Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!haven!adm!husc6!hscfvax!pavlov
From: pavlov@hscfvax.harvard.edu (G.Pavlov)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec
Subject: Re: Disk Drive/Controller performance.
Message-ID: <746@hscfvax.harvard.edu>
Date: 15 Mar 89 06:57:54 GMT
References: <22995@adelie.Adelie.COM> <920@wheaton.UUCP>
Distribution: usa
Organization: Health Sciences Computing Facility, Harvard University
Lines: 35

In article <920@wheaton.UUCP>, stefan@wheaton.UUCP (Stefan Brandle ) writes:
> In article <22995@adelie.Adelie.COM> sean@adelie.Adelie.COM (Sean Conway) writes:
> >(2) Disk Drive Combination/Disk Partitioning of Third Party Drives.
> >    Can you buy a MicroVAX 3600 CPU with only Third Party Drives, particurly,
> >    Emulex 9720-1230 Drive and QD34 crontroller.  The reason this doesn't
> >    seem possible is that during installation of Ultrix, how does the
> >    installation software know the partioning scheme of the Emulex
> >    drive so that it can create the "/", "/usr", "/usr/users", swap, dump.
> >    and crash space file systems.
> I don't know of any nice way of handling this since the installation software
> is pretty much hard-coded for DEC hardware (as far as I can tell).  I got
> things going by using an existing bootable DEC  drive (RD53 of uVAX II) to get
> up and running, then using chpt to set up a non-DEC drive to the partitions
> that I wanted (ie. more that 7.5 MB on /, bigger swap, etc.), ......

  If you can get past your first question (buying a uVAX cpu without DEC disks)
  the rest is doable.

  We attempted to purchase a new uVAX 3nnn cpu without hard disks and failed.
  Unless you have a special source for these, your only real alternative is
  to purchase a minimal configuration and add to it, or sell of the control-
  ler and drive(s) that come with it.  Note that RD54's are not worth much.
  (Editorial comment: not only did DEC not offer a uVAX II => 3nnn upgrade,
  as other vendors have done, but it could not even bring itself to offer a
  total cpu box swap.  From my perspective, one of DEC's most unforgivable
  "marketing decision"s ever).

  It is possible to install the system directly on a 3rd party disk by first
  permitting the installation software to assume that you have a DEC disk
  (RA81, say) and then repartitioning it afterward.  I do not believe that
  you can modify the root partition, but we did manage to expand the swap
  space and virtually everything else.  Send me a message for details if you
  actually get to the stage of trying this.

  greg pavlov, fstrf, amherst, ny