Sparc5 And IBM Ultrastar 36LP
EVILjosh
Hi,
I was wondering if anyone has experienced problems running an
IBM Ultrastar 36LP on a Sparc5/70.
The Sparc5 is running a core installation of SunOS5.7 at patch
revision 20 and is equipped with the floppy disk and CDROM (2x
I believe) option drives along with a second port of 10Base-TX
in the form of an Antares Microsystems SBUS ethernet board.
The system has 64Mbytes of main memory.
The problem I'm having is that every 10 minutes (pretty much
exactly) the 36LP emits a loudish sound for about 5 seconds
that sounds like it's very busy performing some kind of disk
activity. Regular read/write ops that I induce via say
executing a `find`, etc does not produce this sound. Given
that this system is close at hand, I find it annoying.
This problem does not induce any disk activity as reported
via vmstat and iostat - the counters remain at zero when it
happens and the disk is otherwise idle.
The drive makes this sound whether the system is sitting in the
PROM monitor or booted multiuser. The SCSI bus is terminated.
I have tried things such as disconnecting the floppy and CDROM
from the system, forcing the drive to Single Ended mode, dis-
abling unit attention in addition to trying all of this with
another SPARC5/85 which produces the same results.
There is nothing in my system logs related to drive oriented
problems. All clean there.
In looking at a compatability chart for the 36LP, I see that
the SPARC20 is listed but not the SPARC5. The SPARC5 SCSI
implementation is SCSI-2 Fast while the SPARC20 is SCSI-2 F/W
I believe. The 36LP should be capable of negotiating "down"
to SCSI-2 Fast if I'm not mistaken.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks,
Josh.
Andrey Vlassov
why not take disk out and plug power and let it run for 20 minutes.
After that it will clear - "is it disk or SPARC 5".
Andrey
Akop Pogosian
> Hi,
> I was wondering if anyone has experienced problems running an
> IBM Ultrastar 36LP on a Sparc5/70.
> The Sparc5 is running a core installation of SunOS5.7 at patch
> revision 20 and is equipped with the floppy disk and CDROM (2x
> I believe) option drives along with a second port of 10Base-TX
> in the form of an Antares Microsystems SBUS ethernet board.
> The system has 64Mbytes of main memory.
> The problem I'm having is that every 10 minutes (pretty much
> exactly) the 36LP emits a loudish sound for about 5 seconds
> that sounds like it's very busy performing some kind of disk
> activity. Regular read/write ops that I induce via say
> executing a `find`, etc does not produce this sound. Given
> that this system is close at hand, I find it annoying.
> This problem does not induce any disk activity as reported
> via vmstat and iostat - the counters remain at zero when it
> happens and the disk is otherwise idle.
I have a 9GB 36LP connected to an Adaptec 2940UW card in a PC that
dual-boots Solaris 8 and Linux. I also hear those strange noises that
you're talking about. I suspected that this is some sort of self-test
that the disk performs on its own whether you like it our not. Now,
what's strange is that I also have a 36GB 36LP in my Ultra5 running
Solaris 2.6 at work and it does -not- make those noises..
--
Akop Pogosian
This space has been accidentally left blank.
Esa Kuusisto
> exactly) the 36LP emits a loudish sound for about 5 seconds
> that sounds like it's very busy performing some kind of disk
> activity. Regular read/write ops that I induce via say
> executing a `find`, etc does not produce this sound. Given
> that this system is close at hand, I find it annoying.
> This problem does not induce any disk activity as reported
> via vmstat and iostat - the counters remain at zero when it
> happens and the disk is otherwise idle.
>
I have same disk, but it is 18GB and in PC. It make same "noise" about every
ten to fifteen minuts. Thats a normal operation and does not depend what
operating system or scsi hardware you have.
-Esa