> All those people who said they were interested [...]

My interest was conditional:

> So, depending on the actual cost (and, perhaps, the memory), I might
> be interested in one or two.

"Cheap" is in the eye/wallet of the beholder.

> This is cheaper than a MAC [...]

I just bought a used Mac Pro (Late 2013, 6-core Xeon E5-1650 v2 @
3.50GHz, 64GB DDR3, 1TB NVMe) with shipping and tax for about $420.

> Are you going to take one????

I could just about justify the shipping cost, but not another $800.

Fair enough
But losing money on them is not in my plans.  It takes 2 hours to clean
and test them, add new battery and reconfigure cost about $200 per server
We make about $275 on each system once configured - even packing costs
$35 because we use a very strong plank foam at $25 per sheet then some
additional poly foam for the edges for about $10 . Box is $6 - It all
adds up

Can't please everyone I guess.....

;0(

DT

On 1/14/2023 3:56 PM, Steven Schweda wrote:
>> All those people who said they were interested [...]
> My interest was conditional:
>
>> So, depending on the actual cost (and, perhaps, the memory), I might
>> be interested in one or two.
> "Cheap" is in the eye/wallet of the beholder.
>
>> This is cheaper than a MAC [...]
> I just bought a used Mac Pro (Late 2013, 6-core Xeon E5-1650 v2 @
> 3.50GHz, 64GB DDR3, 1TB NVMe) with shipping and tax for about $420.
>
>> Are you going to take one????
> I could just about justify the shipping cost, but not another $800.

On Saturday, January 14, 2023 at 2:02:59 PM UTC-8, David Turner wrote:
> Fair enough
> But losing money on them is not in my plans. It takes 2 hours to clean
> and test them, add new battery and reconfigure cost about $200 per server
> We make about $275 on each system once configured - even packing costs
> $35 because we use a very strong plank foam at $25 per sheet then some
> additional poly foam for the edges for about $10 . Box is $6 - It all
> adds up

My best compuarchaeology buy is a Sun T5220 for $38.13 including shipping.
I do suspect that they might have lost money on that one. It was from a
big computer recycling company, so they only have to make money
on average. Shipping distance wasn't so far, though.
(I am not sure how that compares to the DS10.)

When I buy things like this, I assume no cleaning, battery, or configuration,
but yes you do need to charge for those.

My latest is a Synology RS810+ for $80, which then needed a new power
supply, CPU fan, and disks were not included. It was clean, I didn't check
the battery.

In general, I bid low and get way too many old computers.

But yes, no complaints about wanting to sell quality equipment.

I noticed the disk drive you were selling not so long ago, way out
of my disk price range. I am sure that some people need fast end
expensive drives, though.

On 1/14/2023 5:02 PM, David Turner wrote:
> Fair enough
> But losing money on them is not in my plans.

You've always been helpful. I'm wishing you the best.

However, my IT days are in the past. No new work for some time now. Basically
retired, and, I have:

VAXstation 4000 Model 90A (two of them)
Some AlphaStation 200/233 systems
An AlphaServer 800 system
A DS20 system
A DS10L system
A RX2660 itanic
And more stuff

Don't know why I'd "like" to have a DS10, guess I'm just a collector.

I cannot justify the cost, and they are decent prices, but I really have no real
need.

> It takes 2 hours to clean and test
> them, add new battery and reconfigure cost about $200 per server
> We make about $275 on each system once configured - even packing costs $35
> because we use a very strong plank foam at $25 per sheet then some additional
> poly foam for the edges for about $10 . Box is $6 - It all adds up
>
> Can't please everyone I guess.....

It's more justification than pleasing ...

Thanks for all your help in the past.

>
> On 1/14/2023 3:56 PM, Steven Schweda wrote:
>>> All those people who said they were interested [...]
>> My interest was conditional:
>>
>>> So, depending on the actual cost (and, perhaps, the memory), I might
>>> be interested in one or two.
>> "Cheap" is in the eye/wallet of the beholder.
>>
>>> This is cheaper than a MAC [...]
>> I just bought a used Mac Pro (Late 2013, 6-core Xeon E5-1650 v2 @
>> 3.50GHz, 64GB DDR3, 1TB NVMe) with shipping and tax for about $420.
>>
>>> Are you going to take one????
>> I could just about justify the shipping cost, but not another $800.
>
>

