From: Parkins, Larye (NIH/NIAID) (LParkins@niaid.nih.gov)
Date: Wed May 28 2003 - 14:15:29 EDT
More on the subject of whether the SunPCi3 can be used in Ultra 5/10
systems...
I've had a number of additional responses on this topic, regarding
apparently conflicting data in the Sun marketing literature versus release
notes:
The brochure: http://www.sun.com/desktop/products/sunpci/datasheet.pdf
says "One 32-bit or 64-bit PCI slot required..."
But, later, it says, under "Platforms Supported"
All Sun Blade...
Sun Workgroup Servers (... 220R,250,420R,and 450...)
Sun Fire 280R and V480 servers (with available 32-bit or 64-bit PCI slot)
This could be interpreted to mean, "32-bit, but only on Sun Fire 280R and
V480...," or, simply semi-technical market literature. As I explained to my
customers in my proposal to try it anyway, the omission of the machines that
ran SunPCi2's in the SunPCi3 supported-hardware list could either mean, "It
won't work in anything else," or, "We only tested it on these machines,
which were currently in production at the time."
I went with the Tom C.'s response that said, "We tried it and it didn't
work," which convinced my customers to elect to stick with the
explicitly-supported configuration, which is doable at their site by
shuffling hardware between offices. [The other responses were questions, to
my previous summary.]
As far as I have been able to determine from reading the service manuals,
running prtdiag, and looking at the 32-bit PCI riser board on a U/10, is
that there is possibly some as-yet-unknown combination of factors:
a) PCI chipset. prtdiag says PCI-1 for U/10, just "pci" on the
E-450 and Blade 100. This is not definitive, but we could assume some
differences between earlier and later PCI-bus machines.
b) physical layout: there is a stiffener bar on the U/10 PCI riser.
It doesn't look like it would interfere with the additional pins on a 64-bit
PCI-card, but I haven't tried that yet (not authorized).
c) OBP firmware, which controls how devices are probed. My U/10s
are: OBP 3.25.3.
I'd like to be able to figure out definitely whether a SunPCi3 can be made
to work in a U/10, as, like some others who responded, we have several, but
Blade 150s are relatively cheap if we need more dual-purpose workstations.
-- Larye D. Parkins Systems Administrator, RML - NIAID 903 S. 4th St., Hamilton, MT 59840 (406) 363-9433 _______________________________________________ sunmanagers mailing list sunmanagers@sunmanagers.org http://www.sunmanagers.org/mailman/listinfo/sunmanagers
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