Sun Blade 1000 SCSI DVD/CD problem......

I have a Blade 1000 that won't recognise any SCSI DVD/CD drives I
connect to it's internal 50 pin SCSI cable. I'm using probe-scsi from
the bios prompt.

I've tried a Toshiba DVD from a similar machine and an older Toshiba CD.
Both are on ID 6 with terminaton off and parity on. Drives work fine on
other unix boxes.

It sees it's internal hard drive OK.

Any ideas?


--
Who needs a life when you've got Unix? :-)
Email: , John G.Burns B.Eng, Bonny Scotland
Web : http://www.unixnerd.demon.co.uk - The Ultimate BMW Homepage!
Need Sun or HP Unix kit? http://www.unixnerd.demon.co.uk/unix.html
www.Strathspey.co.uk - Quality Binoculars at a Sensible price

On Aug 18, 7:38*am, John Burns <j...@unixnerd.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> I have a Blade 1000 that won't recognise any SCSI DVD/CD drives I
> connect to it's internal 50 pin SCSI cable. I'm using probe-scsi from
> the bios prompt.
>
> I've tried a Toshiba DVD from a similar machine and an older Toshiba CD.
> Both are on ID 6 with terminaton off and parity on. Drives work fine on
> other unix boxes.
>
> It sees it's internal hard drive OK.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> --
> Who needs a life when you've got Unix? :-) *
> Email: j...@unixnerd.demon.co.uk, John G.Burns B.Eng, Bonny Scotland
> Web *:http://www.unixnerd.demon.co.uk- The Ultimate BMW Homepage!
> Need Sun or HP Unix kit?http://www.unixnerd.demon.co.uk/unix...athspey.co.uk- Quality Binoculars at a Sensible price

In my experience, not all SCSI CD-ROMS/DVD drives work in Sun boxes.
I've tried a couple of 4x and 16x from various Apple machines I had
and they never worked, although they work fine on HP and IBM boxes.

However the 16x from my Ultra 60 worked fine in my sunblade 2k.
Pretty sure there is some info on the web about block structure
requirements etc. and you'll need a sun compatible drive.

On 2009-08-18, John Burns <> wrote:
> I have a Blade 1000 that won't recognise any SCSI DVD/CD drives I
> connect to it's internal 50 pin SCSI cable. I'm using probe-scsi from
> the bios prompt.
>
> I've tried a Toshiba DVD from a similar machine and an older Toshiba CD.
> Both are on ID 6 with terminaton off and parity on. Drives work fine on
> other unix boxes.

Do you have the proper Sun cable with the terminator pack at the
drive end?

And have you tried "probe-scsi-all" instead? I forget whether
probe-scsi bothers to look at anything other than the FC-AL bus
(internal disk drives and possible external FC-AL drives).

> It sees it's internal hard drive OK.

Yes -- but that is on the FC-AL bus, even though it is called
"SCSI" by the probe utility. "probe-scsi-all" sees all three buses
(internal CD-ROM drive, FC-AL drives, and external 68-pin SCSI (which is
a separate bus from the internal ones), plus any others on cards plugged
into the PCI slots.

Good Luck,
DoN.

--
Email: <> | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
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--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

On 2009-08-18, Bart <> wrote:
> On Aug 18, 7:38*am, John Burns <j...@unixnerd.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> I have a Blade 1000 that won't recognise any SCSI DVD/CD drives I
>> connect to it's internal 50 pin SCSI cable. I'm using probe-scsi from
>> the bios prompt.
>>
>> I've tried a Toshiba DVD from a similar machine and an older Toshiba CD.
>> Both are on ID 6 with terminaton off and parity on. Drives work fine on
>> other unix boxes.
>>
>> It sees it's internal hard drive OK.
>>
>> Any ideas?
>>
>> --
>> Who needs a life when you've got Unix? :-) *
>> Email: j...@unixnerd.demon.co.uk, John G.Burns B.Eng, Bonny Scotland
>> Web *:http://www.unixnerd.demon.co.uk- The Ultimate BMW Homepage!
>> Need Sun or HP Unix kit?http://www.unixnerd.demon.co.uk/unix...athspey.co.uk- Quality Binoculars at a Sensible price
>
> In my experience, not all SCSI CD-ROMS/DVD drives work in Sun boxes.
> I've tried a couple of 4x and 16x from various Apple machines I had
> and they never worked, although they work fine on HP and IBM boxes.
>
> However the 16x from my Ultra 60 worked fine in my sunblade 2k.
> Pretty sure there is some info on the web about block structure
> requirements etc. and you'll need a sun compatible drive.

That applies when booting from the drive -- but probe-scsi-all
should at leat *see* it.

Two things apply when booting:

1) The default block size needs to be 512 bytes, instead of 2048
bytes which is the default for many non-Sun supplied ones. Once
the system is booted, it has a more complex driver, which can
tell the drive to switch to 512 byte block sizes. And I *think*
that the SB-1K/SB-2K/SF-280R systems are smart enough to tell
the drives even from the boot command.

2) If you are trying to boot from a DVD-ROM, instead of a CD-ROM
you need the latest firmware (downloadable from Sun) for the
Toshiba drives which were in everything from the Ultra-1 up
through the SB-2k at least. Here is what the output of
"cdrecord -scanbus" shows -- I have the drive in question moved
to an external bus, and have installed an IDE DVD+/-RW drive
with a bridge card by ACard to make it both a bootable drive and
a read-write drive.

5,6,0 506) 'TOSHIBA ' 'DVD-ROM SD-M1401' '1009' Removable CD-ROM

"probe-scsi-all" will show the model "M1401" and the firmware
version "1009" squished together in some format -- but it *must*
be the "1009" firmware version to boot from a DVD-ROM.

Note that I have seen one system with a bad internal SCSI bus,
and this may be one -- or it may simply be that the OP needs
"probe-scsi-all" instead of "probe-scsi" to see the drive.

That one system with the bad internal SCSI bus could be booted
from the same drive moved to an external box connected to the external
68-pin SCSI. It did require a devalias invocation to work for booting,
which I accomplished via the following two additions to the "printenv"
at the OBP level:

================================================== ====================
use-nvramrc?=true
nvramrc=devalias cdrom1 /pc1@8,700000/scsi@2,1/disk@6,0:f
================================================== ====================

Note that the early part of that may need changing based on
information from "probe-scsi-all", and you have to type:

boot cdrom1

instead of

boot cdrom

to use it. My example has the drive connected to an extra PCI card, not
to the built-in external SCSI bus.

In any case, the string will have to end with "/disk@?,0:f",
where '?' corresponds to the SCSI ID of the drive -- jumper or swich on
the external box.

I hope that this helps,
DoN.

--
Email: <> | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
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--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

"DoN. Nichols" <> writes:

>2) If you are trying to boot from a DVD-ROM, instead of a CD-ROM
> you need the latest firmware (downloadable from Sun) for the
> Toshiba drives which were in everything from the Ultra-1 up
> through the SB-2k at least.

How does one upgrade the firmware in a DVD-ROM from Solaris?

gert
--
Yield to temptation ... it may not pass your way again! -- Lazarus Long
//www.muc.de/~gert
Gert Doering - Munich, Germany
fax: +49-89-3243328

On Aug 19, 4:53*pm, g...@greenie.muc.de (Gert Doering) wrote:
> "DoN. Nichols" <dnich...@d-and-d.com> writes:
> >2) *If you are trying to boot from a DVD-ROM, instead of a CD-ROM
> > * *you need the latest firmware (downloadable from Sun) for the
> > * *Toshiba drives which were in everything from the Ultra-1 up
> > * *through the SB-2k at least. *
>
> How does one upgrade the firmware in a DVD-ROM from Solaris?

A quick grep of Sun's xref file indicates to me that installing patch
111649-04 would upgrade the firmware of the DVD drive.

111649|04|May/19/05| | | | |Unbundled|||Hardware/DVD: Toshiba DVD
1401 firmware

On 2009-08-19, Gert Doering <> wrote:
> "DoN. Nichols" <> writes:
>
>>2) If you are trying to boot from a DVD-ROM, instead of a CD-ROM
>> you need the latest firmware (downloadable from Sun) for the
>> Toshiba drives which were in everything from the Ultra-1 up
>> through the SB-2k at least.
>
> How does one upgrade the firmware in a DVD-ROM from Solaris?

