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From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: Re:  Advice on VAX peripherals wanted, note re HSC50
Message-ID: <3457@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 10-Jan-84 17:59:30 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.3457
Posted: Tue Jan 10 17:59:30 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 10-Jan-84 17:59:30 EST
References: <15221@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 24

Chuck Kennedy observes:

   Digital has announced the Digital Storage Architecture (DSA) which
   utilizes their nifty new HSC50.  The connection to the HSC50 is via the
   Computer Interconnect (CI) bus which has a 70Mbit/sec bandwidth.
   The HSC50 has some really neat features ...

One of the not-so-neat features is that the box on the other end which
actually runs the disks contains a cpu.  A small cpu.  I am told that for
some configurations it's a 730.  This may limit throughput.

   I only have two problems with the HSC50:
   	1)  If you don't run VMS (i.e. UNIX), you will have to write DSA
   	    code to run the HSC50.  This is probably more complicated
   	    than your average driver.  Besides, you have to yank teeth
   	    to find out all the information from DEC.

Bear in mind that the network architecture involved is approximately
that displayed by the UDA50 controller; I am told that Armando's driver
for that creature is about 30KB of code!  "More complicated than your
average driver" is probably the understatement of the century.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry