[Summary] Ultra 5 and scsi controller

Many thanks to Jonathan V Hays, Andrew Yauhwa Wu, Max
Kartsev, Peter Stokes, John Sullivan.

My question is looking for cheap pci cards that
supports on Ultra 5.

The answers give :
- http://www.znyx.com/products/hardware/zx370.htm
- SunSwift PCI SCSI/FE X1032A
- Antares cards ( www.antares.com )
- LSI cards with chip Symbios 875 , such as SYM
8751SP.
- and a very detailed emails from John Sullivan that I
would like to post below , so that somebody who are
likes my situation can use it.

Thanks,

DT
-----------------------------------------------
>From John Sullivan :

     The OBP on the Ultra 5 system will support LSI
Logic (formerly
Symbios) SCSI chips.  Solaris 2.6 and above will
support up to
Symbios' 875 or 876 Ultra Wide chip; the PCI board
based on the
chip is the SYM-8751SP (or LSI-8751SP).  It's out of
production,
but you might be able to find one on Ebay, or at a
closeout place;
price should be between $30 for a clean pull and $60
for a new
(unused) board.  Solaris 8 will support LSI Logic's
895 chipset
(Ultra2 SCSI), but only the 1/01 release or later (or
an earlier
release of Solaris 8 with Maintenance Update 3 or 4
applied).  Since
you're using Solaris 9, the drivers should be no
problem.  The
boards to look for here are LSI Logic's SYM-8951U or
-8952U (now
renamed the LSI-8951U or -8952U).  AVOID THE 8953
BOARDS, though,
since the Solaris driver won't work on these chips (it
was designed
specifically for MS systems).  Check
http://www.lsil.com for details
on the boards, as well as resellers.  Any of LSI
Logic's Ultra-160
boards will work too, but you'll need to download the
driver from
LSI Logic's web site.  You may have more work to do if
you're trying
to *boot* from a controller whose driver is not part
of the standard
O.S., like the Ultra-160 boards - it's certainly not
impossible, but
tricky.  In addition, keep in mind that any Ultra-160
SCSI board can
fully saturate your Ultra-5's PCI bus, which is only
32 bit @ 33 MHz
(160 MB/s > 133 MB/s); you'll probably see very little
difference,
if any, between an Ultra2 SCSI board or Ultra-160 in a
system
without a 64-bit PCI bus.  Keep in mind, also, that
even 10K RPM
SCSI disks have a SUSTAINED transfer rate of less than
40 MB/s.

     You might check with CDW for boards
(http://www.cdw.com, search
for "symbios"); the Ultra2 boards go for around $130
USD.  If it's
for a personal system, you might check pricewatch or
eBay and find
a less expensive board.  Good luck!

                                         John

p.s. - some very early Ultra5/10 systems had an Open
Boot Prom (OBP)
that would not properly support SCSI.  You might want
to download
the latest OBP release and reflash if the system is
over two years
old, just in case.  Go to sunsolve, to the hardware
support page:
http://sunsolve.Sun.COM/pub-cgi/show.pl?target=patches/xprod-Hardware&nav=pub-patches
and download the latest version of patch 106121 (-18
now, I think);
apply this (can be done while the system is booted up,
just by
using pkgadd), and reboot.  As with any reflashing,
make sure you
don't turn off the machine while the flashing is in
progress, of
course.
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