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Looking for SCSI HD for a RS/6000 server.

T

tchinhe

Senior member
Well all of you administrators might know this. I have one of this 43P-140 AIX server. Now the drives in there is 5 years old and has been running 24/7 since they were installed. Yes there is occassional reboots and shutdowns. We looking for a version upgrade to aix 4.3 and at the same time replace the drives. Unfortunately, IBM has stopped carrying drives compatible with this machine and all the other vendors has is Refurbs. I have one person recommend that I buy a Retail IBM SCSI that is available in the stores. I have also heard some vendors say they are not compatible, firmware wise.

So what are you suggestion in looking for a cheap 9 or 18gb SCSI that will work.
 
Hi. The 43P-140 has a standard 50-pin Ultra-SCSI interface. While IBM itself might not offer any new drives with that interface, you should be able to use a more recent UW/U2/U160/U320 drive with the appropriate cable adapter (subject my caution below). Backward compatibility is a beautiful thing 🙂

Hyper Microsystems had some Ultra-SCSI drives still listed on their website the last time I checked.

There might be firmware problems if you tried plugging in a big scsi drive but I don't think you'd have any problems plugging in another 9.1gig or 18.2gig drive. Note though that I haven't done it (need to do it though as my 43P has a 5 year old drive too!)

Okay...Now for the caution. Ultra-SCSI specifies two modes of operation that define signal voltages and timings: single-ended (SE) and high voltage differential (HVD). Starting with Ultra2, HVD was dropped and low-voltage differential (LVD) was added. This means if youwant to use an U2/U160/U320 drive with an old Ultra-SCSI host adapter, you must make sure the adapter is set for SE operation. Trying to mix HVD and LVD is a Bad Thing (tm) and can result in hardware damage. I haven't looked inside my 43P to see how it's configured but I'm betting it's SE since that's probably the cheapest cabling. You'll definitely want to check before you plug in a new drive.
 
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