DOWNLOADING FIRMWARE TO STORAGETEK LVD/SE BUS

[ROBERTO_16]

Hi all! Two weeks ago, I was in a Libraries course and the teacher told us that if we have a LVD-SE bus and we want to connect with our laptops, we had to put a SE active terminator to degrade the bus to SE. Somebody has tried this?

Last week I was in a customer with this problem in a STK 10/180 library and I used a SE active terminator (PN of HP:5063-5324)and some other terminators in all the possible ways.After 2 hours without working we decided to include a Single ended DVD in the bus and it worked.

Which is the part number of the terminator I must use to degrade the bus to SE? It's really possible to degrade the bus without including a SE device like DVD or DDS?

I know the way to download it with the web page and the CSE port, but with the laptop......the only way to connect it is inserting a SE device in the bus?

Thanks a lot for your time!!!


Roberto

[David Ruska]

Your laptop most likely uses a SCSI cable from your PCMCIA card which does not include the SCSI Diff Sense line (since the card edge connector cannot hold all the SCSI lines, something had to be left out). This prevents devices (and terminators) from knowing if the bus is single ended or LVDS. The Adaptec 1460/80 cards are all SE only. With an LVDS device on this card, you must use a singled-ended (ONLY) terminator. Using an autosensing LVDS/SE terminator will NOT work. For an HD68 connector, use the HP #5183-2408. Your workaround of adding an SE device on the bus forced the bus into single-ended mode.

I'm not sure why the active SE terminator you mentioned did not work (but I'll look into it).

- dave

[David Ruska · Accepted solution]

Just a few follow-ups.

Are you connecting to the LVDS drives or to the library controller? I'll guess the library controller.

I've seen two ways the library controller can be cabled. The first uses a Y-cable attached from the MPW (LVDS) card to the power-bulkhead. In this configuration, the termination is placed on one of the Y-cable ends. This configuration would also support daisy-chaining to a drive, however it's recommended to have the library at the end of the bus (see installation manual).

The other way an LVDS library controller can be cabled is using a straight SCSI cable from the power-bulkhead, along with an in-line (aka pass-through) multi-mode terminator (PN 10148029). In this configuration, the library controller must be at the end of the bus. Note: this will NOT work with a laptop PCMCIA SE card, since the terminator will not know to switch to SE mode (due to the lack of the Diff-sense line). To connect a laptop in this configuration, you would need to switch to an in-line SE terminator, or temporarily attach a Y-cable in place of the in-line terminator.

It is also recommended to have termination power supplied at both ends of the bus (but no more than 3 devices on the bus providing term power).

I hope this answers your question. The SE active terminator you mention should work, provided it is cabled up as described above.

- dave

[ROBERTO_16]

HI !! I'M HERE AGAIN. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ANSWERS. IF IT CAN HELP YOU, THE PCMCIA SLIM SCSI CARD I'M USING IS AN ADAPTEC 1460D FAST SCSI, SO I DON'T KNOW IF THERE IS A SCSI DIFF SENSE LINE ON IT.

I WILL TRY YOUR SOLUTION AND I WILL ANSWER YOU.

THANKS A LOT, DAVE

[David Ruska]

All the Adaptec slim SCSI cards (1460x, 1480x) use the same 26 pin connecter which excludes the diff-sense line.

Also, I believe all of the L180 LVDS cards ship with the straight SCSI cable and an in-line LVDS terminator. You would need to either replace this with an in-line SE terminator, or a y-cable with a single ended terminator, to connect it to a SlimSCSI card.