SCSI to IDE adapters for HP

[Michael D'Aulerio]

I have an HP9000/744 system running HP-UX 10.20 (nothing like state-of-the-art). We're using a SCSI CD-RW but can't find a supplier for all the systems we need (> 100).
Does anyone know if we can use an IDE drive with a SCSI-to-IDE adapter? I'm hoping we can and that it would be transparent to the OS.

I also found a ITRC thread that talked about a RockRidge patch for HP-UX 11.0. Anyone know if there is an equivalent for 10.20?

Thanks,
Mike

P.S. This thread has been moved from Disk to HP 9000. -HP Forum Moderator

[Bill Hassell · Accepted solution]

SCSI CDROM drives are virtually out of production, especially those that can boot HP-UX. The reason is that the HP 9000 machines require a different sector size and unless the CDROM drives have a jumper for this, they will work once HP-UX is booted but do nothing when you try to get the CPU to boot from the CD.

As far as an adapter, the same issue holds true--the drive must support the two sector sizes. Only HP-branded and Toshiba CDROM drives (and many Plextor models) can do this. You'll just have to try any adapters to see if they will work.

All patches and changes for 10.20 stopped in Dec 2001, so there is (and will never be) a patch for RockRidge on 10.20. Instead, you have to use PFS which is somewhat painful to use but will translate RockRidge to an NFS filesystem. See man pfs.

[Michael D'Aulerio]

Thank you Bill.

I was afraid that I was grasping at straws but I thought I'd give it a shot. We currently use Plextor SCSI CD-ROM drives so maybe the Plextor IDE drives will work with the convertor.

Mike

[Florian Heigl (new acc)]

If You can wait a few days, I'll post back on testing such a config, even though I'm not sure I've got any reasonable IDE drive (as in: reads 512byte blocks) around, but a last the adapter is here and an old 715/50 with 10.20 also is.

but it *will* take some time as I'll first have to fix my A180 ;)

[Michael D'Aulerio]

Thank you Florian. I appreciate your help.
I've been looking at DVD-RW drives also but haven't found any one that supports the 512-byte block size.

Mike

[Florian Heigl (new acc)]

Hi,

I've started testing yesterday night - I've put a cheap Yamaha SCSI to IDE adapter on my Aopen DVD-recorder.
I burnt a CD on AIX with 40x speed using cdrecord, without any problems. I'll move it over to a D-Class tonight and try booting.

The adapter *includes* a jumper for setting the blocksize to either 512 or 2048 byte.

I'm not sure though if that adapter can be easily ordered, mine came from Ebay.

The 'regular' Acard adapters are much more sophisticated, but also more expensive.

[Florian Heigl (new acc)]

the 512/2048 obviously works!

the PC Operatingsystem-image I burnt tonight won't boot in a pc but is readable - it might appear I've got myself a 512byte sector CD for the PC now ;)

[Florian Heigl (new acc)]

Hi,

so, finally a useful test:
I booted our Ignite Boot CD on a D270 using the Yamaha SCSI-IDE Adapter and an Aopen DUW1608.
It worked w/o problems and quite fast, too.
The adapter appears to be called Y769970.
Confusing fact - it also booted when I set the
'block size' jumper. Don't ask me :)

Seems I forgot my install CD in the other D-Class, but anyway - it works.