Adaptec 2940UW on AlphaStation

[Martin Liska]

hello folks !
i am trying to get an Adaptec PCI SCSI adapter working on an AlphaStation 200 4/166, running OpenVMS V7.3-1.
I am stuck with getting and installing a driver for this card. i see some articles in the web, but no detailled ideas.
I must admit being quite 'rusty' on VMS, used to manage and program the boxes some 15 years ago, just re-activated this one to play with.
any ideas / help greatly apprechiated !
/Martin

[Hoff · Accepted solution]

Your particular SCSI controller board is not recognized by your OpenVMS release, which usually means the board is "unsupported".

This leaves you with four choices: try a newer OpenVMS release, try a different SCSI board, hack the configuration to try to force a driver to connect (see below), or create a driver.

The usual approach is to acquire a supported board.

There is some evidence around that one of the AHA-2940UW boards is supported (I don't know the KZ-analog) but clearly this variant is not supported by this release.

There's at least one report around that there was OEM BIOS on the DEC AHA-2940UW board.

To try to swap in the a different driver, see:

http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=810392

If you "just want to play", then get yourself an OpenVMS VAX distro and load simh on your Windows, Mac OS X or Linux box. Use emulation.

[Joseph Huber_1]

No luck, the 2940 is not supported by VMS drivers (at least up to 7.3-2, probably not for 8.3 as far I see).

See discussiion in

http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=810392

[Steven Schweda]

You might have more success with a QLogic
card with an ISP1040 chip on it. If you can
find one cheap, a Digital-branded KZPBA-CA/CX
would be best, but I used more generic cards
in my AlpSta 200 systems (when I used my
AlpSta 200 systems). Tru64 did _not_ like
the non-Digital QLogic cards (looped when
trying to boot), and later-model Alpha
systems (like a Personal Workstation 500a[u])
were also happier with a real KZPBA.

I haven't been shopping for a SCSI card in a
while, but there were some Ebay bargains on
these things a few years ago. Not quite so
common as the Adaptec cards, but not really
rare, either.

[Martin Liska]

ok - i got the message. i will extend the system's drivespace with NFS mounted storage :-)

[Martin Liska]

ok, thanks. will use NFS to extend VMS' diskspace.
/martin

[Steven Schweda]

> [...] later-model Alpha
> systems (like a Personal Workstation 500a[u])
> were also happier with a real KZPBA.

For the record, I believe that the PWS
500a[u] was happy enough with the non-DEC
QLogic card, but the firmware in an XP1000
had some complaints about it. (By the time I
got the XP1000, I had a real KZPBA available,
so I used that instead of trying to work with
the non-DEC card. Thus I don't know if it
had any real problems, or if it could have
some magic NVRAM parameter changed to satisfy
the XP1000 firmware.)