HP ULTRA2 LVD SCSI Card - Part #A4999A

[Angie_1]

Was wondering if an HP ULTRA2 LVD SCSI Card - Part #A4999A - could be installed in a PC running Windows 2000? We originally purchased it for a C3000 but instead were thinking of hooking up our disk backup library to the Windows 2000 box with this SCSI card installed in it. We don't want to blow up anything if we try this.

Please advise.
Angie

[Pete Randall]

Angie,

You can get SCSI cards for Intel platforms but I don't think you'll be able to use this one. The architectures are too different.


Pete

[Angie_1]

Thanks for the reply.
Can someone please verify FOR SURE that the architectures are truly too different?

Thank you,
Angie

[Pete Randall]

Well, you could always open up the PC and try to plug it in. That would probably verify it!


Pete

[Pete Randall]

Or let me ask you this: would you expect an I/O card from an Apple to work in a Windoze box?


Pete

[Angie_1]

Ok I can see you are an HPUX GURU but I seriously need to know if doing this would fry the box. Anyone else out there?

Angie

[A. Clay Stephenson]

It's not going to harm your PC but the gotcha may be finding a compatible driver for it. Plug it in and "use the Force".

[Umapathy S]

Angie,
You first need to know about some hardware fundamentals. When you are saying a PC, its mostly an intel platform that follows CISC processor architecture and other accessories/pheriperals are manufactured on that basis only.
HP-PA is a RISC architecture. Moreover you are trying to plug in a SCSI type into a predominatly IDE type hardware.
I have never tried like that. May be you can share your experience with us.

HTH,
Umapathy

[Angie_1]

Yea I can "Use the Force" and I will send you the bill when and if it fries this card! hahahahahaha

Angie

[Gregory Fruth]

At one time the A4999A was actually a
LSI Logic Symbios SYM8951U. Perhaps it
still is; physically look at the card to
see. The A4999A FAQ says:

----
Q: Can I use the A4999A card in an HP PC
or IA-32 workstation?

A: At the moment, possibly. Such use is not
supported by HP, and the A4999A does not
include any PC software or cabling. Some PC
software is available on the LSI Logic site,
but it may not be the complete suite supplied
on the CD-ROM shipped with PC versions of
this card.
----

Unfortunately, I can no longer find this
document or any other info on the A4999A
on the HP web site.

Good luck!

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Angie,

Truly, it's not going to harm either the card or the PC --- the PCI standards take care of that issue. You do have to concern yourself with compatible drives and terminators. For example, it you connect the SCSI card to HVD drives bad things can happen. LVD SCSI is compatible with LVD SCSI device and SE-SCSI devices. As long as you don't connect the SCSI connector to incompatible (i.e. HVD SCSI drives) then no harm will befall any component.

Software compatibility is another issue. It may well be that Windows will see this card as a known SCSI controller and use/install the correct driver for it -- but I wouldn't bet on it.

[Angie_1]

Thanks for the reply.

Ok you are right. It does say LSI Logic on it. SYM8951U. Ok now I understand the problem may be in finding drivers, but am course curious, will I physically damage the PC or card if I plug it into a PC? How can drivers be found for this LSI Logic SYM8951U since we can't seem to find it on LSI Logic's webpage.

Angie

[Angie_1]

OK the DLT library that we have is a DLT 7000, product #A4851A and I don't know if the 2 drives that are in there are Low Voltage Differential or not.

Will try to find out.
Thanks for the input.

Angie

[Gregory Fruth]

The A4999A / SYM8951U is PCI 2.1 compliant,
and can be plugged into a 32-bit, 33 MHz PCI
slot at either 3.3 or 5.0 Volts. I dunno how you
can determine if your PC has such a slot -- I
suspect it does, but can't guarantee it. I would
wager that plugging it into your PC will not
damage either the card or the PC, but that's
just a guess.

If you have an A4999A, a C3000, and an HP DLT
drive, and you want assurances that it will work, then
why would you bother plugging it into a PC? I
doubt that the PC will be any faster than the C3000,
because the performance will be limited by the
network and SCSI speeds, not the speed of the
CPU.

If you plug it into the PC, Windows might already
have a driver for it, or perhaps it can use a generic
PCI SCSI adapter driver.

However, the A4851A DLT7000 appears to be a
SCSI Fast Wide Differential (FWD) device; if this is
true, DO NOT connect it to the A4999A!!! The
A4999A is Low Voltage Differential (LVD). FWD
SCSI uses High Voltage Differential (HVD) signalling,
and HVD devices can damage LVD devices.

[Angie_1]

Thanks for the great reply.

So FOR SURE fast wide differential devices ARE HIGH VOLTAGE?

Just want to make that clear.

So it sounds like I can't take this Ultra 2 SCSI card, place it in a PC, AND hook up this DLT 4851A library due to this SCSI card being Low Voltage and the tape library being HIGH VOLTAGE.

All correct?

Angie

[Angie_1]

I forgot to mention that the reason we are doing this, is because we have had problems with our Netvault software recognizing the tapes in the slots correctly for the DLT library. (shows BAD for slots that have brand new out-of-wrapper tapes). By moving this library and hooking it into the Windows 2000 system that is running Netvault, we are hoping the tapes in the slots will recognize correctly and to help troubleshoot what is going on.

Angie

[Angie_1]

So what SCSI card is NOT LVD, but High Voltage, and would work in a Windows 2000 system and of course be connected to the HP DLT 7000 product #A4851A system?

============================================
"However, the A4851A DLT7000 appears to be a
SCSI Fast Wide Differential (FWD) device; if this is
true, DO NOT connect it to the A4999A!!! The
A4999A is Low Voltage Differential (LVD). FWD
SCSI uses High Voltage Differential (HVD) signalling,
and HVD devices can damage LVD devices."

