🚀 go-pugleaf

>  The Mac is *incredibly* sloppy about ignoring bad bus phases, 
>  {... }it has very unsatisfactory results in trying to make multiple
>  devices work *reliably* at the "same" time.

  We've had far more cases of corrupted file systems or files on
  the sgi's than on the macs. That's what I use to just the 
  reliability of the bus.

>  Sounds to me like you aren't using very high quality cables, 
>  terminators, or devices then.  

  The devices are seagate disks. The terminators are, of course, 
  from SGI. The cables are the best we can find to buy, though 
  there may be better ones available.

>  something like blow the SCSI termpower fuse, and not fixed 
>  it; 

  Is there a diag test for this condition? Or do I get out the
  ohmmeter?

>  I suppose you'd rather have corrupted data, and data rates 
>  on the order of 100KBytes/sec, instead of 2-5 MBytes/sec also?  
>  I doubt it.

  I want it to be both fast and usable. Maybe that isn't possible
  in the world of scsi;  I'm not an expert. The point is, I don't
  want to _be_ an expert.  I want to attach new disks from well-
  known vendors like seagate, and have them work without trauma.
  I don't disbelieve that SGI has put a lot of work into its scsi; 
  but I haven't had appreciably better behavior from the indigo 
  R4000's than I had from the 4D/25's.

>  If you are attaching 3rd party SCSI devices, ask the people 
>  you buy them from to support them properly.  If the problems 
>  occur with SGI purchased devices, by all means get the support 
>  folks to make them work; escalate the call if necessary!

  After several years of bad scsi behavior from many models of SGI
  machines, I no longer believe the problem is with the devices.

  -shoshana
   shoshana@pdi.com
   Shoshana Abrass
   Pacific Data Images, Sunnyvale, CA