At 01:39 AM 2/25/02 +0100, kees.stravers@iae.nl wrote:
>I ask because a friend and me just got our first
>DSSI machines, a rather large VAX 4000-300 cluster (See
>http://home.iae.nl/users/pb0aia/vax/hapert/index.html

That is a pile of VAX! When Fred described it I was pretty amazed.

>for some quick pics) and we want to get DSSI working. We think the best
>machine to start with developing a DSSI driver on is the -100 because that
>one has both SCSI and DSSI controllers, so you can work off one while
>testing the other. Ultimately we want to get a VAX4000-700 working
>too. Are the DSSI controllers on the -100, -300 and the -700 fundamentally
>the same?

There are at least two, maybe three DSSI controllers.
         The 3400/3300 (aka KA640) has the SII chip.
         The 4000/200 has the SHAC chip.
The 4000/300 may have a third chip but I don't have the KA670 manual handy.

>When finished, the cluster will be running the new VAXarchive main site,
>hopefully from DSSI, but it has, next to the DSSI drives, also a KDA50
>and RA90's, so we have a fallback solution :)

Cool.

>And we are not worrying about power consumption :)

Clearly :-) Every time I fire up the 3400 the wife cringes at what that 
will do to the power bill.


>It would save a lot of time if we could get a snapshot we can put on
>the 4000-100 so we have one working machine to start with. So I hope
>someone can put up a current snapshot somewhere.

If you get one please put a pointer to it here so that others can benefit. 
All my DSSI stuff is on 1.5 as that is reasonably stable on the 4000/90 and 
I'm not getting nailed with -current disease.

--Chuck