[Info-vax] Buying disk for a DS10

[Steven Schweda]

On Feb 24, 4:03 pm, MG <marcog... at SPAMxs4all.nl> wrote:

> I have two Ultra320 (80-pin) SCA drives in a Sun SPARCstation 5
> and two others, with a converter, in an SGI Indigo Extreme.  I
> sincerely doubt that a more recent DS10 wouldn't work.  (Unless
> the disks would rely on specific firmware, as was the case with
> the old DEC RZ disks in the AlphaServer 1000 that I had, but I
> wouldn't know if that's the case for the DS10.)

   I have some Seagate ST336607LC (80-pin SCA, Ultra320)
drives in my XP1000 systems, where the fastest adapter is
Ultra160.  As the Seagate "Cheetah 10K.6 SCSI Product Manual,
Rev. D" says:

      Ultra320 SCSI uses negotiated transfer rates. These
      transfer rates will occur only if your host adapter
      supports these data transfer rates and is compatible
      with the required hardware requirements of the I/O
      circuit type. This drive also operates at SCSI-1 and
      SCSI-2 data transfer rates for backward compatibility
      with non-Ultra/Ultra2/Ultra320 SCSI host adapters.

(http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/manuals/scsi/100195486a.pdf)

> The drives will operate at a lesser speed, but otherwise
> I don't see why they shouldn't work.  For how much are they
> listed there?

   With my weak psychic powers, I don't know which "The
drives" you're considering, but drives in that Seagate family
seem to work as claimed.  In recent years, I've tended to
replace my primary drives with larger ones before they die.
When new, they were sold with a "5-year warranty".  If you're
buying them on the junk market, as I am, then that may provide
some comfort, if no actual benefit.

>   Also, how much RPMs do you have in mind?  For
> boot disks 15K RPM is ideal, but can be really expensive
> (compared to 10K RPM).

   If a 15k r/m disk runs warmer than a 10k r/m disk, then it
may not be "ideal" for anything involving long life.