--- Don Maslin <donm_at_cts.com> wrote:
> The ACB-4000 Series User Manual is about 1/2" thick, Joe, and is not
> partitioned by specific models. But, I see no reason why a regular SCSI
> drive could not be installed in lieu of the ACB-4070 and ST-411/506
> interface drive. Seems to me that I have gone the other way once.
My experiences with Adaptec bridge controllers is that they don't
support an IDENT packet, so the host has to "know" the geometry,
meaning that _you_ will have to know the geometry of the embedded
SCSI drive and tell the host since it will not think to ask the
drive itself.
Additionally, whatever (low level) formatting software comes with the host
might or not might not work with an embedded drive. Modern drives will
ignore harmful commands, so it's not a risk to the drive, but if there
is a canned procedure for installing the OS (old variants of UNIX come
to mind), it might or might not succeed with an embedded drive if it
was written to expect an ACB-4xxx.
Finally, most Adaptec bridge controllers I know of did support multiple
LUNs. Some SCSI drives won't like being probed for LUNs and may return
a hit for every LUN probed (I've seen that happen with some drives on
an Amiga 3000 which optionally supports multiple LUNs per target ID)
If none of the above differences trip you up, then you should have no
problem using an embedded SCSI drive in place of your ACB-4070.
-ethan
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Received on Mon Jul 22 2002 - 20:28:01 BST