[Info-vax] EMU communication in Storageworks 4200/4300 drive enclosure

[Scott Dorsey]

Rich Jordan  <jordan at ccs4vms.com> wrote:
>I can't find info on this online.  I have the user guide and some older info that came with them originally.

There is very limited documentation for the end user.  The StorageWorks
hardware was sold to VARs to be bundled into third-party systems.  It was
not sold through normal DEC channels and the normal DEC rep would disavow
any knowledge of it.

>We have a 4200 dual bus shelf that is showing the enclosure alarm light.  All of the drives, fans, power supplies, i/o modules etc are working and show normal indicators.  Its connected to an SA6400 controller in a VMS Integrity system running HP VMS V8.4
>
>If I remember correctly an intermittent fault can turn the light on and it won't turn off 'by itself' even if the fault is cleared, but I could be mistaken.  The manual is not clear on that.
>
>The EMU has a modular jack on it.  Is there any user level connectivity to it that would be useful?

I had a 4600 and as I recall there was a serial port that would communicate
with it that had a command language, and I had directions to configure the
raid in that command language but I could never get any other documentation
or any actual description of the commands.  There was also a way that you
could plug it into a Windows NT machine and run a program they supplied on
floppy that would set the thing up over the scsi port.  I never used that
since we didn't have any Windows systems available.

I bought the 4600 from AC Technologies, a northern Virginia VAR.  They 
supplied it with Seagate scsi drives, and we put it on a Sun server.  It
ran for many years until disk density got so much higher that we just
replaced the whole thing with a single drive.

I remember when it went out on bid I was getting a lot of calls from DEC
resellers asking what the hell this thing was and why couldn't they find it
in their catalogue.
--scott
-- 
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."