[Info-vax] SCSI question (KZPEA-CX adaptor)

[JF Mezei]

I finally installed a KZPEA-CX adaptor on a DS10L.

I had some adaptor that fitted onto the external plug of the KZPEA-CX
and provided a standard 50 pin ribbon cable interface.

Plugged in a CD drive (old Sony drive very similar to the RRD42). The
SRM console would see the drive, get its identity, generate a DKA400:
device. But couldn't boot from it.

>>>>show dev
> dka400.4.0.17.0            DKA400        SONY CD-ROM CDU-8003A  1.8f
> dqa0.0.0.13.0              DQA0                Maxtor 5 3073H6  DAC10SC0
> dva0.0.0.0.0               DVA0
> ewa0.0.0.9.0               EWA0              08-00-2B-87-3D-64
> ewb0.0.0.11.0              EWB0              08-00-2B-87-3D-6D
> pka0.7.0.17.0              PKA0                  SCSI Bus ID 7  5.57

>>> run bios pka0 gets me into the card's config program (pretty neat!)

When I "autoconfigure device settings", It does show SCSI ID 4 as:

> ------------------------------SCSI Device Settings------------------------------
> 
>       SCSI ID:  0   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10  11  12  13  14  15
>                +---------------------------------------------------------------+
>  Enable Device |Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes|
>  Disconnects OK|Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes|
>  Check Parity  |Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes|
>  Negotiate Wide|Yes Yes Yes Yes No  Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes|
>  Negotiate Sync|Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes|
>  Tagged Queuing|Yes Yes Yes Yes No  Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes|
>  Enable LUNs   |Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes|
>  Sync Offset   |8   8   8   8   8   8   8   8   8   8   8   8   8   8   8   8  |
>  Sync Period   |12  12  12  12  12  12  12  12  12  12  12  12  12  12  12  12 |
>                +---------------------------------------------------------------+

So it detects that this old SCSI drive is a narrow ("no" to "Negotiate
Wide") and that it doesn't suport tagged queuing.

However, trying to do a "Verify media" results in it telling me it isn't
a disk device.

However, booting into VMS:


> $ show dev $10$dka400:/full
> 
> Disk $10$DKA400: (BIKE), device type SONY CD-ROM CDU-8003A, is online, file-
>     oriented device, shareable, served to cluster via MSCP Server, error logging
>     is enabled.
> 
>     Error count                    0    Operations completed                  0
>     Owner process                 ""    Owner UIC                      [SYSTEM]
>     Owner process ID        00000000    Dev Prot            S:RWPL,O:RWPL,G:R,W
>     Reference count                0    Default buffer size                 512
>     Allocation class              10

But:

$ mount/nowrite/override=id    $10$dka400: test
%MOUNT-F-MEDOFL, medium is offline


I Have tried this with different setups, including plugging the 50 pin
ribbon cable directly into the KZPEA card's internal 50 pin connector.


QUESTIONS:

If the controller is able to find out the identity of this device,
notice it isn't wide etc:

	-does this mean that the connection (cable, adaptor etc) is fully
functional ? or are there primitive exchanges (such as getting
information from device) which can be done with a deffective connection
but when you try to do real access to the device , it fails ?

	-the card is set to have auto termination. Would an unterminated  CD
ROM drive at the other end of the cable cause this behaviour ? I'd have
to search for the specs of this drive to see if it is terminated or not.