--
David Froble Tel: 724-529-0450
Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc. E-Mail: davef@tsoft-inc.com
DFE Ultralights, Inc.
170 Grimplin Road
Vanderbilt, PA 15486

On 1/14/2023 9:03 PM, gah4 wrote:
> On Saturday, January 14, 2023 at 2:02:59 PM UTC-8, David Turner wrote:
>> Fair enough
>> But losing money on them is not in my plans. It takes 2 hours to clean
>> and test them, add new battery and reconfigure cost about $200 per server
>> We make about $275 on each system once configured - even packing costs
>> $35 because we use a very strong plank foam at $25 per sheet then some
>> additional poly foam for the edges for about $10 . Box is $6 - It all
>> adds up
>
> My best compuarchaeology buy is a Sun T5220 for $38.13 including shipping.
> I do suspect that they might have lost money on that one. It was from a
> big computer recycling company, so they only have to make money
> on average. Shipping distance wasn't so far, though.
> (I am not sure how that compares to the DS10.)
>
> When I buy things like this, I assume no cleaning, battery, or configuration,
> but yes you do need to charge for those.
>
> My latest is a Synology RS810+ for $80, which then needed a new power
> supply, CPU fan, and disks were not included. It was clean, I didn't check
> the battery.
>
> In general, I bid low and get way too many old computers.
>
> But yes, no complaints about wanting to sell quality equipment.
>
> I noticed the disk drive you were selling not so long ago, way out
> of my disk price range. I am sure that some people need fast end
> expensive drives, though.

There are two completely different markets for used servers:

A) the market for tested and properly configured systems
sold with warranty targeted professional use and
hobbyists that are willing to pay for it
B) the market for systems practically given away with
absolutely no warranty of any kind and where buyer will
have to try and see if it can be made working targeted
hobbyist that either are not willing to pay or actually
enjoy messing around with the HW to get it working

Dave runs a business. And as a business they are selling
for market A. They can not make money selling for market B.

If we look at market A then I don't think IslandCo is
expensive.

They are obviously expensive if we look at market B, but
that is to be expected.

Arne

On 1/15/23 02:03, gah4 wrote:
> On Saturday, January 14, 2023 at 2:02:59 PM UTC-8, David Turner wrote:
>> Fair enough
>> But losing money on them is not in my plans. It takes 2 hours to clean
>> and test them, add new battery and reconfigure cost about $200 per server
>> We make about $275 on each system once configured - even packing costs
>> $35 because we use a very strong plank foam at $25 per sheet then some
>> additional poly foam for the edges for about $10 . Box is $6 - It all
>> adds up
>
> My best compuarchaeology buy is a Sun T5220 for $38.13 including shipping.
> I do suspect that they might have lost money on that one. It was from a
> big computer recycling company, so they only have to make money
> on average. Shipping distance wasn't so far, though.
> (I am not sure how that compares to the DS10.)
>
> When I buy things like this, I assume no cleaning, battery, or configuration,
> but yes you do need to charge for those.
>
> My latest is a Synology RS810+ for $80, which then needed a new power
> supply, CPU fan, and disks were not included. It was clean, I didn't check
> the battery.
>
> In general, I bid low and get way too many old computers.
>
> But yes, no complaints about wanting to sell quality equipment.
>
> I noticed the disk drive you were selling not so long ago, way out
> of my disk price range. I am sure that some people need fast end
> expensive drives, though.

I buy too many as well, but allows me to keep up to date on the lab
systems at very low cost. Have run a Sun M3000 for 4 or 5 years now.
Around 60.00 ukp on Ebay and arrived in a bricked condition, but found
an obscure page that showed how to load a failsafe admin image and it
all sprang into life. Similar situation with a T4-1 recently, but
sold that on after fixing it to defaults. Both fixes took no more
than a couple of hours, so well worth the effort.

Still have Alpha in the collection, but they are old and orphaned in
terms of add on software availability, so no use here other than out
of historical curiosity. Sad end for a great architecture, but the
world moves on...

Chris

On Sunday, January 15, 2023 at 7:21:13 AM UTC-8, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

(snip)

> There are two completely different markets for used servers:
> A) the market for tested and properly configured systems
> sold with warranty targeted professional use and
> hobbyists that are willing to pay for it
> B) the market for systems practically given away with
> absolutely no warranty of any kind and where buyer will
> have to try and see if it can be made working targeted
> hobbyist that either are not willing to pay or actually
> enjoy messing around with the HW to get it working

There is also market AB, for hobbyists that are slightly
richer than average, or have special interest in something.

