[rescue] Converting Ultra 10 from IDE to SCSI HD

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: Mike Hebel <nimitz at nimitzbrood.com>
>Date: 2007/02/22 Thu PM 01:12:03 CST
>To: The Rescue List <rescue at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [rescue] Converting Ultra 10 from IDE to SCSI HD

>Thus spake Mark:
>> On 22 Feb 2007, at 18:57, Lionel Peterson wrote:
>>
>>> I just wanted to share with folks that might be interested that I
>>> found a great step-by-step instruction page on converting an Ultra
>>> 5/10 from IDE to SCSI - it covers both CD-ROM and HD replacement,
>>> and it enabled me to convert an Ultra 10 to SCSI HD (retaining IDE
>>> CD-ROM drive) in about 15 minutes.
>>>
>>> Here's the link:
>>>
>>> http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~gerdts/ultra10-scsi.html
>>
>> Yeh, I ran my Ultra 10/440 off a pair of 18GB Seagate Cheetahs and a
>> Symbios card. It really makes a big difference over the paltry IDE on
>> the board. I never bothered with the CD-ROM as I wanted a DVD drive
>> and IDE ones are way cheaper and more readily available.
>
>I'm just curious - is there an IDE card that works well in the U10s?
>
>Or would it be better to go SCSI and use something like the ACARD adapters
>if you want 250G+ drives?

THEORY: A very basic, standard IDE controller *could* work, but to the best of my knowledge none have been reported to work (with SCSI controllers so cheap...). There has also been some conjecture about SATA controllers that may work, esp. if they "look" like IDE controllers to the machine.

I have two Maxtor drives from a couple years ago that have bundled IDE 133 and IDE 133/SATA controllers for PCI bus - I'm planning to give each a try in the near future (I suspect they are *very* standard, and designed to be backwards-compatible for older PCs)...

I also have a couple "Ultra 66" controllers - again, just standard IDE controllers that are twice as fast as the Ultra 33 controller in the Ultra 5/10, I'll give them a try as well - the issue is that the OBP needs to be able to boot off the controller - adding a controller for storage to be accessed only after the OS has booted may be easier/more likely (i.e. boot off IDE/SCSI HD, then use a Solaris 10-supported IDE/SATA controller for storage).