Rimfire 3400's and 4.0.3

[Paul Allen]

A week or so ago, I posted about the trouble I was having putting up SunOS
4.0.3 on some machines that have Ciprico Rimfire 3400 ESDI controllers.
Here's a brief recap of the problem:

We've got seven 3/200-class machines with Ciprico 3400 controllers.  Two
of them are 3/260 clones purchased from Artecon.  These two machines boot
from the Rimfire controller.  The other five are Sun 3/280's with Xylogics
451's for boot devices.  Using an Artecon-supplied 4.0 support tape, I was
able to get one of the 3/260 clones booting 4.0.1 from its Rimfire
controller.  Due to substantial changes in conf.c in 4.0.3, and no doubt
my own inexperience, I failed miserably in my attempts to make a 4.0.3
kernel with 3400 support on this machine.  In conversations with several
different people at Artecon, it became clear that there were problems with
4.0.3 and the Rimfire 3400 and there wouldn't be an Artecon 4.0.3 support
tape for that controller.  I called Ciprico, but didn't find anybody who
was ready to say "Yes, 4.0.3 works and here's how you can get a tape".  So
I fell appealed to the net for help.

I started getting mail almost immediatly after my posting, mostly from
people who had other models of Ciprico controllers and were not having
trouble.  I got mail from a gentleman at Apunix offering to email me a
driver.  Several correspondents provided hints that convinced me that I
hadn't tried hard enough to get the Artecon-supplied driver installed.  I
was just about to try again when I got a call from a very helpful engineer
at Ciprico.  He put me out of my misery by sending me a tape with the
latest version of the 3200/3400 driver and a matching installation manual.
He also explained in detail what the problem was with 4.0.3 and the 3400
controller.

The two machines we bought from Artecon have boot PROM's that were done by
Sun Consulting.  Sun has since discontinued the practice of providing boot
PROM's for third-party vendors, leaving Artecon, Ciprico, and others out
in the cold.  The old boot PROM relocates itself high enough in memory
that it was safe from being overwritten by SunOS 3.x, but 4.0 is a little
bigger, and 4.0.3 is too big to boot from a 3400 unless you really strip
the kernel down.  You can, however, boot diskless and run a kernel that
has root and swap on the 3400.  And that's what I intend to do, as soon as
I can get a chance to work on it.  A string of hardware problems has
soaked up most of my time, lately.  :-(

In all, I got calls from three different individuals at Ciprico, one at
Apunix, and one at Artecon as a result of my posting.  I'm quite pleased
with the response, although it seems to have taken a public nudge to get
the attention of someone at Ciprico with the knowledge and authority to
solve my problem.  At this point, I'm a happy camper.  I'm completely
satisfied with the support provided by Ciprico.  I've never done business
with Apunix, but I like their attitude.  I've still got a to-do item to
call the Artecon support manager back.  The last time I talked with him,
he was suggesting that I either upgrade to Interphase Panther controllers
or downgrade to Emulex MD-21's.  I don't want to sound like I'm pissed at
Artecon, either.  They did try to be helpful, and I probably could have
got my machines running with their tape and a bit of R'ing the FM.
Artecon just wasn't as helpful as Ciprico was.

Disclaimer:  My opinions are not identical with my employer's opinions.
Nothing in this article should be construed as an endorsement, since I am
not authorised to endorse anything.  My intent here is to close the loop
on my previous posting by letting everyone know that the story has
apparently ended happily.

Paul Allen
pallen at atc.boeing.com