You search for the patch "111649-04" on Sun's site (it will
proably be a compressed tar file), extract it, read the README file
included, and follow the instructions:

================================================== ====================
-r--r--r-- 1 dnichols family 93 May 16 2005 copyright
-r--r--r-- 1 dnichols family 13K Sep 27 2005 LEGAL_LICENSE.TXT
-r--r--r-- 1 dnichols family 5.6K Aug 27 2001 License
-rwxr-xr-x 1 dnichols family 55K Aug 27 2001 optdload*
-rw-r--r-- 1 dnichols family 8.8K Mar 9 2006 README.111649-04
-r--r--r-- 1 dnichols family 116K Aug 27 2001 Yg1009.hex
================================================== ====================

When I downloaded it, it was free -- and I hope that it still
is. I've used mine quite a few times since I got the patch.

The README shows yet another way to view the version of the
DVD-ROM drive:

iostat -E | grep DVD

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: <> | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

Thanks for the advice guys :-)

> --- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

cool sig :-)

--
Who needs a life when you've got Unix? :-)
Email: , John G.Burns B.Eng, Bonny Scotland
Web : http://www.unixnerd.demon.co.uk - The Ultimate BMW Homepage!
Need Sun or HP Unix kit? http://www.unixnerd.demon.co.uk/unix.html
www.Strathspey.co.uk - Quality Binoculars at a Sensible price

On 2009-08-20, John Burns <> wrote:
> Thanks for the advice guys :-)

You're welcome.

>> --- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---
>
> cool sig :-)

Thanks! It came from a button I got at a Science Fiction
Convention many years ago. I've never been able to find out who
originally said it. The button maker did not know.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: <> | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

DoN. Nichols wrote:
> On 2009-08-18, Bart <> wrote:
>> On Aug 18, 7:38 am, John Burns <j...@unixnerd.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>> I have a Blade 1000 that won't recognise any SCSI DVD/CD drives I
>>> connect to it's internal 50 pin SCSI cable. I'm using probe-scsi from
>>> the bios prompt.
>>>
>>> I've tried a Toshiba DVD from a similar machine and an older Toshiba CD.
>>> Both are on ID 6 with terminaton off and parity on. Drives work fine on
>>> other unix boxes.
>>>
>>> It sees it's internal hard drive OK.
>>>
>>> Any ideas?
>>>
>>> --
>>> Who needs a life when you've got Unix? :-)
>>> Email: j...@unixnerd.demon.co.uk, John G.Burns B.Eng, Bonny Scotland
>>> Web :http://www.unixnerd.demon.co.uk- The Ultimate BMW Homepage!
>>> Need Sun or HP Unix kit?http://www.unixnerd.demon.co.uk/unix...athspey.co.uk- Quality Binoculars at a Sensible price
>> In my experience, not all SCSI CD-ROMS/DVD drives work in Sun boxes.
>> I've tried a couple of 4x and 16x from various Apple machines I had
>> and they never worked, although they work fine on HP and IBM boxes.
>>
>> However the 16x from my Ultra 60 worked fine in my sunblade 2k.
>> Pretty sure there is some info on the web about block structure
>> requirements etc. and you'll need a sun compatible drive.
>
> That applies when booting from the drive -- but probe-scsi-all
> should at leat *see* it.
>
> Two things apply when booting:
>
> 1) The default block size needs to be 512 bytes, instead of 2048
> bytes which is the default for many non-Sun supplied ones. Once
> the system is booted, it has a more complex driver, which can
> tell the drive to switch to 512 byte block sizes. And I *think*
> that the SB-1K/SB-2K/SF-280R systems are smart enough to tell
> the drives even from the boot command.

I used a SCSI->IDE converted in my Blade 2000 (basically the same
machine as a 1000). That worked fine, and allowed me to use a double
layer DVD drive. I never set the block size on that SCSI->IDE converter
(I'm not even sure I could have done so), but it worked fine. So I think
the Blade 2000 is smart enough to work with anything.

An obvious problem could be a faulty terminator or cable. If John has an
external enclosure which would take the drive, I would be tempted to
make it an external device and see if that works. If so, it would
suggest the drive is suitable, but a cable issue.