On 2/14/20 1:54 PM, jim stephens via cctech wrote:
On 2/14/2020 6:09 AM, Alan Perry via cctalk wrote:
On Feb 14, 2020, at 04:15, Liam Proven via cctalk
<cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Thu, 13 Feb 2020 at 19:06, Alan Perry via cctalk
<cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
I supplied part numbers. How can I be more specific?
Oddly, some of us do not have a mental look-up table of Sun part
numbers. In fact I think I can safely say that I could not identify a
single cable of any form for any machine ever made by its part number.
If you can, good for you.
I read the label attached to the cable.
I could tell you what connectors are at each end of the cable, but I
couldn’t tell you how they are wired together and, having no docs on
the cable or an example to check, am dependent on the part number to
tell me that.
alan
The SCSI spec and cabling have a specific way that the conductors have
to be rolled to make a round cable. Each cable type has a recommended
way that signal and grounds should be paired and in what proximity in
the cable.
For SMD I never saw a formal spec with as much detail as the SCSI spec,
and I don't know if they standardized the cabling. Mainly to speculate
about whether you can use a generic 25-25 or 37-37 straight thru.
I opened up the drive pedestal chassis. At the panel, a 60-pin ribbon
cable is split between the two D-sub connectors, 36 (with the #1 pin) on
the 37-pin D-sub and 24 on the 25-pin D-sub. The ribbon cable disappears
into the chassis, but there are two 60-pin ribbon cables come out, one
connected to each drive.
As far as the data connectors, I can only access the connector on one
drive. On the drive is a 26-pin IDC connector. The ribbon cable attached
to the connector is 25-pin and each drive has it own 25-pin D-sub on the
back panel.
I suspect the 25-25 would be sensitive to the type of conductor pairing
and fabrication would work. The 37-37 bus connector probably would work
with looser electrical specs to substitute in different cabling.
Also just to make things more entertaining on the Oracle site for sun
hardware they are using the term "Storage Module Drive" to refer to 6g/s
SAS drives installed in individual blades for a blade server system. So
the term appears frequently in their online docs, and including old
documents and current documents.
When I was searching the Interwebs by part number, I found something
that categorized the cables as SAS cables, even though the official name
associated with the part number says SMD.
Here's one example of that term on a page
https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19452-01/html/821-0911/gkfcf.html
If I'm not far off base, I ran across two vendors who may have made the
controller if they aren't sun, Interphase, and Xylogics. Also an
article referred to the Sun boards as Eurocard from Xylogics. Xylogics 753.
The SMD controller is a Xylogics 451. It is a Multibus card, so there is
a Multibus-VME on the VME board between it and the backplane. The
control connector is a 60-pin IDC to ribbon cable split between two
D-sub connectors as above. The data connectors is as above, 26-pin IDCs
to 25-pin ribbon to 25-pin D-sub.
For grins, I tried powering up the drives. They came up and didn't make
horrible noises.
alan
Thanks
Jim
But if someone, say, told me "I need some SCSI cables: a MD50 to MD68
cable, 2 × MD68 to MD68, an MD50 terminator and ideally a DB25 to
MD50," then I would be able to say "yes, I have some of those".
However, since Jim has been a bit more forthcoming, it sounds like I
can't help you.
--
Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 - ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
