SUMMARY: Quantum Fireballs in Alpha

From: Wesley Darlington <w.darlington_at_am.qub.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 97 14:17:20 BST

Hi List,

Originally, I asked a question about using Quantum Fireball disks
in an Alpha. I received responses ranging from "They don't work
in Alphas" to "I have one, and it works fine!"

I don't like my suggestions being quoted verbatim in a summary,
so I won't quote the respondents verbatim. Instead, I will
summarise the responses one-by-one.

Thanks to (in alphabetical order):
o Marc Beckers
o Igor Dukhovich
o Robert L McMillin
o Lewis L Lasser
o Gyula Szemenyei
o Anthony Talltree
o Steve Thompson
o Mark Zander

The original question was:
> I have just got my hands on a Quantum Fireball 3GB SCSI
> drive for a PC and I thought I'd try it in one of our
> Alphas (4.0A). My questions are:
>
> o Is anybody using a Fireball in an Alpha?
> o If so, what size of disk and what kind of Alpha?
> o Has anybody found problems using a Fireball in an Alpha?


The summarised answers are:

o Marc Beckers has installed a 4.3GB fireball on an Alpha 200
  running DU 3.2 and it works fine;

o Igor Dukhovich's 3.1GB fireball wouldn't install in his
  Alpha Server 400 running DU 4.0B. It hung his Alpha;

o Robert McMillin managed to install one in his Alpha with
  no problems, but said that a rogue fireball once tried to
  kill his SGI Indy (by sucking as much power as possible
  from the PSU and becoming rather warm). He also questioned
  the reliability of fireballs;

o Lewis Lasser has been using a 3.21GB fireball with no problems
  for about half a year on an Alpha 3000/600 running DU 3.2;

o Gyula Szemenyei installed a fireball in an Alpha 3000 without
  success. He mentioned, however, that he had found no problems
  with many other brands of disk, namely Fujitsu, Digital and
  Seagate;

o Anthony Talltree said that the drive should (probably) work,
  but that it was an extremely _slow_ drive;

o Steve Thompson (and a colleague) have tried 2.1GB fireballs
  in both a 2000/300 and a 400 4/233, running both DU and VMS.
  He says that they just don't work;

o Marc Zander has a 2.1GB fireball in a 400/233 running DU 4.0B.
  It works fine.

Those are, like I said, summaries of the answers I received.
Any errors above are mine.

Now for my comments. I found with my own disk that it installs
OK. I can make a file system on it with no problem. However, when
i proceed to fsck it, it hangs the whole system. If I mount it
without fscking it, I can do small things with it. (eg. copy
small files to and from the disk) However, if I try to do
anything big (eg. copy _big_ files to/from the disk), then it
hangs the system. To be more accurate, it doesn't hang the whole
computer, it just hangs the scsi subsystem. This is, in effect,
the same thing.

As far as I can tell, there are at least two different flavours
of fireball. One called the `Tempest' or `TM' which I have, and
another known as `ST'. The `ST' is, AFAIK, a newer faster drive.
Apparently, the `TM' (mine) doesn't support something called
`queue tagging', and this might explain why it doesn't work in
my Alpha. Now, I don't know if the `ST' is any sort of improvement
over the `TM' but it is conceivable that it _does_ support
queue tagging, and that some of the respondents who report no
problems with fireballs are using the `ST' incarnation of the
fireball.

If anybody has any information to relate concerning the fireball,
then I would be more than happy to hear from them. If sufficient
light is cast on this thorny subject, I will post a further
summary to this list.

Thanks and Regards,
Wesley Darlington,
Dept. Applied Maths,
Queen's University of Belfast.
Received on Mon Jul 21 1997 - 18:12:43 NZST

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