Also, for professionals that are better than average at
getting things running, and invest a little time to save
some money.

Many items are sold as non-working/parts, though sometimes
they actually work. But if I bid low enough, I won't feel bad
if it doesn't work.

I am not sure exactly how much I might have paid for a
DS10, but less than $800.

I got one of the $100 RX2600 that were being sold some
years ago, long enough that I don't remember.

But I do remember when Alpha was new, and thought it had
some interesting new ideas.

But I already have another machine to try out, that I haven't
even unpacked yet. Somewhat newer, though still priced
for hobby use.
> Dave runs a business. And as a business they are selling
> for market A. They can not make money selling for market B.
> If we look at market A then I don't think IslandCo is
> expensive.
>
> They are obviously expensive if we look at market B, but
> that is to be expected.

On Sunday, January 15, 2023 at 11:27:38 AM UTC-8, chris wrote:

(snip, I wrote)

> > My best compuarchaeology buy is a Sun T5220 for $38.13 including shipping.
> > I do suspect that they might have lost money on that one. It was from a
> > big computer recycling company, so they only have to make money
> > on average. Shipping distance wasn't so far, though.

(snip)

> I buy too many as well, but allows me to keep up to date on the lab
> systems at very low cost. Have run a Sun M3000 for 4 or 5 years now.
> Around 60.00 ukp on Ebay and arrived in a bricked condition, but found
> an obscure page that showed how to load a failsafe admin image and it
> all sprang into life. Similar situation with a T4-1 recently, but
> sold that on after fixing it to defaults. Both fixes took no more
> than a couple of hours, so well worth the effort.

I think the M3000 is a little newer than the T5220, though I
am not sure how they compare. It came without disks, but
there are people selling the disks with trays for a low price.
(Well, they are 146GB disks.)

But it is supposed to be that SAS is compatible with SATA drives,
so I might try a modern SATA SSD in that one. But running
NFS over gigabit Ethernet works pretty well.

I also have a Sun 3/E, bought for hobby pricing, which is a 6U
VME board, additional VME board for SCSI/Ethernet, and a
VME chassis to hold and power it.

Years ago, I was working on diskless Sun3 and Sun4 system, so
it wasn't hard to get it running. That is the last of the Sun3 models,
meant for embedded use. A little more dense than previous models.

On Sun, 2023-01-15 at 23:37 -0800, gah4 wrote:
> Years ago, I was working on diskless Sun3 and Sun4 system, so
> it wasn't hard to get it running.  That is the last of the Sun3
> models, meant for embedded use.  A little more dense than previous
> models.

Funnily enough, we just replaced a set of old Netgear NAS units with
newer Synology NAS units. One of these old Netgear NAS unit (ReadyNAS
Duo v1) has a bastardised SPARC v7 (with some v8 instructions, I
believe) processor embedded in it. I'm toying with the idea of
replacing the crappy Netgear firmware with something more modern.

--
Tactical Nuclear Kittens

On 2023-01-14, Dave Froble <davef@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
> On 1/14/2023 5:02 PM, David Turner wrote:
>> Fair enough
>> But losing money on them is not in my plans.
>
> You've always been helpful. I'm wishing you the best.
>
> However, my IT days are in the past. No new work for some time now. Basically
> retired, and, I have:
>

I hope you enjoy your retirement David (although I thought the business
owner wasn't closing for another year or so. Or has that time really
flown by already ? :-))

I thought you hadn't been posting for a while...

Simon.

PS: Got any post-retirement plans ? :-)

--
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.

Ten years ago I picked up a bunch of AlphaServer RX2600's, all of
which eventually were given away, except for 1, which is now dead
(presumably I could open it up and change some capacitors and maybe
resurrect). All of those 2600's were in the $100 to $300 USD price
range, including shipping (maybe in those days UPS was cheaper than it
is today). There's nothing cheap today (mostly). Sellers are charging
more because they can, I believe. Oh well, it's all for fun anyway.
Disks in those boxes are on sleds, which I used to have lying around;
not any more. But any SCSI disk would do just fine, in my experience;
I had a bunch of 72 GB and 300 Gb lying around. Nothing left now.

