Adding SCSI to IBM R6000

[Dan]

IBM wants $14000 for a PCI SCSI controller and 40Gig HD to expand my R6000
box.
Can I use "off the shelve" products. Used IBM PCI controllers seem to be
around $500 bucks.
That also seems outrageous. Will standard Dual Channel scsi controllers and
standard SCSI HD's
work?

[Michael W Ryder]

Dan wrote:

> IBM wants $14000 for a PCI SCSI controller and 40Gig HD to expand my R6000
> box.
> Can I use "off the shelve" products. Used IBM PCI controllers seem to be
> around $500 bucks.
> That also seems outrageous. Will standard Dual Channel scsi controllers and
> standard SCSI HD's
> work?
>
>

You could use external drives connected to the external scsi port. This
won't be as fast as an internal solution, but can be done with standard
parts.
Alternatively you can probably pick up the necessary parts from a
reseller for much less than the new price and they should be capable of
being covered by maintenance.

[Dan]

That's what I was hoping to hear! Any recommendations.
I'm not a SCSI / R6000 guy so I'm relying on the "kindness of strangers".
Do you know what type of SCSI the R6000 uses? Model 7044-270.

[Jochen Luebbers]

Dan wrote:

> Do you know what type of SCSI the R6000 uses? Model 7044-270.

FAST-WIDE, but be aware, the external SCSI connector is a (strange)
VHD connctor, so normal HD68 cable will not work, and we spend a
lot of money to buy a cable VHD68<->HD68 :-(

Jochen Luebbers



--
Jochen Lübbers [email]luebbers@tde-online.de[/email]
Software Development Group I TDE - Tele Data Electronic GmbH
"Wer die Freiheit aufgibt, um Sicherheit zu gewinnen,
der wird am Ende beides verlieren" (Benjamin Franklin)

[Ulrich--nO--(dot)-sPAM--Link]

Dan wrote:

> IBM wants $14000 for a PCI SCSI controller and 40Gig HD to expand my R6000
> box.
> Can I use "off the shelve" products. Used IBM PCI controllers seem to be
> around $500 bucks.
> That also seems outrageous. Will standard Dual Channel scsi controllers and
> standard SCSI HD's
> work?
>
>

Standard SCSI disks work.
With 'chdev -P -l hdisk?? -a q_type=simple -a queue_depth=3' you can
achieve same performance from the equivalent IBM/Hitachi drive, than
it's costly RS6K counterpart.
If you don't fear, you can flash the correct RS6K firmware update into
the OEM drive and low level format it afterwards. This must be done with
some low-level DOS tools on a PC.
No warranty, buy a few drives more.
AFAIK the defect management is much weaker for "Other SCSI Disk Drive"
than for a recognized drive type.

---
Uli

[Dan]

tks very helpful, especially the cable info.

[Michael W Ryder]

Dan wrote:

> That's what I was hoping to hear! Any recommendations.
> I'm not a SCSI / R6000 guy so I'm relying on the "kindness of strangers".
> Do you know what type of SCSI the R6000 uses? Model 7044-270.
>
>

How many internal drives do you have in your system? Our office is
using the 7044-270 also. It came with one 18 GB hard drive internally
and we just installed another 36 GB hard drive in it for about $1300
from IBM Direct. No way would I have paid the $14,000 you quoted as we
spent about $5,000 to buy the computer originally.
Supposedly the computer will work with drives up to 72 GB internally and
they are about $1,900 from IBM, so you should be able to mount 2 drives
totalling 144 GB in the case without adding a new controller. The
internal drives come with a special mounting bracket from IBM and just
plug in -- total time to install about 5 minutes.

[Bob Mariotti]

On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 10:22:14 GMT, "Dan" <dtonner@ydoucare.com> wrote:

>IBM wants $14000 for a PCI SCSI controller and 40Gig HD to expand my R6000
>box.
>Can I use "off the shelve" products. Used IBM PCI controllers seem to be
>around $500 bucks.
>That also seems outrageous. Will standard Dual Channel scsi controllers and
>standard SCSI HD's
>work?
>
>

If you have a drive bay available inside the system then you can use
OEM HITACHI (formerly IBM Ultrastor) 36/72/146GB drives for about
$180/380/790 each respectively. They work just great. Just installed
a 36GB one last week.