SCSI transport failed message on SparcStation OS4.1 - follow up

[John Sutton]

Some time ago we (sun-spots) had a short discussion on a problem with the
Conner CP3200, 200 Mbyte, 3.5 inch SCSI disk and SparcStations running
SunOS 4.1.  These drives worked okay with 4.0.3 but not with 4.1.  There
was also some grumbling about Sun, support, and openness.  I would like to
relate how this problem is being resolved.

It turns out that Conner has finally agreed to upgrade our drives to the
newest version which appears to work correctly with 4.1 on SparcStations.
This occurred only after some folks in Sun took an interest in the problem
and made contact with Conner.  There was considerable effort on the part
of the SCSI expert at Sun to understand and straighten out this problem,
including spending his own personnel time on it.  I was not until after he
started working with Conner that it was discovered that their newer
version of the drive worked correctly.  Unfortunately, our drive supplier
was unable to get this kind of support and information from Conner.  The
Sun SCSI expert was willing to take the responsibility to determine what
the problem was and do what ever was appropriate to fix it.

Many times we complain because Sun does not make everything work as we
think it should.  That does not necessarily mean they aren't interested,
but that they are significantly limited in what battles they have time and
resources to tackle.  I believe that this experience shows that the spirit
of openness is alive in Sun and that some Sun employees are willing to
commit their time and effort to it.

If you have Conner drives and plan to use them on SparcStations running
4.1 make sure that the firmware label is NOT  RS16 001.86.  Drives with
the firmware label  RS16 RS2.03  work properly.  Unfortunately, the entire
PC board must be replaced, as a prom change only does not fix them
problem.

I offer my thanks to the following people for helping resolve this
problem:

	Matt Jacob (Sun)
	Lew Yobs (Sun)
	Alayne Gyetvai (Sun)
	Joe Scandore (Sun)
	Steve O'Sullivan (Falcon)
	and several others who passed information to the right people
	in sun but whos name I don't have.

John Sutton		jggs at lanl.gov
(505) 667-3623		or sutton at luke.lanl.gov
Los Alamos Nat'l Lab