On Mon, Jan 16, 2023 at 2:30 AM gah4 via Info-vax <info-vax@rbnsn.com> wrote:
>
> On Sunday, January 15, 2023 at 7:21:13 AM UTC-8, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>
> (snip)
>
> > There are two completely different markets for used servers:
>
> > A) the market for tested and properly configured systems
> > sold with warranty targeted professional use and
> > hobbyists that are willing to pay for it
> > B) the market for systems practically given away with
> > absolutely no warranty of any kind and where buyer will
> > have to try and see if it can be made working targeted
> > hobbyist that either are not willing to pay or actually
> > enjoy messing around with the HW to get it working
>
> There is also market AB, for hobbyists that are slightly
> richer than average, or have special interest in something.
>
> Also, for professionals that are better than average at
> getting things running, and invest a little time to save
> some money.
>
> Many items are sold as non-working/parts, though sometimes
> they actually work. But if I bid low enough, I won't feel bad
> if it doesn't work.
>
> I am not sure exactly how much I might have paid for a
> DS10, but less than $800.
>
> I got one of the $100 RX2600 that were being sold some
> years ago, long enough that I don't remember.
>
> But I do remember when Alpha was new, and thought it had
> some interesting new ideas.
>
> But I already have another machine to try out, that I haven't
> even unpacked yet. Somewhat newer, though still priced
> for hobby use.
>
> > Dave runs a business. And as a business they are selling
> > for market A. They can not make money selling for market B.
>
> > If we look at market A then I don't think IslandCo is
> > expensive.
> >
> > They are obviously expensive if we look at market B, but
> > that is to be expected.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Info-vax mailing list
> Info-vax@rbnsn.com
> http://rbnsn.com/mailman/listinfo/info-vax_rbnsn.com

--
www.comets.com

On 1/16/23 10:57, Single Stage to Orbit wrote:
> On Sun, 2023-01-15 at 23:37 -0800, gah4 wrote:
>> Years ago, I was working on diskless Sun3 and Sun4 system, so
>> it wasn't hard to get it running.  That is the last of the Sun3
>> models, meant for embedded use.  A little more dense than previous
>> models.
>
> Funnily enough, we just replaced a set of old Netgear NAS units with
> newer Synology NAS units. One of these old Netgear NAS unit (ReadyNAS
> Duo v1) has a bastardised SPARC v7 (with some v8 instructions, I
> believe) processor embedded in it. I'm toying with the idea of
> replacing the crappy Netgear firmware with something more modern.
>

FreeBSD 11 works well on old Ultra machines, OpenBSD and Netbsd as
well perhaps, but getting a boot image into the flash might be the
biggest obstacle, unless you can diskless boot over the network.
rarp, tftp, bootparams, nfs etc. Interesting to experiment with it
anyway and not being x86 is a plus in terms of security...

Chris

Carl Friedberg <frida.fried@gmail.com> wrote:
>Ten years ago I picked up a bunch of AlphaServer RX2600's, all of
>which eventually were given away, except for 1, which is now dead
>(presumably I could open it up and change some capacitors and maybe
>resurrect). All of those 2600's were in the $100 to $300 USD price
>range, including shipping (maybe in those days UPS was cheaper than it
>is today). There's nothing cheap today (mostly). Sellers are charging
>more because they can, I believe. Oh well, it's all for fun anyway.
>Disks in those boxes are on sleds, which I used to have lying around;
>not any more. But any SCSI disk would do just fine, in my experience;
>I had a bunch of 72 GB and 300 Gb lying around. Nothing left now.

That is how the market is. When something first becomes obsolete, everyone
throws them away and you can get them for a song. As time goes by, fewer
of them exist because so many have been thrown away, and although the demand
doesn't increase much, it doesn't go away and the prices go up because the
supply is so much smaller. Sometimes after a while, the demand drops to be
below the small supply, and then prices drop. But sometimes it becomes a
valuable historical artifact and then the sky is the limit for the prices.

