Re: DAC960 Alpha support (was: Re: Redhat 7.2 on a DEC ALPHA 2100)
Hello everyone (sespecially Jay!)
I'm a little confused on the model/firmware:
I just bought a DAC960PU-3 (D040397) thinking that I could replace the
non-ultra PD that I have without problems. But the card just arrived,
and it has two bios chips - 3.51 firmware version. While I am confident
I could put root on it, will I be able to actually boot to an array on
this card (as I do with my currnt setup) with the 3.5 firmware as
opposed to the DEC 2.7 firmware? My system is an AS1200.
Thank's
Mike
BTW, if i can't use this dual chip setup, can the chips be repolaced
with a single chip with the 2.7 firmware?
On Wed, Feb 26, 2003 at 11:52:16AM -0500, Jay Estabrook wrote:
<snip>
>
> Unfortunately, I believe that that particular DAC960 may not be
> supported on Alpha by the Linux driver even with updated ROM(S), or
> even if it can be updated with newer ROM(S). I have had trouble with
> later PCI DAC960s with P/No D040340, even when updated to DEC custom
> firmware 2.70 (see below); the driver just doesn't seem to work
> correctly. Unfortunately, I've not had time to look more closely at
> the problem.
>
> One can download from the following HP site firmware upgrades (to DEC
> custom version 2.70, ie single EEPROM) for some of the older DAC960
> cards (see table below), along with documentation and the RAID
> Configuration Utility (RCU) that can be run from ARC/AlphaBIOS
> consoles on our Alphas.
>
> http://h18002.www1.hp.com/alphaserver/products/storage/ra230/index.html
>
> Several small tweaks must be made to current Linux sources to allow:
>
> 1. the Linux DAC960 driver to work with DEC custom version 2.70 firmware,
> 2. using DAC960-based RAID disks as root.
>
> To this purpose, find attached at the end patches against 2.4.21-pre4,
> based on some patches posted by Richard Muratti <rmurat@attglobal.net>
> to the debian-alpha-list. These will most likely apply reasonably well
> to other kernel 2.4.x versions, but are not intended for 2.5.x.
>
> WARNING!!!
>
> There may be, occasionally, "misleading" messages from the DAC960
> driver when used with the DEC custom firmware version 2.70. I've seen
> some that claimed that existing drives were "DEAD", but they worked
> just fine. There may be more, so - YOU ARE WARNED!!!
>
> If a RAID volume is initialized using "fdisk" to BSD-style partition
> table, leaving ~5MB unused space at the beginning (for the "aboot"
> bootstrap to be installed, via "swriteboot"), our SRM consoles will be
> able to boot from that volume.
>
> The following DAC960 models have been successfully used with the
> modified Linux driver and the updated custom firmware version 2.70:
>
> Part No MYLEX name DEC name
> ------- ---------- --------
>
> D040347 DAC960PD-1 KZPSC 1 channel
> D040348 DAC960PD-2 KZPSC 2 channels
> D040349 DAC960PD-3 KZPSC 3 channels
>
> D040395 DAC960PU-1 KZPAC 1 channel
> D040396 DAC960PU-2 KZPAC 2 channels
> D040397 DAC960PU-3 KZPAC 3 channels
>
> Note that KZPSC is Fast/Wide, while KZPAC will run Ultra/Wide, IIRC.
>
> Good luck, and please let me know of any problems.
>
> --Jay++
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Jay A Estabrook HPTC - LINUX support
> Hewlett-Packard Company - MRO1-2/K15 (508) 467-2080
> 200 Forest Street, Marlboro MA 01752 Jay.Estabrook@hp.com
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
<snip patches>
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