[rescue] SunBlade 1500 & SSD disk

[David Strom]

Has anyone experimented with the SunBlade 1500 and a PATA SSD disk? Is performance much better, some better, or "meh"?

I recall someone posting about using older SCSI disks via SCSI card.

Just curious, thanks.

[Jerry Kemp]

Sorry, I don't have a direct answer to your question, but I'm glad you asked it.

I'm actually more interested in how you plan to get a functional SATA sub-system, be it SSD or spinning rust, functional on SPARC.

Jerry

Post by David Strom
Has anyone experimented with the SunBlade 1500 and a PATA SSD disk? Is performance much better, some better, or "meh"?
I recall someone posting about using older SCSI disks via SCSI card.
Just curious, thanks.

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rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue

[Andrew Jones]

Post by Jerry Kemp
Sorry, I don't have a direct answer to your question, but I'm glad you asked it.
I'm actually more interested in how you plan to get a functional SATA
sub-system, be it SSD or spinning rust, functional on SPARC.
Jerry

If you can find the right firmware to flash to it, you should be able to
boot off of any LSI SAS1068 card.

These used to be common as dirt with both PCI-X and PCI-E formats,
re-branded for every vendor you can imagine: HP, Dell, Sun, Fuji, etc.

I think you can get the "FCode" ROM from LSI themselves, or whoever owns
LSI nowadays.
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[Jerry Kemp]

I have one of those, purchased new after reports of success several years back.

Never had any luck with it on x86/x64, and it sits gathering dust.

Was not aware that an "FCode" rom flash update code was available. That would be awesome if it worked.

Wondering if anyone else here has this working, i.e. FCode flash update to SAS1068 card on SPARC?

Thanks,

Jerry

Post by Andrew Jones
If you can find the right firmware to flash to it, you should be able to
boot off of any LSI SAS1068 card.
These used to be common as dirt with both PCI-X and PCI-E formats,
re-branded for every vendor you can imagine: HP, Dell, Sun, Fuji, etc.
I think you can get the "FCode" ROM from LSI themselves, or whoever owns
LSI nowadays.
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[Andrew Jones]

Was not aware that an "FCode" rom flash update code was available.B
That would be awesome if it worked.

I knew where to download it on the LSI site, but the Broadcom download
site is much harder to navigate.

It was historically a free download, and there is a Linux utility to
flash the card.
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[Mouse]

Post by Jerry Kemp
I'm actually more interested in how you plan to get a functional SATA
sub-system, be it SSD or spinning rust, functional on SPARC.

Depending on the OS, it may Just Work, at least if you don't mind not
booting off it. NetBSD supports a lot of devices across many
architectures; if you've got a popular bus, a lot of devices will work
right out of the box.

I think NetBSD/sparc supports nothing but SBus (and VME on the -4/470
and its ilk), so you'd have to be on sparc64, but there, I would expect
most bog-standard PCI cards to work painlessly.

Provided, that is, that you're not trying to boot from them. For that,
yes, you'll need FCode, whether built-in or add-on. But in some cases
not being bootable isn't a showstopper; I have a few machines with a
small (<100M, generally) partition that holds booters and kernels and
nothing else. In some of those cases that's all that's on that device.

I assume SBus-to-PCI bridges exist, though I've never personally seen
one, but I don't recall seeing software support for such a thing in
either NetBSD or my SunOS days.

/~\ The ASCII Mouse
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[Andrew Jones]

Post by Mouse

Post by Jerry Kemp
I'm actually more interested in how you plan to get a functional SATA
sub-system, be it SSD or spinning rust, functional on SPARC.

Depending on the OS, it may Just Work, at least if you don't mind not
booting off it. NetBSD supports a lot of devices across many
architectures; if you've got a popular bus, a lot of devices will work
right out of the box.

Like a video card, I don't think an MPT device (1068 family) will work
without boot-time initialization by the ROM.
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[Andrew Jones]

Post by David Strom
Has anyone experimented with the SunBlade 1500 and a PATA SSD disk?
Is performance much better, some better, or "meh"?
I recall someone posting about using older SCSI disks via SCSI card.
Just curious, thanks.

It's still going to be limited to the ATA bandwidth and instruction set,
so I wouldn't go into it with high expectations.

SATA is much "smarter." It's not really ATA at all. It much more
closely resembles SCSI than the original ATA.
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[Patrick Giagnocavo]

a PATA SSD disk should give you greatly reduced latency; so on a bunch
of small random writes, performance should be a lot better. A 64GB
PATA SSD should be about $80; a 128GB, about $120.

For sustained large writes you might not see quite as much of an
improvement on performance.

One nice bonus would be that it should be very quiet.

Post by David Strom
Has anyone experimented with the SunBlade 1500 and a PATA SSD disk? Is performance much better, some better, or "meh"?
I recall someone posting about using older SCSI disks via SCSI card.
Just curious, thanks.
--
David Strom
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[a***@computer.org]

Hi David,

I can't comment on a SunBlade 1500 and PATA SSDs, but I do have an
Ultra-45 (1600MHz UltraSPARC-III), into which I've successfully
installed a SATA SSD.BB I've used it under both Solaris-10u10 and Debian
Linux.BB Performance was much better.BB After maxing out the RAM, the
SSD was the upgrade with the next-greatest impact.

Linux identifies my controller as "LSISAS1064 A3, FwRev=01080300h,
Ports=1, MaxQ=511, IRQ=11"

Oh yes, this controller also came with the correct FCode to boot Solaris
and Linux off the SSD.BB Thanks, Sun!