I am seeing equipment that I tossed into dumpsters in the seventies selling
for tens of thousands of dollars now. I should have kept more junk than
I did.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On 1/16/23 07:37, gah4 wrote:
> On Sunday, January 15, 2023 at 11:27:38 AM UTC-8, chris wrote:
>
> (snip, I wrote)
>
>>> My best compuarchaeology buy is a Sun T5220 for $38.13 including shipping.
>>> I do suspect that they might have lost money on that one. It was from a
>>> big computer recycling company, so they only have to make money
>>> on average. Shipping distance wasn't so far, though.
>
> (snip)
>
>> I buy too many as well, but allows me to keep up to date on the lab
>> systems at very low cost. Have run a Sun M3000 for 4 or 5 years now.
>> Around 60.00 ukp on Ebay and arrived in a bricked condition, but found
>> an obscure page that showed how to load a failsafe admin image and it
>> all sprang into life. Similar situation with a T4-1 recently, but
>> sold that on after fixing it to defaults. Both fixes took no more
>> than a couple of hours, so well worth the effort.
>
> I think the M3000 is a little newer than the T5220, though I
> am not sure how they compare. It came without disks, but
> there are people selling the disks with trays for a low price.
> (Well, they are 146GB disks.)
>
> But it is supposed to be that SAS is compatible with SATA drives,
> so I might try a modern SATA SSD in that one. But running
> NFS over gigabit Ethernet works pretty well.
>
> I also have a Sun 3/E, bought for hobby pricing, which is a 6U
> VME board, additional VME board for SCSI/Ethernet, and a
> VME chassis to hold and power it.
>
> Years ago, I was working on diskless Sun3 and Sun4 system, so
> it wasn't hard to get it running. That is the last of the Sun3 models,
> meant for embedded use. A little more dense than previous models.
>
>

The M3000 is the peak of Sun here and have tried quite few of the older
Ultra machines as well. The M series was unusual, for Sun anyway, in
that there is a management monitor, XSCF that talks to each cpu
domain via an internal tcp/ip network. The M3000 is single socket, up
to 4 cores at about 2.6Ghz and has a single domain, but the
other M series can have N processors, N domains. You can reach the obp
monitor for each domain / cpu via the XSCF monitor, which has a whole
raft of functionality for system management, error detection and
logging and more. The fly in the ointment for desktop use is the fact
that there is no usb port to connect a keyboard and mouse, but that
is fixed by using a pci-e usb card, with an hcl supported chipset.
Then, you can put in a sun supported graphics, add a symbolic link to
point to fb0 and voila, a desktop login screen appears. M series was
built by Fujitsu in Japan afiak and that's reflected in the obsessive
attention to detail and functionality of the XSCF management engine,
not to mention the hardware quality. Never needed to be rebooted, or
crashed in 4 years of 24x7 use here, other than for admin reasons.

Firefox performance is not good, never properly sorted before the
development team was shutdown, but otherwise, the fastest Sparc
machine ever used here and worth a look. Solaris 10 is really the
only game in town, though the Debian / Sparc group is active and
busy.

So much interesting hardware around now, much of it at almost scrap
prices...

Chris

On Monday, January 16, 2023 at 1:50:06 PM UTC-8, Carl Friedberg wrote:
> Ten years ago I picked up a bunch of AlphaServer RX2600's, all of
> which eventually were given away, except for 1, which is now dead
> (presumably I could open it up and change some capacitors and maybe
> resurrect). All of those 2600's were in the $100 to $300 USD price
> range, including shipping (maybe in those days UPS was cheaper than it
> is today).

Shipping costs have gone up. I think mine was about $30.

The T5220 was $18 shipping, from only one state away.

Otherwise, the RX2600 is Itanium not Alpha.

> There's nothing cheap today (mostly). Sellers are charging
> more because they can, I believe. Oh well, it's all for fun anyway.
> Disks in those boxes are on sleds, which I used to have lying around;
> not any more. But any SCSI disk would do just fine, in my experience;
> I had a bunch of 72 GB and 300 Gb lying around. Nothing left now.
They are SAS SCSI disks, which are slightly rare amount SCSI disks,
but not all that hard to find. And mine came with sleds, so I didn't
have to worry about those.

Some ship without, and sleds are sometimes hard to find.

On Monday, January 16, 2023 at 3:02:12 AM UTC-8, Single Stage to Orbit wrote:

(snip)

> Funnily enough, we just replaced a set of old Netgear NAS units with
> newer Synology NAS units. One of these old Netgear NAS unit (ReadyNAS
> Duo v1) has a bastardised SPARC v7 (with some v8 instructions, I
> believe) processor embedded in it. I'm toying with the idea of
> replacing the crappy Netgear firmware with something more modern.
I have a Nook e-book reader, originally from Barnes and Noble.

