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From: jg@zorch.crl.dec.com (Jim Gettys)
Newsgroups: comp.periphs.scsi,comp.sys.dec
Subject: Re: Is DEC RZ23 real SCSI?
Keywords: Does DEC use some odd proprietary controller query scheme?
Message-ID: <5454@crltrx.crl.dec.com>
Date: 3 Jun 90 19:28:45 GMT
References: <1990Jun2.213812.13909@spock.UUCP>
Sender: news@crltrx.crl.dec.com
Reply-To: jg@zorch.crl.dec.com (Jim Gettys)
Organization: DEC Cambridge Research Lab
Lines: 26

As far as I know, we do everything legit, for the standard
command set (or whatever the SCSI terminology is for the
command set disk and tape devices are supposed to implement).
And while I'm not one of our SCSI experts, I don't think
we've done anything strange to the drives we use, other than
get them to work properly and put a DEC label in the ROM...

Experience has shown, however, that SCSI is far from the
tightest specification in the world.  When we started hooking up
other SCSI devices to DECstations, there was about a 50% chance
they would work (to my knowledge, it our case, it was always microcode
problems with the SCSI peripherals; in your case, it could be either
the drive or your controller); this percentage has
been increasing with time, as people get their implementations
conformant to the specification, and the specification gets better
understood by the implementors  (moral is:  KISS...  SCSI violates
this rule...).

But your experience is not all that unusual, from what I've
seen, with hooking up new devices on a SCSI...  Sigh...

Of course, make sure you have the SCSI unit number set to
something reasonable...  I once had a RZ55 and an RZ23 set to the
same address on my DS3100, and shall we just say that the machine
acted wierd.....  Almost booted up multi-user, but not quite...
			- Jim