DSSI mystery disk

[GanjaTron]

Hi all,

I managed to get my hands on an RF72 DSSI disk for my VAX 4000. I'm not (yet) familiar with DEC hardware, so bear with me.

After installing and powering it up, the drive makes tons of calibration noise before settling down. Even when idle there's still the occasional audible activity; is this normal for a DSSI drive? I remember some early 5.25" monster SCSI drives did this too, but far less obtrusively.

Anyway, the drive showed up in the VAX console (rah!):

>>>show dssi
DSSI Bus 0 Node 0 (OLLIE3)
-DIA0 (RF72)

DSSI Bus 0 Node 6 (*)

DSSI Bus 1 Node 7 (*)

I assumed "OLLIE3" is a volume label, and that the disk might be formatted; on a whim, I tried booting from it (with audible activity from the drive):

>>>boot dia1/1/0
(BOOT/R5:0 DIA0)

  2..
-OLLIE3$DIA0
?42 NOSUCHFILE, DIA◈
?06 HLT INST
        PC = 00000D75
Bootstrap failure.
>>>

Am I right in assuming there's no boot image on the drive, or is the drive actually faulty? Any way I can test it in the console?

Any hints appreciated where to go from here. Thanks!

--GT

 

[gslick]

Hi all,

I managed to get my hands on an RF72 DSSI disk for my VAX 4000. I'm not (yet) familiar with DEC hardware, so bear with me.

Any way I can test it in the console?
--GT

DSSI drives contain embedded diagnostic utilities which you can access from the VAX system console.

The RF drive built in utilities and diagnostics are described here:
RF Series Integrated Storage Element User Guide
Order Number: EK-RF72D-UG-008
http://manx.classiccmp.org/collections/mds-199909/cd3/disk/rf72dug8.pdf

-Glen

 

[m_thompson]

DSSI is more like a network than what would would see with SCSI. You can login to the DSSI disk from the console just like it was another computer, and then run diagnostics, configure the drive, and look at statistics.

 

[GanjaTron]

Hi all,

thanks for the info, I just ran the embedded diags via the console's SET HOST/DUP/DSSI/BUS command, and it passed with 0 errors after lots of crunch 'n' grind. (Rah!)
Now to get the installation media from the OpenVMS hobbyist program. Any recommendations for a user group to join?

Best regards & have a good week,

--GT