At some point, I was having problems with it. It turns out to run a
specialized version of Android. I found install instructions for an
more ordinary version of Android, which let me download newer
apps, such as new Overdrive.

If they are GNU licensed, then the source has to be available, but
it is a lot of work to go through the specialized parts. Among others,
the new Android, like cell phones, doesn't turn all the way off,
when you turn it off. Otherwise, it is a lot of fun.

I am not sure how hard it would be to get Solaris running on your box.

On 1/17/23 05:11, gah4 wrote:
> On Monday, January 16, 2023 at 1:50:06 PM UTC-8, Carl Friedberg wrote:
>> Ten years ago I picked up a bunch of AlphaServer RX2600's, all of
>> which eventually were given away, except for 1, which is now dead
>> (presumably I could open it up and change some capacitors and maybe
>> resurrect). All of those 2600's were in the $100 to $300 USD price
>> range, including shipping (maybe in those days UPS was cheaper than it
>> is today).
>
> Shipping costs have gone up. I think mine was about $30.
>
> The T5220 was $18 shipping, from only one state away.
>
> Otherwise, the RX2600 is Itanium not Alpha.
>
>> There's nothing cheap today (mostly). Sellers are charging
>> more because they can, I believe. Oh well, it's all for fun anyway.
>> Disks in those boxes are on sleds, which I used to have lying around;
>> not any more. But any SCSI disk would do just fine, in my experience;
>> I had a bunch of 72 GB and 300 Gb lying around. Nothing left now.
>
> They are SAS SCSI disks, which are slightly rare amount SCSI disks,
> but not all that hard to find. And mine came with sleds, so I didn't
> have to worry about those.
>
> Some ship without, and sleds are sometimes hard to find.
>
>

I've more or less standardised on 2.5" sas now. Sata are usually
limited to 7200 rpm, whereas sas are 10 or 15K, even 2.5". Much
faster access times and lower rotational latency.

A lot of the 2.5 sas drives around now, as users discard rotating
drives for ssd types. One Ebay seller here in the uk had hundreds
of them, all in boxes, netapp mainly and won 2 lots of 2.5 sas
1200Mb (1.2Tb), 10 in the lot, for around 100 ukp. Some 450 and 600's
prior to that as well. They have an mtbf of well over 10e6 hours
and not a single duff one here yet...

Chris

On Tuesday, January 17, 2023 at 6:55:22 AM UTC-8, chris wrote:

(snip, I wrote)

> > They are SAS SCSI disks, which are slightly rare amount SCSI disks,
> > but not all that hard to find. And mine came with sleds, so I didn't
> > have to worry about those.
> > Some ship without, and sleds are sometimes hard to find.
> I've more or less standardised on 2.5" sas now. Sata are usually
> limited to 7200 rpm, whereas sas are 10 or 15K, even 2.5". Much
> faster access times and lower rotational latency.
I got four of the ST914602S, 146GB drives, including the
right sleds for the T5220, for $18.

> A lot of the 2.5 sas drives around now, as users discard rotating
> drives for ssd types. One Ebay seller here in the uk had hundreds
> of them, all in boxes, netapp mainly and won 2 lots of 2.5 sas
> 1200Mb (1.2Tb), 10 in the lot, for around 100 ukp. Some 450 and 600's
> prior to that as well. They have an mtbf of well over 10e6 hours
> and not a single duff one here yet...
As I understand it, you can always connect SATA disks to a SAS
controller, but not the other way around.

But also, many current motherboards might have a SAS controller,
marketed as SATA. I have seen Unix-like systems use the SCSI
driver for what I thought were SATA.

But I now have a Synology box running with four 500GB SSD
as RAID 5, and with gigabit Ethernet running NFS.

But I might try a SATA SSD in the T5220, just to see it work.

Was there a SAS controller that would work with Alpha VMS on DS10/15/20/25 machines with the restrictions that it couldn't boot from that controller?

Or were they just faster unsupported parallel SCSI controllers (U320) or RAID controllers that worked for data disks on those systems?

Right now my franken-DS10 has a KZPEA with multiple IBM 2.5" U320 73GB disks drives (largest capacity 2.5" parallel SCSI drives I've found) in hot-swap server 4-drive shelves installed into former full height DAT drive housings, which is more than adequate for my needs; I don't want noisy universals.. And so far it has been fast enough for my needs except for very occasional huge compiles.

