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From: tts@agaton.lu.se (Teletrafiksystem)
Newsgroups: misc.wanted,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Cheap wonderful UNIX boxes
Message-ID: <2306@agaton.lu.se>
Date: Mon, 20-Apr-87 15:56:42 EDT
Article-I.D.: agaton.2306
Posted: Mon Apr 20 15:56:42 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 29-Apr-87 05:18:26 EDT
References: <791@kodak.UUCP> <6402@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Reply-To: rn@erlang.sunet.se
Distribution: world
Organization: Dept. of Communication Systems, University of Lund, Sweden
Lines: 64
Xref: mnetor misc.wanted:854 comp.unix.questions:2055

In article <6402@bu-cs.BU.EDU> bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) writes:
>
>	Does anyone know any inexpensive, even slowish, disks that
>	can be hooked up to the SUN3/50 SCSI port?
>
>	Off-the-cuff Requirements (try me!):
>
>	1. Probably at least 100MB.
>
>	2. By slowish (this isn't PC world) I mean, say, 35msec
>           or thereabouts.
>
>	3. Nice if there were a tape option, even a mediocre one
>	   for occasional backups (I could UUCP incrementals.)
>
>	4. Price: Well, Sun's 141MB costs us $4830, half that
>	   would be worth considering. The 71MB is probably a
>	   little small for me, almost...
>

We have the following experience of using (non SUN) SCSI-disks on SUN 3/50:

Using a preformatted Micropolis 1375 (5 1/4"-disk, 170 Mbyte unformatted,
23 ms):
   - The disk was labeled and set up using standard "diag" program
   
   - Then it was just to mount it on the system and run it as a local disk.

   - We also removed the SUN 3/50 from the fileserver and booted it from tape
     (Archive 5945S, also SCSI) and built a unix-system on the Micropolis. It
     worked out perfect. We also used the 3/50 as bootserver and fileserver 
     for another 3/50. It worked OK, however the disk is a bit to small
     for this purpose. (With a bigger disk  it seems to be a cheep way to 
     run 3/50(s) without a special fileserver.)
     
   - We have NOT tried to reformat the disk, due to our experiense with the
     Maxtor disk (see below).
 
 Using a Maxtor 3170 (5 1/4", 170 Mbyte unformatted, 30 ms):
    - We were not able to format the disk. The diag-program and the disk 
      seems to have different opinions on format commands. However we could
      get contact with the disk. Any hints, pointers or programs to solve 
      the problem are welcome.
      
 
A 170 or 350 Mbyte disk plus a streamer tape station (all on SCSI) and 
powersupply built in in a box have (in Sweden) approx one third of the 
price from SUN. 

The performance (on a low-loaded 3/50 with SCSI-disk) was approx the same as 
using a SUN 180 as fileserver. We have not performed any deeper test-suites 
to measure accesstime at heavy load or with a 3/50 as fileserver.

Please note the problem with using the diag-program to format the disk,
anyone out there that can help us with that?


Richard Niklasson, Dept of Communication Systems, Lund Institute of Technology, 
SWEDEN

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