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DraconianTimes
n00b
Joined: 26 Oct 2003
Posts: 9
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 Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2004 12:17 am Post subject: Ultra 60 - IDE, USB & SCSI? |
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Hi all.
I have just bought an Ultra 60 (2x300MHz, 9GB SCSI Disk, 512Mb RAM, Creator3D). I will be installing Gentoo on the new machine (latest 2.6 kernel). I got it cheap off of eBay 
The U60 is intended to take over my main desktop functions. I have been reading the forums and searching usenet, but would like some clarification on the following:
1. I have a DVD-rewriter. If I plug in a PCI IDE Controller, will I be able to use the drive? Can anyone recommend a PCI card that will let me do this?
2. According to recent posts, an NEC compatible USB2.0 PCI card will allow me to connect my cameras, external drives etc. Can anyone recommend a specific make of card that definitely works (e.g. Belkin xxxxx).
3. This machine will be my first SCSI driven machine. Can I simply swap out the existing SCA drive (9GB) for a larger one and re-install my software or is it like SGI kit where only certain drives will work? (I'd like to pop a 36GB drive in there).
Thanks in advance for your replies!
-DraconianTimes |
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Ferris
Retired Dev
Joined: 13 Jan 2003
Posts: 426
Location: N. Virginia (USA)
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| Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2004 3:26 pm Post subject: |
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To the last point: Only certain disks will work. A typical disk looks like a
Seagate ST336704LC (Sun part X5242A; look at
http://sunsolve.sun.com/handbook_pub/Systems/U60/component.disks.html )
These are readily available on eBay, for example, bit the are pricy.
But if you are willing to use 2x18, you will see your options through the same
link, and they are reasonably priced on, say, eBay.
In any case, you will need to use your existing system to put a sun label
onto your new disk before you install on it. If you use an "off brand" disk,
this can be a pain, because fdisk won't know about it, and you will have to
define the disk charactistics yourself (parted might do better). (If you get
something being sold with a sun part number, it will already be labeled.) |
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Corp.Nobbs
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 02 Oct 2003
Posts: 112
Location: Reading, UK
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| Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2004 3:01 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | 1. I have a DVD-rewriter. If I plug in a PCI IDE Controller, will I be able to use the drive? Can anyone recommend a PCI card that will let me do this? |
I have an Ultra 30 with a Promise Ultra ATA-133 TX2 card installed in the 66Mhz slot. This is running 2 IDE Harddrives in a Raid 0 mirror. The Promise works fine once you have compiled in support in the kernel for it. When I built the system using the 1.4 Livecd, originally the card is not found as the kernel had no support for it.
The other thing to remember about a dumb card like this is that OpenBoot knows nothing about it, so anything attached to it is not bootable. I am using the original tiny (and slow) 4.2Gb SCSI to hold the system on.
As to whether you could run a DVD-RW off this card, I don't see a problem with it. Again, as long as you compile in modules for ide-cd, udf etc, it should work - just not bootable..
I had problems if I had the Promise compiled as modules, so thats why I opted to include these in the kernel.. Also remember there is a kernel size limit of about 3.6Mb otherwise silo fails to load it, so choose your kernel options sparingly.
_________________
Asus A8V
AMD64 3500+
1GB XMS3200C2 Pro
120GB Barracuda SATA
Geforce 3 |
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DraconianTimes
n00b
Joined: 26 Oct 2003
Posts: 9
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| Posted: Sat Mar 13, 2004 10:19 am Post subject: Top stuff |
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Thanks for answering my questions. Very useful indeed!
Regards,
-DraconianTimes |
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