kgpsa-cx

[Wilroy V. Ticzon]

Hi we are planning to migrate to SAN env, our Alpha GS140 server with PN number DWLPB-BA motherboard and our HBA card is DS-KGPSA-CX, the problem is when we try to install the HBA card, it seems that card is not fitted to the PCI slot of the motherboard, is their any way we can install the HBA card?

[Uwe Zessin]

I don't know what the DWLPB looks like, but I had problems fitting certain adapters into certain slots of an AlphaServer DS25 when the 'motherboard' itself was slightly misaligned.

[Mike Naime]

If this is an upgraded Alpha 8400, I got ours to boot from the SAN. You had to SET MODE DIAG before you could get to WWIDMGR.

My cards are plugged into a PCI drawer/IO backplane, not on a "Motherboard".

[Cass Witkowski]

The GS140 has a PCI card cage (DWLPB-AA) with 12 slots.

Are you saying that there is a problem physically installing the card? Can you be more specific on the problem?

[Wilroy V. Ticzon]

hi Mike,
yup this is upgraded version of 8400, and also the card plugged to a PCI i/o box drawer.

Hi Cass,
Sorry for not being specific with my problem. What we encounter is that after inserting the HBA card into the slot of the PCI box, the size of the card is not the same with the pci slot, meaning there is a excess part of the card that is not physically inserted into the slot, I already did the following but the wwidmgr wont work and hba cannot be detected
1. SET MODE DIAG
2. upgrade the latest firmware


thanks

[Mike Naime]

Is this a one GIG HBA? We have the 1 GIG HBA's in our 8400/140. I have not tried to install a 2GIG HBA into them.

The firmware upgrade may have killed you! It did us! We last firmware upgraded our 8400 boxes about 2 years ago to 6.0. When we did, we wound up backing it out. Since then we have left it alone. According to our platinum TAMS, there have not been any firmware updates to the 8400 Hardware since then.

Read the booklet in the firmware CD jacket. You will see that the 8400 has not had any updates since 5.9-2. That is what is running on my 8400 boxes today.

For what it's worth, I am in the process of getting my management to sign off on replacing our 8400's with a 1/2 rack of DS25's. I get the same # of CPU's and 4x the memory in one floor tile that uses less power consumption than the 8400 uses in 4 floor tiles of space!

Mike Naime

[Wilroy V. Ticzon]

Hi Mike,

yup its a 1 GB HBA Card(i think 2 GB HBA is not supported to GS140 env), but upgrading to new firmware version is actually recommended by our local maintenance provider (which is a partner of HP) So meaning to say i have to downgreade our firmare to lower 5.9.

thanks

[Mike Naime]

Our HBA's are in some of the upper (Physical location) slots of the PCI drawer. I remember there being some different length slots in the PCI drawer. I have not opened one up in probably a year, so I can't remember the exact locations. You might need to shuffle some cards around to get your HBA's to install correctly. Although at the back of my mind, I seem to remember the 16 bit card operating in 8 bit mode because that was all of the slot that it would plug into.

Last time I had the boxes open, I removed all of the unused cards in the PCI drawers in both boxes. We had one CI interface card at the time that was throwing errors. Actually I'm surprised that the box has lasted this long without any major hardware problems that would have been it's death knell. (Gee... Can we replace it now?)