[rescue] Re: [geeks] SGI Origin 200 firewire upgrade - A littleOT

[Björn Ramqvist]

nick at snowman.net wrote:
> 
> > Doesn't the O200 have multiple external SCSI buses?  If so, adding more
> > storage is a simple matter of adding a new storage array and hooking it up
> > to the next free bus.
>
> It has two scsi busses, one narrow, one wide.  The narrow one does not go
> external, I'm not sure if the wide goes external.
>         Nick

That's right, but none of those two goes external. The narrow bus drives
the CDROM and, if you have one, a DLT/DAT-drive. The wide bus drives the
internal system disks.
The machine has only three 64-bit PCI-slots, and no XIO, which practicly
renders it useless as a mid-range server, atleast if you want large,
cheap disks. (assuming the old-fashion way if putting in a disk-box full
of disks and a SCSI-card. Fibre Channel is another thing) I'd be more
happy with a couple of extra PCI-slots so I could drive anything more
than a disk-box (on one SCSI-card), a DLT autoloader (on another
SCSI-card) and a Gigabit Ethernet adapter (in the last slot).
Last time I heard, it was an enormous amount of money just to get that
Gigachannel tower upgrade with those o-so-wonderful XIO cardslots.

It's a wonderful machine, but it feels like it's designed to be too
tight to fit everyones costume. We should have gone for the Origin 2000
instead...

/Bjorn