Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!purdue!i.cc.purdue.edu!j.cc.purdue.edu!kcs
From: kcs@j.cc.purdue.edu (Kevin C. Smallwood)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sequent
Subject: Re: Third Party Disc Experience on Sequent systems
Keywords: DCC, disks, stand-alone, formatter
Message-ID: <7917@j.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 5 Oct 88 15:24:39 GMT
References: <1049@orion.cf.uci.edu> <2400024@kailand>
Reply-To: kcs@j.cc.purdue.edu.UUCP (Kevin C. Smallwood)
Organization: Purdue University
Lines: 29

In article <2400024@kailand> pwolfe@kailand.KAI.COM writes:
>
>One problem (detailed in a talk given by Purdue University at the 1987
>Sequent User's Group meeting) is that the disk format programs Sequent
>delivers has the drive parameters hard coded in, instead of reading them from
>a user-editable table.  So even if you know all the information that the format
>program needs, you need the *source* code to be able to add drives.  This
>eliminated any chance we had for adding non-supported drives.

This is no longer true.  In the *binary* distribution of the DYNIX V3.0,
the proper files are available.  If you look in /usr/sys/stand/conf_zdc.c,
you will find the table that we used to have to change by only having the
source code available.  In fact, Sequent now has a Makefile available in
/usr/sys/stand to remake the stand-alone programs (like the formatter --
zdformat -- if you plan to boot off of the device, also remake "boot" and
"zdboot" -- there are other caveats if you are interested).  In conf_zdc.c,
you need to come up with the magic configuration numbers that are described
in the zdinfo structure (described in /usr/sys/stand/zdc.h -- but the most
important chunk -- zdcdd -- is described in /usr/sys/zdc/zdc.h).  One of
the Sequent systems (this happened to be a Symmetry) at Purdue (the
Department of Computer Science) was able to add support for a CDC 9766
essentially following the directions that Mike Marsh and I laid out in the
paper with only the "binary" distribution (not source code) with DYNIX
V3.0, so I know it is now possible.  Thanks to Sequent for adding this
support!

Kevin C. Smallwood			Internet: kcs@j.cc.purdue.edu
Manager of UNIX Systems			UUCP: ...!{pur-ee,purdue}!kcs
Purdue University Computing Center