[Gregory Fruth]

Yes, FWD devices are always HVD. LVD did not
exist until Ultra2 was introduced. (Ultra2 came after
Ultra, which came after Fast.)

What type of computer is the DLT currently connected
to? If it's your C3000, is the drive connected to a FWD
port on the C3000?

As for your difficulties with the DLT, are you sure
you're using the right type of tape? I'm not very familiar
with DLT, but in the DDS world, if you put a DDS-4
tape in a DDS-3 drive the drive won't recognize it.
Perhaps your new tapes are of a newer generation
DLT technology.

As for HVD cards, HP makes the A4976A for HP 9000
workstations, but I have no idea if it'll work in a PC.
Check LSI and Adaptec to see if they have PC-compatible
FWD cards.

FWD / HVD is the oddball of the SCSI family, and is not
compatible with the other types. It was deployed widely
by HP but is now pretty much obsolete.

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

Your A4851A is a little 2/15 DLT Library and is definitely HVD SCSI. I actually have one of the little libraries and use it under OmniBack to backup PC data. If I were you, I would purchase an Adaptec AHA-2944UW. If you have two DLT7000's in your 2/15 then you actually need two SCSI controllers to operate both drives simultaneously. If you are running 2 DLT4000's then both of these can share a single SCSI bus because of the less demanding bandwidth requirements.

[Angie_1]

Ok thanks fo rverifying that my library is High Voltage. The DLT library will be connected to a PC (if I see now that I get the correct SCSI High Voltage card). I am sure we are using the correct DLT tapes as we did have it hooked to our C3000 running Omniback and all was well. Its not until we purchased Netvault disk backup software that we are wanting to change our entire configuration.

What is the Adaptec AHA-2944UW and where can I buy it from? I wanted to clarify will this Adaptec card work in Windows 2000 and then I will be able to hook this A4851A tape library to it? I am assuming the ADapter AHA-2944UW IS HIGH VOLTAGE.

Right?
Angie
===================================


Yes, FWD devices are always HVD. LVD did not
exist until Ultra2 was introduced. (Ultra2 came after
Ultra, which came after Fast.)

What type of computer is the DLT currently connected
to? If it's your C3000, is the drive connected to a FWD
port on the C3000?

As for your difficulties with the DLT, are you sure
you're using the right type of tape? I'm not very familiar
with DLT, but in the DDS world, if you put a DDS-4
tape in a DDS-3 drive the drive won't recognize it.
Perhaps your new tapes are of a newer generation
DLT technology.

As for HVD cards, HP makes the A4976A for HP 9000
workstations, but I have no idea if it'll work in a PC.
Check LSI and Adaptec to see if they have PC-compatible
FWD cards.

FWD / HVD is the oddball of the SCSI family, and is not
compatible with the other types. It was deployed widely
by HP but is now pretty much obsolete.



A. Clay Stephenson


September 11, 2003 20:03 PM GMT points for answer: Unassigned109876543210

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your A4851A is a little 2/15 DLT Library and is definitely HVD SCSI. I actually have one of the little libraries and use it under OmniBack to backup PC data. If I were you, I would purchase an Adaptec AHA-2944UW. If you have two DLT7000's in your 2/15 then you actually need two SCSI controllers to operate both drives simultaneously. If you are running 2 DLT4000's then both of these can share a single SCSI bus because of the less demanding bandwidth requirements.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Adaptec is probably the best-known of the PC SCSI manufacturers.

http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/product/proddetail.html?sess=no&language=English+US&prodkey=AHA-2944UW&cat=%2fTechnology%2fSCSI%2fSCSI+for+Servers

You can order a 2944UW all day long from almost any of the PC suppliers. e.g. www.cdw.com

[Angie_1]

One more question, if the 2 drives in the DLT 7000 library, model A4851A, are daisy chained together, then why would you need to buy 2 Adaptec SCSI cards as specified in the last email in order to write out simulaneously?

Angie

[A. Clay Stephenson]

If you look at the maximum sustained throughput for the SCSI card and the maximum sustained throughput for a DLT7000 or DLT8000, you will find that a single DLT7000 can take essentially the full bandwidth of the SCSI bus. The DLT4000 uses about half as much as a DLT7000 so that two of them will not saturate the bus. HP has always strongly recommended that only one active DLT7000/8000 be on a bus.
Two drives sharing a bus will work but because of the constant start/stop/rewind cycles of the tape drive mechanism on a saturated SCSI bus, it's very probable that the throughput of a SINGLE DLT7000 that is allowed to stream (because the bus is not saturated) will far exceed the throughput of two hog-tied DLT7K's.
Note: It is perfectly ok for the robot (which uses essentially no bandwidth) and a single DLT7K to share a common bus.

[Angie_1]

Interesting. Thanks for explaining all that.
Now one other question. Are you running Omniback on a PC as your cell server and so that is why you know that this HP DLT Library A4851A will work with the specified Adaptec High Voltage SCSI card you specified?

Angie

[A. Clay Stephenson]

I'm positive the AHA2944UW will work under Windows NT4/2K with your 2/15 Library. My Cell Server is not (and never will be anything but HP-UX) but one of the drives in the 2/15 is connected to a Windows server (as a media agent) and the other is connected to an HP-UX box.

To be accurate but confusing the drive is question is actually configured like this:

Windows Server AHA2944UW (SCSI ID 7 Terminator) <-----> DLT7K (SCSI ID 0) <---->
(SCSI ID 6 Terminator) HPD380/2.

The drive is actually shared by both Windows and HP-UX --- just not at the same time.