SUMMARY 2: SunPCi3 Card on older hardware

From: Parkins, Larye (NIH/NIAID) (LParkins_at_niaid.nih.gov)
Date: 05/28/03

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    To: "'sunmanagers@sunmanagers.org'" <sunmanagers@sunmanagers.org>
Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 14:15:29 -0400

    More on the subject of whether the SunPCi3 can be used in Ultra 5/10
    systems...

    I've had a number of additional responses on this topic, regarding
    apparently conflicting data in the Sun marketing literature versus release
    notes:

    The brochure: http://www.sun.com/desktop/products/sunpci/data***.pdf
    says "One 32-bit or 64-bit PCI slot required..."

    But, later, it says, under "Platforms Supported"
     All Sun Blade...
     Sun Workgroup Servers (... 220R,250,420R,and 450...)
     Sun Fire 280R and V480 servers (with available 32-bit or 64-bit PCI slot)

    This could be interpreted to mean, "32-bit, but only on Sun Fire 280R and
    V480...," or, simply semi-technical market literature. As I explained to my
    customers in my proposal to try it anyway, the omission of the machines that
    ran SunPCi2's in the SunPCi3 supported-hardware list could either mean, "It
    won't work in anything else," or, "We only tested it on these machines,
    which were currently in production at the time."

    I went with the Tom C.'s response that said, "We tried it and it didn't
    work," which convinced my customers to elect to stick with the
    explicitly-supported configuration, which is doable at their site by
    shuffling hardware between offices. [The other responses were questions, to
    my previous summary.]

    As far as I have been able to determine from reading the service manuals,
    running prtdiag, and looking at the 32-bit PCI riser board on a U/10, is
    that there is possibly some as-yet-unknown combination of factors:
            a) PCI chipset. prtdiag says PCI-1 for U/10, just "pci" on the
    E-450 and Blade 100. This is not definitive, but we could assume some
    differences between earlier and later PCI-bus machines.
            b) physical layout: there is a stiffener bar on the U/10 PCI riser.
    It doesn't look like it would interfere with the additional pins on a 64-bit
    PCI-card, but I haven't tried that yet (not authorized).
            c) OBP firmware, which controls how devices are probed. My U/10s
    are: OBP 3.25.3.

    I'd like to be able to figure out definitely whether a SunPCi3 can be made
    to work in a U/10, as, like some others who responded, we have several, but
    Blade 150s are relatively cheap if we need more dual-purpose workstations. 

    --
Larye D. Parkins
Systems Administrator, RML - NIAID
903 S. 4th St., Hamilton, MT 59840
(406) 363-9433
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