New toy!!!

From: Dave McGuire <mcguire_at_neurotica.com>
Date: Sat Jul 10 18:17:50 1999

On Wed, 31 Dec 1969, Joe wrote:
> I've never heard of a IPI-2 interface. Any idea what kind of machine
>uses them? If you can't use it, I'll go ahead and post it on the CC list.
>Maybe someone there can use it.

  IPI is an intelligent disk interface bus that was used on a few larger
systems such as high-end Sun servers. They sold a lot of 4/4xx and 4/6xx
machines with IPI disk controllers. They're quite intelligent (the Sun IPI
controller has a 68020 and a pile of RAM on it) and very, very fast. Seagate,
I believe, is still making IPI drives...or if they've discontinued them, it had
to have been fairly recently.

  The oldest IPI drive I've seen is the CDC Sabre, an 8" 1.2gb drive which was
available in either SMD or IPI. The newest one was just recently...a 5.25" FH
Seagate 4.3gb IPI drive. I've got access to 24 of those and I'm still toying
with the idea of picking them up and building a big array on a couple of Sun
IPI controllers with a 4/600 with a pair of 150MHz HyperSPARCs on it. That'd
make a kickass file server. But, as with many things, lack of free time will
probably prevent me from doing so. Sigh.

                     -Dave McGuire
Received on Sat Jul 10 1999 - 18:17:50 BST