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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: <5461@crltrx.crl.dec.com>
Date: 4 Jun 90 14:19:57 GMT
References: <1990Jun2.213812.13909@spock.UUCP> <5454@crltrx.crl.dec.com> <136580@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Sender: news@crltrx.crl.dec.com
Reply-To: jg@zorch.crl.dec.com (Jim Gettys)
Organization: DEC Cambridge Research Lab
Lines: 36

>>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...).

>Weak, buddy. Real weak. This would have been a truer statement 3-4
>years ago, but not for the last couple of years.

>
>-matt jacob
> Sun Microsystems

Boy, it looks like you don't like to read....

If you read my statement above, you'll see that I was talking about several
years ago, and noted that the percentage has been increasing with time.
And it was a very small sample. (statistics of small numbers....)

Most of the problems we saw were of the form:

Disk firmware has timing window that only a fast machine can hit...
Drive might generate error or hang after pounding on it for some hours.

Getting solid implementations of complex specifications is always
difficult.

Are you claiming that Sun makes slow machines and slow SCSI implementations
that don't see that kind of problem?  :-).  Sun certainly didn't
build such fast machines 18 months ago... :-).
				- Jim