
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Date: Mon, 18 Dec 95 14:26:40 -0800
From: Chris Scheers airmail.net>
Organization: Applied Synergy, Inc.
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To: edwardliverpool.ac.uk
Subject: Re: SCSI on VS3100
References: csc.liv.ac.uk>
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Eddy Austin liv.ac.uk> wrote:
>Hi there
>
>
>I have a VS-3100/38 with only a 50mb Internal SCSI drive. Can I put any
>SCSI drive in this machine or does it have to be a DEC RZ series?? if
>it does have to be an RZ drive what models can i put in?? thanks???
>
>I'm a student and can't afford DEC drives especially when I can get similar
>SCSI drives with the same capacity for half the price :-)
I also have a VS3100/38 and have found it to be pretty tolerant of
foreign SCSI drives. In fact, it has worked with every SCSI drive I
have put on it! (Of course, I've probably just been lucky so far!)
There are a few gotchas to look out for:
1) The system (i.e., boot) disk can not be larger than about 1GB. I
use a Seagate ST41200N (a CDC Wren VII) which is about 1.03 GB. (NOTE:
Data disks may be larger. See (3) below.)
2) If the device ID returned from the drive is longer than 7 (maybe 8)
characters, the SCSI self test will fail and the system will not
autoboot. Nothing is really wrong. Just do a manual boot (enter B at
the >>> prompt) and the system will boot properly.
3) The maximum disk size depends on your version of VMS. To use
drives larger than 1GB, you need VMS 5.3-(something) or later. To use
drives larger than 4GB, you need a fairly recent release of VMS, but
I'm not sure which. Probably VMS 6.2 or later.
I hope this helps. Good luck!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Chris Scheers, Applied Synergy, Inc.
817-237-3360 (Voice) 817-237-3074 (Fax) Internet: asiairmail.net
Date: 4 Jan 1996 02:11:45 GMT
From: Chris Scheers (asiairmail.net)
Organization: Applied Synergy, Inc.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec
References: 1
jcpwerple.net.au (John Peterson) wrote:
>A few days I posted a query re. using 3rd Party SCSI Drives in
>Vaxstation 3100 Model 30. Thanks for the answers.
>
>I have since tried a Quantum LPS240 SCSI in this machine. VMS does not
>recognise it (cannot initialize it)
>At the monitor level (>>>) the drive is recognised correctly complete with
> size, type (LPS240) etc.
>
>After booting VMS from Netwok/CD-ROM the device appears as DKA300:
>SHO DEV indicates a "GENERIC SCSI DRIVE". When trying to initialize
>the drive, I get the error %INIT-F-DRVERR, Fatal Drive Error.
>
>Trying with an RZ22 works straight away.
>
>Am I missing something? e.g. Is some other low level formatting step
>required.
You may need to do a low level format from the console. Before you do
that, however, I would try something else first: From the console, do a
BOOT DKA300 to see if the system can access the drive correctly. The
drive should spin up and be accessed a bit, and then the console will
return an error indicating that the file system was bad or that it
couldn't find the file. This will show that it can at least access the
drive. Knowing the results of this might give us other clues.
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING PROCEDURE MAY MAKE THE DRIVE UNUSABLE!!!
If you want to do a low level format, use the console command TEST 75
For a DKA300 drive, the responses would be "0" (SCSI bus A), "3" (ID
#3), "1" (Yes, do it!) If this succeeds, you should then be able to do
an INIT from VMS.
If it fails, it may have left the drive in a condition where it won't
work on either the VAX or on the original system. For example, I once
had a drive which would not work on either the VAX or the original PC
(neither machine could reformat it) after I tried to format it on the
VAX. After reformatting the drive on an Amiga, I was able to reformat
it on the PC and everything was happy again. (Sometimes (Most of the
time?), SCSI is magic.)
BTW: I have successfully used a Quantum LPS50S on a VS4000-VLC.
>Also, Could someone also shed some light on the meaning of the SS, EP and WS
>jumpers on the LPS240S drive.
I don't know about the others, but "EP" is probably Enable Parity.
Parity should be enabled for the VAX. (If the jumper is off, this
might explain the problems you are seeing.)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Chris Scheers, Applied Synergy, Inc.
817-237-3360 (Voice) 817-237-3074 (Fax) Internet: asiairmail.net