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I've got the following in my vintage late 90s alpha 1000A:
mlx0 at pci0 dev 12 function 0: Mylex RAID (v2 interface)
mlx0: interrupting at dec_1000a irq 3
mlx0: DAC960P/PD, 3 channels, firmware 2.70-0-00, 32MB RAM
AKA the DEC KZPSC. it's a three-channel hardware raid controller, and
is wired into a nifty storageworks shelf in the alpha.
I saw that it was supported under NetBSD and decided to actually use it.
first mistake.
switching from SRM to ARC to run the configuration program isn't
completely godawful; I had a monitor and keyboard hooked up when I
configured and initialized my starter 16GB RAID5. no big deal, it
didn't take too long to initialize the array, and the machine wasn't
being used for anything yet, so I could afford downtime. second
mistake.
as old hardware from my alma mater is wont to do, a largish (126GB is
large to me) nstor disk tray made its way into my basement. "wouldn't
it be great to connect this to my hardware RAID controller?" so I
bought the requisite HD68 to HD68 (honda) connectors to wire it up.
third mistake.
by this point I had moved the 1000A off my desk and into my rack, and
given it a proper serial console. I wired everything up, fired up ARC,
and... hey... god how awful this is over a serial console. still, I
trudged along. fourth mistake.
after some missteps involving the internal serverworks shelf being
wired to the same channel as one of the external connectors (even though
the controller has three channels) and figuring out that the nstor box
doesn't need two separate SCSI channels anyway since it only has seven
devices, I got everything ironed out and prepared to configure another
logical device...
it has HD68 connectors but only scans IDs 0-6, I assume since there are
only seven slots in a storageworks shelf. I've got seven drives in the
array, numbered 0-5, and 8. I don't know why I didn't renumber the last
one to 6, but it's not terribly important, since I couldn't create a
logical disk over 32768MB in size. so I ended up creating three
logical disks; two 32.7GB ones, and one leftover. I should have given
up at this point, but I figured I would just concatenate the logical
drives together and just deal. fifth mistake?
it took FOUR HOURS to initialize the logical disks. four hours of
downtime, since the tool is being run out of ARC. oh did I mention that
the firmware is too old for NetBSD's mlxctl to use, and I have a
sneaking suspicion that if I updated it, SRM probably wouldn't be able
to boot off it? (I may still replace the firmware and see what
happens.)
meanwhile I've got a nice 64bit LSI 53c1010 controller here that I wish
I would've used in the first place...
--
Aaron J. Grier | "Not your ordinary poofy goof." | agrier@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
"silly brewer, saaz are for pils!" -- virt
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