These new systems are faster than mine (466 -> 617MHz). Faster I/O would definitely help but again this is only for rare occasions.

I've got a pile of things to try eBaying or Craigslisting that would help offset the cost...

On Tuesday, January 17, 2023 at 7:57:51 PM UTC-6, gah4 wrote:
> On Tuesday, January 17, 2023 at 6:55:22 AM UTC-8, chris wrote:
>
> (snip, I wrote)
> > > They are SAS SCSI disks, which are slightly rare amount SCSI disks,
> > > but not all that hard to find. And mine came with sleds, so I didn't
> > > have to worry about those.
>
> > > Some ship without, and sleds are sometimes hard to find.
>
> > I've more or less standardised on 2.5" sas now. Sata are usually
> > limited to 7200 rpm, whereas sas are 10 or 15K, even 2.5". Much
> > faster access times and lower rotational latency.
> I got four of the ST914602S, 146GB drives, including the
> right sleds for the T5220, for $18.
> > A lot of the 2.5 sas drives around now, as users discard rotating
> > drives for ssd types. One Ebay seller here in the uk had hundreds
> > of them, all in boxes, netapp mainly and won 2 lots of 2.5 sas
> > 1200Mb (1.2Tb), 10 in the lot, for around 100 ukp. Some 450 and 600's
> > prior to that as well. They have an mtbf of well over 10e6 hours
> > and not a single duff one here yet...
> As I understand it, you can always connect SATA disks to a SAS
> controller, but not the other way around.
>
> But also, many current motherboards might have a SAS controller,
> marketed as SATA. I have seen Unix-like systems use the SCSI
> driver for what I thought were SATA.
>
> But I now have a Synology box running with four 500GB SSD
> as RAID 5, and with gigabit Ethernet running NFS.
>
> But I might try a SATA SSD in the T5220, just to see it work.

On 1/18/23 04:24, Rich Jordan wrote:
> Was there a SAS controller that would work with Alpha VMS on DS10/15/20/25 machines with the restrictions that it couldn't boot from that controller?
>
> Or were they just faster unsupported parallel SCSI controllers (U320) or RAID controllers that worked for data disks on those systems?
>
> Right now my franken-DS10 has a KZPEA with multiple IBM 2.5" U320 73GB disks drives (largest capacity 2.5" parallel SCSI drives I've found) in hot-swap server 4-drive shelves installed into former full height DAT drive housings, which is more than adequate for my needs; I don't want noisy universals. And so far it has been fast enough for my needs except for very occasional huge compiles.
>
> These new systems are faster than mine (466 -> 617MHz). Faster I/O would definitely help but again this is only for rare occasions.
>
> I've got a pile of things to try eBaying or Craigslisting that would help offset the cost...

I looked for a dec supported scsi controller back in the days when I
ran a 500/400, Tru64, but not thick on the ground here in the uk
and very expensive. Before Ebay, so no bargains from the US either.

Perhaps the most common sas controllers are the LSI Logic types,
sas1068 and others, which all the mainstream vendors seem to
rebadge. They do have an onboard rom bios to set up various raid
configurations, diags etc, but of course, that is X86 / pc code
which won't work on non X86 unless the vendor modifies the code
to suit the architecture. If not, there must be either standalone
or os based utilities to do that.

The HP smart array range are pretty well sorted. The usual rom
bios entered at boot to config, and in a raid setup, if a drive
goes down, just replace the drive and it will rebuild in the
background with no power down or reboot required. Pretty
bulletproof all round.

