Attaching non-sun SCSI drives to a SparcStation

[khb at sun.com]

In article <3246 at brazos.Rice.edu> it is written:
>X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 8, Issue 205, message 5 of 19
>
>The problem we encountered is the following. During the last phase of
>formatting the disk (a CDC Wren IV) the disk label and backup label are
>written to the disk. The label is written correctly (since it is written
>onto one of the first blocks of the disk), but writing the backup label
>fails. We get a SCSI error back from the disk saying that the format
>program tried to write beyond the end of the disk.  We tried changing the
>format parameters in /etc/format.dat but that didn't help either. If
>nsyl=x, acyl=y and pcyl=x+y we always get 'No media error on cylinder x'
>once the backup label is being written.

I'm no SCSI wizard, and the following information should be considered
pure hearsay, and not attributed to me or to sun.

When I did peek at some scsi problems, I found that there were serious
problems with the ROM/firmware the vendor provided (_not_ CDC). Coding
around those errors was a major hassle. Fortunately, I managed to get
removed from that task :>

If Sun provides SunROMs, I'd bet that there are bugs in the CDC firmware.
These can be coded around/may correspond to matching bugs on other systems
.... but someone decided that the proper fix was to fix the disk. Of
course, CDC reserves the right to ship crock for crock buggy drives to
everyone else ... 

Note that I'm not in an I/O group, I'm a compiler/applications/performance
weenie, and I'm speaking for myself, bymyself and do not represent Sun in
any way on this.

The marketing critters may have much more entertaining (and possibly
correct) stories.

Keith H. Bierman    |*My thoughts are my own. !! kbierman at sun.com
It's Not My Fault   |	MTS --Only my work belongs to Sun* 
I Voted for Bill &  | Advanced Languages/Floating Point Group            
Opus                | "When the going gets Weird .. the Weird turn PRO"