[Info-vax] Device numbering in a "Pizza Box"

Alfred Falk falk at arc.REMOVE.ab.ca
Wed Apr 1 15:00:18 EDT 2009


gartmann at nonsense.immunbio.mpg.de (Christoph Gartmann) wrote in
news:gqt500$hke$1 at news.belwue.de: 

> In article <rPOdnS9tCv3icVLUnZ2dnUVZ_jWdnZ2d at giganews.com>, "Richard
> B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88 at comcast.net> writes: 
> 
>>The BA353-AA has three small DIP switch packs on the rear next to the 
>>SCSI connector.  These DIP switches are used to set the drive ID of
>>the drives in the three drive bays.
> 
> Ok, I found these DIP switches behind a bezel. They were barely
> visible (the case stands in a rack, surrounded by a lot of other
> stuff). 
> 
>>Now the drives themselves can be jumpered if someone is prepared to
>>take the drive out of the caddy, install berg jumpers, and put it back
>>in the caddy.  Doing so is NOT a good idea.
> 
> Nevertheless I had to do this. There seems to be no standard or the
> standard has changed over time concerning the little plug for the
> SCSI-IDs and LED. In addition, the location of the harddive connectors
> varies a little bit. That is, you have to tweak or force this
> translucent cable thing quite heavily with HGST or Fujitsu drives.
> Seagate drives fit perfectly. But the SCSI-ID setting is weird. So I
> ended up covering the appropriate harddrive connector with a tape and
> sat the jumper on the drive itself :-( 
> 
> Before that I got varying/conflicting results with SCSI-IDs depending
> on the manufacturer of the drive (e.g. an ID of 15, always ID 1
> regardless of the slot,...).
> 
> Regards,
>    Christoph Gartmann
> 

The StorageWorks caddies were designed for particular make/models of 
disk drives, for precisely the reasons you noted: there were no 
standards for placement of connectors or meanings of jumpers.  Thus a 
caddy intended for a Seagate barracuda wouldn't work (fully) with 
Quantum Atlas, for instance.  (Part of the beauty of StorageWorks bricks 
was that they hid the diversity.)  If you replace the drive in the caddy 
with something different from the original, you're on your own.

Later blue-coloured caddies take disks with 80-pin SCA connectors.  You 
can put in any make or model of SCA disk.  (Won't work in BA353, 
though.)

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