Chris

>
>
> On Tuesday, January 17, 2023 at 7:57:51 PM UTC-6, gah4 wrote:
>> On Tuesday, January 17, 2023 at 6:55:22 AM UTC-8, chris wrote:
>>
>> (snip, I wrote)
>>>> They are SAS SCSI disks, which are slightly rare amount SCSI disks,
>>>> but not all that hard to find. And mine came with sleds, so I didn't
>>>> have to worry about those.
>>
>>>> Some ship without, and sleds are sometimes hard to find.
>>
>>> I've more or less standardised on 2.5" sas now. Sata are usually
>>> limited to 7200 rpm, whereas sas are 10 or 15K, even 2.5". Much
>>> faster access times and lower rotational latency.
>> I got four of the ST914602S, 146GB drives, including the
>> right sleds for the T5220, for $18.
>>> A lot of the 2.5 sas drives around now, as users discard rotating
>>> drives for ssd types. One Ebay seller here in the uk had hundreds
>>> of them, all in boxes, netapp mainly and won 2 lots of 2.5 sas
>>> 1200Mb (1.2Tb), 10 in the lot, for around 100 ukp. Some 450 and 600's
>>> prior to that as well. They have an mtbf of well over 10e6 hours
>>> and not a single duff one here yet...
>> As I understand it, you can always connect SATA disks to a SAS
>> controller, but not the other way around.
>>
>> But also, many current motherboards might have a SAS controller,
>> marketed as SATA. I have seen Unix-like systems use the SCSI
>> driver for what I thought were SATA.
>>
>> But I now have a Synology box running with four 500GB SSD
>> as RAID 5, and with gigabit Ethernet running NFS.
>>
>> But I might try a SATA SSD in the T5220, just to see it work.

On 1/17/2023 10:24 PM, Rich Jordan wrote:
> Was there a SAS controller that would work with Alpha VMS on DS10/15/20/25 machines with the restrictions that it couldn't boot from that controller?
>

If you don't mind quite a bit of futzing around, you can make a P410 Smart Array card work in a DS10 (I've got one in both of mine) and I assume a DS15/20/25 since the PCI bus and firmware should be compatible.

Do a search of C.O.V and look for Rod Reiger (RIP) and P400 and P410. If you're serious about this (it's a non-trival amount of work) I can recreate my steps. You can't boot from it but you can make Smart Array volume sets from commodity SSD like Samsung EVO 860/870 for fast data storage

John H. Reinhardt

On Wednesday, January 18, 2023 at 9:45:27 AM UTC-6, John H Reinhardt wrote:
> On 1/17/2023 10:24 PM, Rich Jordan wrote:
> > Was there a SAS controller that would work with Alpha VMS on DS10/15/20/25 machines with the restrictions that it couldn't boot from that controller?
> >
> If you don't mind quite a bit of futzing around, you can make a P410 Smart Array card work in a DS10 (I've got one in both of mine) and I assume a DS15/20/25 since the PCI bus and firmware should be compatible.
>
> Do a search of C.O.V and look for Rod Reiger (RIP) and P400 and P410. If you're serious about this (it's a non-trival amount of work) I can recreate my steps. You can't boot from it but you can make Smart Array volume sets from commodity SSD like Samsung EVO 860/870 for fast data storage
>
> John H. Reinhardt

John,
thanks; that rang a bell. I may even have a p400 card hanging around at work.

Its not an immediate need but we have some surplus SAS drives at work that would provide a decent jump in storage if that was ever needed (like when my parallel SCSI disks eventually fail). But I still have working RZ25 and RZ26 drives running 24x7 so it may be a while ;)

Four slots. Video card, KZPEA, gigabit ethernet, and SAS if that combo can be made to work. I'm hoping its an anomaly with my hybrid DS10 (DS10L mainboard with DS10 riser) that is making the powerstorm card not work.

Rich

> [...] SAS drives [...]

When I looked into SAS storage for my XP1000, the only obvious card
choice in SYS$SYSTEM:SYS$CONFIG.DAT was "LSI Logic 1068 SAS", and the
only such cards I could find were 3.3V-only, and the XP1000 has no
suitable PCI slots. (I thought that sawing another slot in the card
edge might be ill-advised.)

As I recall, my RX2660 (not an Alpha) has such a gizmo on-board, and
the HP IPF Offline Diagnostic and Utilities CD includes a cfggen.efi:

fs5:\EFI\HP\TOOLS\IO_CARDS\SAS> cfggen

On 1/14/2023 9:13 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
> However, my IT days are in the past.  No new work for some time now.
> Basically retired,

So time to write a book about VMS basic?

Or create a great open source project in VMS Basic?

:-)

Arne

On 2/26/2023 8:58 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 1/14/2023 9:13 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
>> However, my IT days are in the past. No new work for some time now.
>> Basically retired,
>
> So time to write a book about VMS basic?
>
> Or create a great open source project in VMS Basic?
>
> :-)

Nope! I've got 3 aircraft projects I'm hoping to get flying this spring.

--
David Froble Tel: 724-529-0450
Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc. E-Mail: davef@tsoft-inc.com
DFE Ultralights, Inc.
170 Grimplin Road
Vanderbilt, PA 15486