Michael Kukat drunkenly mumbled...
> Hi !
> 
> Tired... not drunken, just 2 beers :)

i wish drunken was my excuse.  i am definitely tired after all that heavy
lifting. :)  after looking at Best Power's web page, the UPS i just moved weighs
in at a whopping 875 pounds!!!  -200 for the controller (guess) the battery box
is therefor 675 pounds by itself.  i definitely believe that after moving it.
 
> ok, nice. The port for the 4000/300 is official in 1.5-distribution, for the

yeah, i saw that a week ago, made me very happy.

> 4000/400 you need my kernel patches. You should know, that your disks won't

i've been following your posts very closely in preparation of getting the /400
in here and running.  so i'll probably be ok.  if you want a better place to
store your work, i have a 384Kbps line and an ftp/http server.

> be supported on both boxes with the internal DSSI controller called SHAC,
> because a driver for it is still missing. (Lack of information about the
> DSSI side of SHAC). So, you need a MSCP controller card in yout QBus slots
> to use mass storage. But the boxes also work fine netbooted.

ok, netbooting isn't a problem, i can do that, i've got a fairly large amount
of free space on my SUN boxes.  i may have to get the NetBSD/sparc tftpd and
port it to Solaris, since i found trying to netboot a DS5000/240 was not
possible with SUN's tftpd since they dropped support for older TFTP protocol
that the older DECstation was trying to use.  i ended up using my FreeBSD box
to tftp the kernel, but that things has since died and it isn't worth reviving.

that stinks about the SHAC, since i don't have any QBus stuff here at the 
moment.  guess i'll just have to start digging around and seeing what i can
find.  although i do want to run VMS on one of these things, so maybe i'll put
the DSSI disks in one box and install VMS, and get a QBus SCSI controller for
the other two machines since SCSI disks are _MUCH_ easier to find that DSSI
disks are.

i'll at least get them netbooted at some point just to play with them. :)

also, this is a long shot, but does anyone know anything at all about the
following hardware:  

Invincible Technologies Corporation
Product: SHUB
Model: SCSI/IG
Serial: 0509950

the little i know about it (what the guy told me, and giving it a visual
inspection) is that it is a SCSI attatched hardware RAID 5 rig.  it looks to
be as redundant a piece of hardware as you're gonna find, i'm _VERY_ pleased
with it's construction and design (the only reason i took it) it consists of
three units.  one controller and two disk packs.  the controller looks like it
can hook up to 4 hosts with SCSI/SE and it connects to the disk packs with
SCSI/Diff.  each disk pack has three hot-swapable power supplies and two rows
of 10 disks.  judging by it's age, it's SCSI/Diff-narrow, so i'm guesing i have
two hot spare disks per controller.  nice.  on the disk packs each row has it's
own channel, and it's own little "sub-controller" that looks like maybe a 486
(judging from size and color, they all have heat sinks glued to them) and 64MB
of RAM.  32 active disks and 256MB cache? for $50? not a bad deal at all. now
all i need are disks to put in it.

ANYWAY, i'm asking since i don't have the faintest idea how to get this thing
up and running.  i'm assuming there is some way to configure it (maybe a serial
console port, or some SCSI in-band managment, beats me) and i may have found a
contact to ask, i don't even know if this comany is in business anymore.  i'll
let you all know what i find.  if i can get a collection of disks going we
could build a huge VAX reposetory out of this thing.  loaded with kernels,
operating systems, maybe hang it off of the 4000/400 with a QBus SCSI card. :)
either that or it gets hung off of the SPARCserver 1000 that i'll be getting
as soon as it shows up, or maybe both since i can hang 4 machines off of it.

one last thing, i have also inherited the following manuals:

grey binders:
StorageWorks Array Controllers
  HS Familiy of Array Controllers
  User's Guide
  one for version 2.5
  one for version 1.4

VAXserver 4000 Model 300
  Customer Hardware Information
    Installation
    Operation
    Troubleshooting and Diagnostics
    Technical Information
    Site Preparation
    Customer Services
    Dual-Host Systems

VAX 4000 Model 400/500/600
  Customer Hardware Information
    Installation
    Operation
    Troubleshooting and Diagnostics
    Technical Information
    Site Preparation

DSSI VAXcluster
  Installation and Troubleshooting

VAXserver/VAX 4000-series System Conversion Guide

SC008 Star Coupler User's Guide

DECraid+ HSFamily Storage Systems
  Installation/Owner's Guide


BA350-K Series (8-bit) Deskside Expansion Pedestals (Storageworks)
  Users Guide

StorageWorks Solutions Shelf and SBB User's Guide

AlphaAXP SYstems
  Firmware Release Notes

i also have a pile of orange software documentation, but i'm not going into
this much detail with that, if you really want to know email me, this is 
getting far too long an email as it is.

i can probably be convinced to head out to kinko's and get this stuff copied
and sent out to whoever needs it.  a QBus SCSI controller in trade would
probably make me hand deliver the copied docs. :)

anyway, thanks for listening.

-brian