[Info-vax] OpenVMS system Disk Not deduct in Alpha system

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2013-12-23 04:09:37 +0000, Ganesah P said:

> ...i'm no Familiar in alpha i have know only I64.i did check the so 
> many time but it has not detect...

VAX, Alpha and Integrity are all very similiar in the general SCSI and 
StorageWorks configuration details.  The SCSI bus details tend to vary 
far more by the particular disk and disk enclosures and SCSI 
controllers present than by whether the host system is Integrity or 
Alpha or VAX.

> ...from last 3year's it was in offline(shutdow mode)i plan to do same 
> testing is that alpha server....

Could well be dead hardware.  Could be too little or too much 
termination.  A bad or loose or disconnected cable.  I'd normally 
suggest trying to swap some SCSI disk parts around and see if and where 
the SCSI bus problem moves to, but your apparent inexperience with 
older computing hardware and with SCSI and the unfortunate lack of 
available configuration details and diagnostics here — and background 
like why you had the box open and were making adjustments, and 
particularly what those SCSI bus adjustments were — leave me somewhat 
cautious around even assuming that there is a SCSI problem here.  
Posting details help.

> can you Plz tell the alpha system disk Concept and how scsi device has 
> Communicate with alpha system.

Rather than asking for somebody to explain SCSI concepts to you — there 
are already good resources and web sites and documents with that 
information, and in far more detail than can be reasonably provided 
here, and particularly including images and diagrams — here are some 
related documents you'll want to become familiar with:

AlphaServer 1200 Owner's 
<http://manx.classiccmp.org/collections/mds-199909/cd1/alpha/as120sva.pdf‎> 
and  Service 
<ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/alphaserver/firmware/retired_platforms/servers/AS1200%2FEK-AS120-UG-A01.pdf> 
documentation.  Those documents describe how that AlphaServer 1200 
hardware works and how it can be tested.

As for the StorageWorks parts and the general SCSI intro, see 
<http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/54> and particularly the links at 
that web page off to the zip archives of the old TRIADD program 
developer documentation that describes how the old StorageWorks SCSI 
parts fits together.  You'll also want to acquire some spare parts for 
the configuration, such as some scratch SCSI disks.  In that vintage, 
probably some BA356-class carbon/gray StorageWorks Building Block (SBB) 
disks.  (We just had a discussion here of some 146 GB 10K SCSI disks 
that are available from Amazon (cheaply) that can be retrofit into and 
used in those SBBs.)

Alternatively, find somebody local that understands the older 
StorageWorks and SCSI configuration requirements, and have them 
troubleshoot the hardware, and show you how this stuff works.

-- 
Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC