From: Digest <deadmail>
To: "OS/2GenAu Digest"<deadmail>
Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 00:03:13 EST-10EDT,10,-1,0,7200,3,-1,0,7200,3600
Subject: [os2genau_digest] No. 1241
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**************************************************
Sunday 15 January 2006
 Number  1241
**************************************************

Subjects for today
 
1   Partitioning  at  cloning : Alan Duval <amoht at tpg dot com dot au>
1  Re:  Partitioning  at  cloning : Robert Traynor  (BobT)" <rtraynor at optusnet dot com dot au>
2  Re:  Partitioning  at  cloning : Ed Durrant <edurrant at bigpond dot net dot au>
2   RAID Card Performance Test Results : Chris Graham [WarpSpeed]" <chrisg at warpspeed dot com dot au>
3   Some new RAM at the right price : Kev <kdownes at tpg dot com dot au>
3  Re:  Some new RAM at the right price : BruceD <os2box at niclan.homeip dot net>
4  Re:  Some new RAM at the right price : Kev <kdownes at tpg dot com dot au>
4  Re:  Some new RAM at the right price : BruceD <os2box at niclan.homeip dot net>
5  Re:  Some new RAM at the right price : Ed Durrant <edurrant at bigpond dot net dot au>
5  Re:  RAID Card Performance Test Results : Ed Durrant <edurrant at bigpond dot net dot au>
6   OOO/2 help ? : Ed Durrant <edurrant at bigpond dot net dot au>
6  Re:  OOO/2 help ? : Kris Steenhaut <kris.steenhaut at hccnet.nl>
7  Re:  RAID Card Performance Test Results : Chris Graham [WarpSpeed]" <chrisg at warpspeed dot com dot au>
7   OT Leds (was  IBM ServeRAID 3L) : Wayne <datablitz at optusnet dot com dot au>

**= Email   1 ==========================**

Date:  Sat, 14 Jan 2006 21:47:39 +1030
From:  Alan Duval <amoht at tpg dot com dot au>
Subject:   Partitioning  at  cloning

Hi,

Hope someone can help me. I have 3 HDD's of various sizes and I wanted 
to clone everything to a single large HDD. I thought it would be easy 
using Partition Magic 5.0 and Drive Image 3 as I'm familiar with them. 
However PM couldn't make a HPFS partition for eCs or a NTFS partition 
for  WIN XP although I used these to make such partitions with my 
previous PC. Nor would Drive Image clone my HDD 1 to the new disk.

 Hence I used LVM from the eCs CD to install Boot Manager and then a 
partition for WIN XP and installed WIN XP successfully. I then made a 
partition for eCs but couldn't install eCs into it as eCs couldn't 
format the partition. I then tried DFSee with the same results. After 
deleting and reformatting partitions a number of times I reached a stage 
where no software could do anything with this HDD.  Fortunately by 
installing DFSee 715 in eCs I was able to see the partitions and delete 
them. I contacted DFSee support and Jan advised me to use DFSee to wipe 
the HDD clean and then to make a new MBR. This got the HDD back to a 
usable condition and I was able to use DFSee to clone the whole of HDD 1 
(which contains WIN XP and Partitions for WIN applications and data) to 
my new HDD.

I then tried to make partitions to clone partitions from my 2nd. HDD to 
the new one but couldn't as no partitioning software would allow me to 
format a HPFS partition.

I then deleted everything on the new disk again, wiped it clean and 
made  a new MBR with DFSee . Following this I used LVM from the eCS CD 
to install Boot Manager and then make partitions and volumes. I 
installed WIN XP in the first partition and then tried to install eCs 
into another partition but again it couldn't format the partition and 
installation was aborted.

I have put the old HDD 1 back but something has happened  as although I 
can boot to eCs its partition rapidly fills up and a message comes up as 
follows:
"The INI file, G:\OS2\OS2.ini can not be written to disk. The updates 
are being held to automatically retry the operation." All I can do is to 
close down.

Also some programs in a WIN application partition have vanished from 
this 1st HDD when looked for with WIN XP, although Linspire can still 
see them.
I haven't done anything to this HDD so it seems that my attempts to 
partition and format the new HDD, or my use of DFSee have done something 
to the BIOS as I can't think of anything else that would cause this.

I am still able to use Linspire from my 3rd. HDD but couldn't use 
Mandrake Move, (a live CD), as booting was halted by some serious error 
message which I can't understand. I had been able to use it previously.
Is anyone able to help me with this problem?

Regards,

Alan Duval

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 

**= Email   1 ==========================**

Date:  Sun, 15 Jan 2006 14:29:54 +1000
From:  "Robert Traynor  (BobT)" <rtraynor at optusnet dot com dot au>
Subject:  Re:  Partitioning  at  cloning

Alan,

We need some hardware specs.  Motherboard, CPU, Memory, Hard drive
brands and sizes master/slave etc.  Also I assume eCS 1.2.?
How new is this sytem, 1 yr, 2 yr..?
Please also list the types of partitions and files systems on your old drives.
ie Disk0  partition 1 is Ntfs WinXp sp2  etc...
We may then be able to recommend a method of attack.

If this is your newer machine and the hard drives are very LARGE
and eCS is the os then PM5 and DI3 are probably too old to be useful.

If the os is eCS 1.2 and HPFS then NO version of DI up to 6.01 works at
all on my systems.  Although DI6.01 and Warp4  still works.  I assume
changes in HPFS file system that DI and PM are not able to recognise.

Best is to manually create the HPFS partitions on the new drive and
copy or Xcopy from old HPFS drive partition to new drive partition.

DI6.01 will work on NTFS and FAT and FAT32 partitions just not HPFS.

Also for a winXP compatible NTFS you need PM8 (Norton or PowerQuest)
but PM8 *WILL* destroy any HPFS partitions if you are not extremely
careful.   ^^^^*******


You are getting into complicated waters.
I would suggest you backup all crucial data to CD's or DVD's remove
all hard drives and fit the new big drive, BLANK it and start from scratch.

Regards,
Robert Traynor (BobT).
15 January 2006   14:16


On Sat, 14 Jan 2006 21:47:39 +1030, Alan Duval wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Hope someone can help me. I have 3 HDD's of various sizes and I wanted 
> to clone everything to a single large HDD. I thought it would be easy 
> using Partition Magic 5.0 and Drive Image 3 as I'm familiar with them. 
> However PM couldn't make a HPFS partition for eCs or a NTFS partition 
> for  WIN XP although I used these to make such partitions with my 
> previous PC. Nor would Drive Image clone my HDD 1 to the new disk.
> 
>  Hence I used LVM from the eCs CD to install Boot Manager and then a 
> partition for WIN XP and installed WIN XP successfully. I then made a 
> partition for eCs but couldn't install eCs into it as eCs couldn't 
> format the partition. I then tried DFSee with the same results. After 
> deleting and reformatting partitions a number of times I reached a stage 
> where no software could do anything with this HDD.  Fortunately by 
> installing DFSee 715 in eCs I was able to see the partitions and delete 
> them. I contacted DFSee support and Jan advised me to use DFSee to wipe 
> the HDD clean and then to make a new MBR. This got the HDD back to a 
> usable condition and I was able to use DFSee to clone the whole of HDD 1 
> (which contains WIN XP and Partitions for WIN applications and data) to 
> my new HDD.
> 
> I then tried to make partitions to clone partitions from my 2nd. HDD to 
> the new one but couldn't as no partitioning software would allow me to 
> format a HPFS partition.
> 
> I then deleted everything on the new disk again, wiped it clean and 
> made  a new MBR with DFSee . Following this I used LVM from the eCS CD 
> to install Boot Manager and then make partitions and volumes. I 
> installed WIN XP in the first partition and then tried to install eCs 
> into another partition but again it couldn't format the partition and 
> installation was aborted.
> 
> I have put the old HDD 1 back but something has happened  as although I 
> can boot to eCs its partition rapidly fills up and a message comes up as 
> follows:
> "The INI file, G:\OS2\OS2.ini can not be written to disk. The updates 
> are being held to automatically retry the operation." All I can do is to 
> close down.
> 
> Also some programs in a WIN application partition have vanished from 
> this 1st HDD when looked for with WIN XP, although Linspire can still 
> see them.
> I haven't done anything to this HDD so it seems that my attempts to 
> partition and format the new HDD, or my use of DFSee have done something 
> to the BIOS as I can't think of anything else that would cause this.
> 
> I am still able to use Linspire from my 3rd. HDD but couldn't use 
> Mandrake Move, (a live CD), as booting was halted by some serious error 
> message which I can't understand. I had been able to use it previously.
> Is anyone able to help me with this problem?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Alan Duval
> 

>  









   ,-._|\       Robert Traynor        (BobT)
 /  Oz  \      email            rtraynor at removeme.optusnet dot com dot au
 \_,--.x/ 


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 

**= Email   2 ==========================**

Date:  Sun, 15 Jan 2006 14:39:29 +1100
From:  Ed Durrant <edurrant at bigpond dot net dot au>
Subject:  Re:  Partitioning  at  cloning

Alan Duval wrote:
> Hi,

> Hence I used LVM from the eCs CD to install Boot Manager and then a 
> partition for WIN XP and installed WIN XP successfully. I then made a 
> partition for eCs but couldn't install eCs into it as eCs couldn't 
> format the partition. I then tried DFSee with the same results. After 
> deleting and reformatting partitions a number of times I reached a stage 
> where no software could do anything with this HDD.  Fortunately by 
> installing DFSee 715 in eCs I was able to see the partitions and delete 
> them. I contacted DFSee support and Jan advised me to use DFSee to wipe 
> the HDD clean and then to make a new MBR. This got the HDD back to a 
> usable condition and I was able to use DFSee to clone the whole of HDD 1 
> (which contains WIN XP and Partitions for WIN applications and data) to 
> my new HDD.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Alan Duval
> 

I think it may be possible that you are hitting the problem with some 
OSes, who don't like their OS partition to be past Cylinder 1024 - which 
is likely the case on you new large harddisk.

When dealing with Windoze, Linsux and eCS on an "LVMed" drive, I think 
DFSEE is probably goin to be the only tool that has a chance of handling 
all of these mixed environments.

I could be wrong, however, ny belief is that the MBR on your first drive 
needs to know about additional drives, which may be why when you have 
tried to go back with some of the drives, some partitions work and some 
don't.

At this point, I suspect your best route is to install all of the 
non-OS2 operating systems new on your new drive and then copy over data 
from each of the old drives in turn. I know this sounds like a long job, 
however it also forces some "housekeeping" in the process. The OS/2 or 
eCS partitions can simply be Zipped or Xcopied across from the old drive 
to the new, once LVM, BM and volumes are defined.

Cheers/2

Ed.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 

**= Email   2 ==========================**

Date:  Sun, 15 Jan 2006 15:23:28 +1100 (EDT)
From:  "Chris Graham [WarpSpeed]" <chrisg at warpspeed dot com dot au>
Subject:   RAID Card Performance Test Results

Hi All,
	Some of you will have seen me asking a few questions about RAID cards, their setups etc over the last few months.

	Well, I've finally finished my testing and I can now publish the results.

	On eBay recently, I purchased some DAC960 PD and PDU RAID cards, as well as some IBM ServeRAID and ServeRAID 3L cards (around AUD$30 ea) as well as 12 IBM DDRS 9Gb drives for about (AUD$10ea). These are the basis for my raid 5 setups.

	A few notes.

	Mylex DAC960 notes.
	------------------------------

	Mylex was (still is?) an IBM company, but they are now owned by LSI Logic who also own (were/are) LSILogic.

	As these are old cards, most people could not answer my questions, and one helpful chap who said he had a DAC960 could be bother answering my questions as to how to configure it. None the less, I finally managed to get there. I actually found Mylex tech support helpful (as much as they could be for such an old card).

	The Mylex DAC960 uses the Intel i960 as it's on board processor (hence it's name). The on-board SCSI chips are LSILogic 53C720's (PD) and 53C770's (PDU). There are many, many types of DAC960, and I'll only concern myself with the P types (for PCI). These cards came out in about 1996 and also covered MCA, EISA and I think even a VL-Local bus variant! <G> There are a few types of DAC960P's:

	DAC960P	- PCI Based
	DAC960PD	- PCI Based, Dual Channel
	DAC960PDU	- PCI Based, Dual Channel Ultra
	DAC960PU	- PCI Based, Ultra

	There are a few different versions of bios's for them, V2 are a single chip bios and can only take the V2 bios's. V3 bios's all appear to be dual chip bios's and can only take V3 bios's. The BIOS is updated via their own flash update utility. The last version, V3.52-0-2, requires that the PC's bios supports XBDA, or the eXtended Bios Data Area, which most (I'd assume all post 2000 BIOS's) do support. The XBDA is generally a 64K segment of memory starting at 0x40:0 and has all of the extended bios data in it; I've only found a few obsecure references to it. If a DAC960 with the V3.52 bios is installed into a PC that does not support XBDA then it prints a message and disables itself. Mylex recommend that you **DON'T** install this version, probably due to the age of their tech notes. In 1996, XBDA must have been brand new. They recommend that you install V3.51-0-04 instead. The original machine I entended this for was a 200MHz Pentium MMX with a 1996 bios that did NOT support XBDA, but 

when I flashed it to a 
1999 version, it worked fine. In the end I put it in a dual 333MHz P-II machine and it worked fine.

	To configure the RAID card and drives attached to it requires another DOS utility DACCF. There is also a DACD.EXE that is used for diagnostics.

	I've created two bootable floppy images, one with the setup and diag image on it and the other with the flash memory setup on it. If someone can help me, I'll merge them into a single 2.88Mb image that contains both and I'll make it into a bootable CD. I'll then upload it to hobbes and give Mylex a copy as well! <G>

	The DAC960 setup program is quite strait forward. They even have an ez-setup option. I setup all 6 9Gb drives as RAID-5 with one shot standby/spare giving me 34,712Mb of disk.

	The configuration of the drives is saved on the disks, not in the controller memory, so changing cards (I have a PD and a PDU) is easy, it says that expected drives are not responding and gives you the option of loading them from disk. I found this very, very useful.

	OS/2 support for the management and monitoring of DAC RAID's is limited. It is acomplished via the DACADM program.

	IBM Serve RAID Notes
	---------------------------------

	I have some IBM ServeRAID (the original from 1996) and some ServeRAID 3L (cicra 1998/99?) cards.

	The IBM ServeRAID cards use an embedded IBM PowerPC 403 as it's on-board processor. For the on-board SCSI chips they use the Adaptec AIC-7880 chips on the ServeRAID and the ServeRAID 3L uses the LSI 53C895 (so it is LVD/SE).

	Due to the age of the cards, there are quote a few versios of BIOS available for them. All use a bootable floppy/CD to configure the drives or flash the card.

	V3 uses a DOS floppy.
	V4.x uses a bootable CD-ROM that boots Windows 95.
	V5.x uses a bootable CD-ROM that (I think) boots Windows 95.
	V6.x uses a bootable CD-ROM that boots Linux.
	V7.x uses a bootable CD-ROM that boots Linux.

	The only problem with the Linux CD's is that they do not support booting from a SCSI CD-ROM, which is the most 'king brain dead idea I've come across in quote a while. They don't even support booting off the ServeRAID card itself! Too bad if you run an all SCSI setup. The raid cards **CAN** act as a general SCSI card for other devices, CD-ROM, Tape etc (althought I've found them not to be the fastest when used like this). V7 and above BIOS's are copyright IBM (1996-2002) and Adaptec (2002+).
	
	V6 and above come with a java based ServeRAID Manager, that also has the ability to connect to ServeRAID Manager Agents on remote machines. It can also email you of service/error events as well as issue SNMP traps. I've yet to find a MIB for it though.

	The biggest problem with the OS/2 drivers, is that if the RAID array is in error/un-configured/un-initialized, then the driver, although it finds the card; it does **NOT** load! This means that the Manager can not find a card to work with and you get forced back to the boot floppy/cd. Fortuneately, I've found that the V3 bootable floppy is compatible with the V7 bios configuration so I don't need to go and find a working IDE CD-ROM.

	I've not managed to get the controller to sucessfully import it's configuration from drives, so I had to go to the floppy each time and redfine the array. This was not that painful as it did not destroy data on the array, it simply told the controller how to look at the array.

	Performance Tests
	----------------------------

	The testing consisted of two parts.

	A drive write (copy using xcopy) and then a read back of the data. My test data consisted of 3,475 directories that comprised 48,646 files and 15,540,820,634 bytes or 15.5Gb of data.

	The drives (the DDRS's were SE SCSI) all connected on the one cable (all 6 of them) and the source drive was a Quantum Atlas 10K 18.4Gb drive.

Controller		Write Test		Read Test (H:MM:SS)	Throughput (Kb/Sec)
Base Quantum		N/A			25:56			9,791.34

DAC960PD		1:12:51			42:20			5,975.03
4Mb EDRAM

DAC960PDU		1:05:04			44:54			5,635.57
16Mb 0-Wait State	1:12:52			42:19			5,977.39

(Dual Channel		1:13:03			41:53			6,039.23
3 drives per channel)

IBM ServeRAID		4:57:56			59:18			4,338.65
			4:57:05			58:32			4,322

IBM ServeRAID 3L	3:09:00			45:34			5,551

What the ...????? Why were the IBM's 3-5 times **SLOWER**? When I checked the DAC setup, they were all write back caching, ie making use of the on-board cache, the IBM cards were all set up write through, ie effectively disabling the cache. So, I configured the IBM cards to use write back caching, and now we get some sane results.

IBM ServeRAID		3:22:15			44:22			5,703.34

IBM ServeRAID 3L	46:26			36:14			6,980.95

So, ok there you have it, the 3L is a clear winner and the ServeRAID card is damn slow. The DAC960's considering their age are very impressive. They are still about 3 times faster than the equivalent IBM ServeRAID card.

The 3L is very nice indeed, although it is only a single channel card.

I did set up one of the DAC960's to have three drives on one channel and three on the other to see if there was a lot of SCSI bus saturation, but it doesn't look that way. They are old drives and not the fastest at that, so they may have been the limiting factor.

Because of the ease of management provided by the IBM ServeRAID Manager program, I've gone with it and the 3L card.

I hope that you've found this useful, please feel free to comment as usual.


-Chris

WarpSpeed Computers - The Graham Utilities for OS/2.
Voice:  +61-3-9395-1504   Internet:   chrisg at warpspeed dot com dot au
FAX:    +61-3-9395-7633   Web Page:   http://www.warpspeed dot com dot au
Postal: WarpSpeed Computers, PO Box 4293, Hoppers Crossing DC, VIC 3029, AUSTRALIA



----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 

**= Email   3 ==========================**

Date:  Sun, 15 Jan 2006 13:35:37 +0800
From:  Kev <kdownes at tpg dot com dot au>
Subject:   Some new RAM at the right price

Hi all (and one)

Forgive me, I know this isn't a commercial list, but I've come across a 
bargain which I'd like to share here first.  I have 6 x 512meg PC3200 
(DDR400) DIMMs of genuine branded IBM RAM.  These are:-
1. Brand new, unopened, in box
2. Genuine IBM branded stuff - part# 73P2686
    ThinkCentre 512 MB PC3200 CL3 NP DDR SDRAM UDIMM
3. Absolutely legal and above board.
4. Have 3 years warranty from IBM.

They were superfluous to needs in a large(ish) site upgrade and I was 
able to get them at cost - $60.00 each (inc GST)  I'd have bought more 
but someone got in before me - there were 19 of them going begging.

If anyone out there in OS/2 eCS land is interested in a RAM upgrade at 
$60.00/512Mb plus $5,00 pnp/order anywhere in Oz outside Perth then 
please contact me.  I don't expect them to be available for long.  Btw, 
that's cheaper than I can wholesale Legend brand and the like.

Again, I know this isn't *really* the right forum to be selling stuff, 
but I wanted to let the OS/2 community have go.

Cheers all (and the one of course :-))
Kev

-- 
=========================
Kev Downes
kdownes at tpg dot com dot au  ph 0404 7 0808 2
We use and recommend Xandros 3.0.2
=========================
There are 10 types of people ...
    ... those who understand binary, and those who don't!
=========================
"Jesus Christ is the centre of everything and the object of everything;
He who does not know him, knows nothing of the order of the world
and nothing of himself."             Blaise Pascal
=========================
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 

**= Email   3 ==========================**

Date:  Sun, 15 Jan 2006 14:19:16 +0800
From:  BruceD <os2box at niclan.homeip dot net>
Subject:  Re:  Some new RAM at the right price

If I may, can you put me down for 2 [two] RAM sticks? I live up near 
Joondalup north of Perth, so I can collect them during the week if thats 
OK? Thanks for the offer too!

Bruce Dudley
os2box at niclan.homeip dot net


Kev wrote:

> Hi all (and one)
>
> Forgive me, I know this isn't a commercial list, but I've come across 
> a bargain which I'd like to share here first.  I have 6 x 512meg 
> PC3200 (DDR400) DIMMs of genuine branded IBM RAM.  These are:-
> 1. Brand new, unopened, in box
> 2. Genuine IBM branded stuff - part# 73P2686
>    ThinkCentre 512 MB PC3200 CL3 NP DDR SDRAM UDIMM
> 3. Absolutely legal and above board.
> 4. Have 3 years warranty from IBM.
>
> They were superfluous to needs in a large(ish) site upgrade and I was 
> able to get them at cost - $60.00 each (inc GST)  I'd have bought more 
> but someone got in before me - there were 19 of them going begging.
>
> If anyone out there in OS/2 eCS land is interested in a RAM upgrade at 
> $60.00/512Mb plus $5,00 pnp/order anywhere in Oz outside Perth then 
> please contact me.  I don't expect them to be available for long.  
> Btw, that's cheaper than I can wholesale Legend brand and the like.
>
> Again, I know this isn't *really* the right forum to be selling stuff, 
> but I wanted to let the OS/2 community have go.
>
> Cheers all (and the one of course :-))
> Kev
>

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 

**= Email   4 ==========================**

Date:  Sun, 15 Jan 2006 14:39:42 +0800
From:  Kev <kdownes at tpg dot com dot au>
Subject:  Re:  Some new RAM at the right price

Hi Bruce

Consider it done!  Tomorrow will be fine, or even today/tonight if you 
wish.  I'm at ...

59 Agincourt Drv
Forrestfield
9359 4570

Call first just to check that I'm home.

Cheers
Kev

BruceD wrote:
> If I may, can you put me down for 2 [two] RAM sticks? I live up near 
> Joondalup north of Perth, so I can collect them during the week if thats 
> OK? Thanks for the offer too!
> 
> Bruce Dudley
> os2box at niclan.homeip dot net
> 
> 
> Kev wrote:
> 
>> Hi all (and one)
>>
>> Forgive me, I know this isn't a commercial list, but I've come across 
>> a bargain which I'd like to share here first.  I have 6 x 512meg 
>> PC3200 (DDR400) DIMMs of genuine branded IBM RAM.  These are:-
>> 1. Brand new, unopened, in box
>> 2. Genuine IBM branded stuff - part# 73P2686
>>    ThinkCentre 512 MB PC3200 CL3 NP DDR SDRAM UDIMM
>> 3. Absolutely legal and above board.
>> 4. Have 3 years warranty from IBM.
>>
>> They were superfluous to needs in a large(ish) site upgrade and I was 
>> able to get them at cost - $60.00 each (inc GST)  I'd have bought more 
>> but someone got in before me - there were 19 of them going begging.
>>
>> If anyone out there in OS/2 eCS land is interested in a RAM upgrade at 
>> $60.00/512Mb plus $5,00 pnp/order anywhere in Oz outside Perth then 
>> please contact me.  I don't expect them to be available for long.  
>> Btw, that's cheaper than I can wholesale Legend brand and the like.
>>
>> Again, I know this isn't *really* the right forum to be selling stuff, 
>> but I wanted to let the OS/2 community have go.
>>
>> Cheers all (and the one of course :-))
>> Kev
>>
> 
 
> 
> 

> 
> 
> 

-- 
=========================
Kev Downes
kdownes at tpg dot com dot au  ph 0404 7 0808 2
We use and recommend Xandros 3.0.2
=========================
There are 10 types of people ...
    ... those who understand binary, and those who don't!
=========================
"Jesus Christ is the centre of everything and the object of everything;
He who does not know him, knows nothing of the order of the world
and nothing of himself."             Blaise Pascal
=========================
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 

**= Email   4 ==========================**

Date:  Sun, 15 Jan 2006 14:52:52 +0800
From:  BruceD <os2box at niclan.homeip dot net>
Subject:  Re:  Some new RAM at the right price

Thats great Kev, thanks again. I shall call you tomorrow evening on the 
phone and then can arrange a convenient time, so I  can pick up. Today 
my wife has plans for me. :-)                          

Bruce Dudley

Kev wrote:

> Hi Bruce
>
> Consider it done!  Tomorrow will be fine, or even today/tonight if you 
> wish.  I'm at ...
>
> 59 Agincourt Drv
> Forrestfield
> 9359 4570
>
> Call first just to check that I'm home.
>
> Cheers
> Kev
>
> BruceD wrote:
>
>> If I may, can you put me down for 2 [two] RAM sticks? I live up near 
>> Joondalup north of Perth, so I can collect them during the week if 
>> thats OK? Thanks for the offer too!
>>
>> Bruce Dudley
>> os2box at niclan.homeip dot net
>>
>>
>> Kev wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all (and one)
>>>
>>> Forgive me, I know this isn't a commercial list, but I've come 
>>> across a bargain which I'd like to share here first.  I have 6 x 
>>> 512meg PC3200 (DDR400) DIMMs of genuine branded IBM RAM.  These are:-
>>> 1. Brand new, unopened, in box
>>> 2. Genuine IBM branded stuff - part# 73P2686
>>>    ThinkCentre 512 MB PC3200 CL3 NP DDR SDRAM UDIMM
>>> 3. Absolutely legal and above board.
>>> 4. Have 3 years warranty from IBM.
>>>
>>> They were superfluous to needs in a large(ish) site upgrade and I 
>>> was able to get them at cost - $60.00 each (inc GST)  I'd have 
>>> bought more but someone got in before me - there were 19 of them 
>>> going begging.
>>>
>>> If anyone out there in OS/2 eCS land is interested in a RAM upgrade 
>>> at $60.00/512Mb plus $5,00 pnp/order anywhere in Oz outside Perth 
>>> then please contact me.  I don't expect them to be available for 
>>> long.  Btw, that's cheaper than I can wholesale Legend brand and the 
>>> like.
>>>
>>> Again, I know this isn't *really* the right forum to be selling 
>>> stuff, but I wanted to let the OS/2 community have go.
>>>
>>> Cheers all (and the one of course :-))
>>> Kev
>>>
>>
> 
>>
>> 
>
>>
>>
>>
>

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**= Email   5 ==========================**

Date:  Sun, 15 Jan 2006 19:20:00 +1100
From:  Ed Durrant <edurrant at bigpond dot net dot au>
Subject:  Re:  Some new RAM at the right price

Kev wrote:
> Hi all (and one)
> 
> Forgive me, I know this isn't a commercial list, but I've come across a 
> bargain which I'd like to share here first.  I have 6 x 512meg PC3200 
> (DDR400) DIMMs of genuine branded IBM RAM.  These are:-
> 1. Brand new, unopened, in box
> 2. Genuine IBM branded stuff - part# 73P2686
>    ThinkCentre 512 MB PC3200 CL3 NP DDR SDRAM UDIMM
> 3. Absolutely legal and above board.
> 4. Have 3 years warranty from IBM.
> 
> They were superfluous to needs in a large(ish) site upgrade and I was 
> able to get them at cost - $60.00 each (inc GST)  I'd have bought more 
> but someone got in before me - there were 19 of them going begging.
> 
> If anyone out there in OS/2 eCS land is interested in a RAM upgrade at 
> $60.00/512Mb plus $5,00 pnp/order anywhere in Oz outside Perth then 
> please contact me.  I don't expect them to be available for long.  Btw, 
> that's cheaper than I can wholesale Legend brand and the like.
> 
> Again, I know this isn't *really* the right forum to be selling stuff, 
> but I wanted to let the OS/2 community have go.
> 
> Cheers all (and the one of course :-))
> Kev
> 
Thanks for the offer Ken, but they're too fast for my system !

Cheers/2

Ed.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 

**= Email   5 ==========================**

Date:  Sun, 15 Jan 2006 19:35:30 +1100
From:  Ed Durrant <edurrant at bigpond dot net dot au>
Subject:  Re:  RAID Card Performance Test Results

Hi Chris,

   Thanks for documenting your experiences. It's a real shame that we 
don't have somewhere that we can store these sorts of e-mails - a 
knowledge base of sorts.

   By the way, as far as I know Mylex were never owned by IBM, however 
IBM did re-badge the Mylex board (and change its firmware) and sold it 
as the ServeRAID II I believe.

   Since ServeRaid 3 (i.e. 4 and 6 also), there have been three versions 
of the PowerPC based ServeRAID cards - L, M, and H, L=lower cost, lower 
spec - often just one port, wired to both internal and external 
connectors, the M & H were with three external and internal independent 
connectors, the H (High End) card having a larger cache memory than the 
  M (Medium) card. Commercially I normally specify the "M" variant as 
the extra cost of the H is hard to justify except in configurations that 
are trying for every last piece of performance.

  Since the ServeRAID 5, there have been "i" models (5i, 5i+, 6i, 6i+). 
Theses are used in  IBM xSeries servers that have an onboard RAID-1 
mirroring controller upgrading it to RAID-5 and RAID-10 and RAID-1E 
capabilities.

  The current ServeRAID 7k and 8i cards are actually re-badged Adaptec 
cards. These cards come as SATA os U320 SCSI in the case of the 7K and 
SAS (serial attached SCSI) or SATA in the case of the 8i.

   Cheers/2

     Ed.


Chris Graham [WarpSpeed] wrote:
> Hi All,
> 	Some of you will have seen me asking a few questions about RAID cards, their setups etc over the last few months.
> 
> 	Well, I've finally finished my testing and I can now publish the results.
> 
> 	On eBay recently, I purchased some DAC960 PD and PDU RAID cards, as well as some IBM ServeRAID and ServeRAID 3L cards (around AUD$30 ea) as well as 12 IBM DDRS 9Gb drives for about (AUD$10ea). These are the basis for my raid 5 setups.
> 
> 	A few notes.
> 
> 	Mylex DAC960 notes.
> 	------------------------------
> 
> 	Mylex was (still is?) an IBM company, but they are now owned by LSI Logic who also own (were/are) LSILogic.
> 
> 	As these are old cards, most people could not answer my questions, and one helpful chap who said he had a DAC960 could be bother answering my questions as to how to configure it. None the less, I finally managed to get there. I actually found Mylex tech support helpful (as much as they could be for such an old card).
> 
> 	The Mylex DAC960 uses the Intel i960 as it's on board processor (hence it's name). The on-board SCSI chips are LSILogic 53C720's (PD) and 53C770's (PDU). There are many, many types of DAC960, and I'll only concern myself with the P types (for PCI). These cards came out in about 1996 and also covered MCA, EISA and I think even a VL-Local bus variant! <G> There are a few types of DAC960P's:
> 
> 	DAC960P	- PCI Based
> 	DAC960PD	- PCI Based, Dual Channel
> 	DAC960PDU	- PCI Based, Dual Channel Ultra
> 	DAC960PU	- PCI Based, Ultra
> 
> 	There are a few different versions of bios's for them, V2 are a single chip bios and can only take the V2 bios's. V3 bios's all appear to be dual chip bios's and can only take V3 bios's. The BIOS is updated via their own flash update utility. The last version, V3.52-0-2, requires that the PC's bios supports XBDA, or the eXtended Bios Data Area, which most (I'd assume all post 2000 BIOS's) do support. The XBDA is generally a 64K segment of memory starting at 0x40:0 and has all of the extended bios data in it; I've only found a few obsecure references to it. If a DAC960 with the V3.52 bios is installed into a PC that does not support XBDA then it prints a message and disables itself. Mylex recommend that you **DON'T** install this version, probably due to the age of their tech notes. In 1996, XBDA must have been brand new. They recommend that you install V3.51-0-04 instead. The original machine I entended this for was a 200MHz Pentium MMX with a 1996 bios that did NOT suppo
rt XBDA, but 
> 
> when I flashed it to a 
> 1999 version, it worked fine. In the end I put it in a dual 333MHz P-II machine and it worked fine.
> 
> 	To configure the RAID card and drives attached to it requires another DOS utility DACCF. There is also a DACD.EXE that is used for diagnostics.
> 
> 	I've created two bootable floppy images, one with the setup and diag image on it and the other with the flash memory setup on it. If someone can help me, I'll merge them into a single 2.88Mb image that contains both and I'll make it into a bootable CD. I'll then upload it to hobbes and give Mylex a copy as well! <G>
> 
> 	The DAC960 setup program is quite strait forward. They even have an ez-setup option. I setup all 6 9Gb drives as RAID-5 with one shot standby/spare giving me 34,712Mb of disk.
> 
> 	The configuration of the drives is saved on the disks, not in the controller memory, so changing cards (I have a PD and a PDU) is easy, it says that expected drives are not responding and gives you the option of loading them from disk. I found this very, very useful.
> 
> 	OS/2 support for the management and monitoring of DAC RAID's is limited. It is acomplished via the DACADM program.
> 
> 	IBM Serve RAID Notes
> 	---------------------------------
> 
> 	I have some IBM ServeRAID (the original from 1996) and some ServeRAID 3L (cicra 1998/99?) cards.
> 
> 	The IBM ServeRAID cards use an embedded IBM PowerPC 403 as it's on-board processor. For the on-board SCSI chips they use the Adaptec AIC-7880 chips on the ServeRAID and the ServeRAID 3L uses the LSI 53C895 (so it is LVD/SE).
> 
> 	Due to the age of the cards, there are quote a few versios of BIOS available for them. All use a bootable floppy/CD to configure the drives or flash the card.
> 
> 	V3 uses a DOS floppy.
> 	V4.x uses a bootable CD-ROM that boots Windows 95.
> 	V5.x uses a bootable CD-ROM that (I think) boots Windows 95.
> 	V6.x uses a bootable CD-ROM that boots Linux.
> 	V7.x uses a bootable CD-ROM that boots Linux.
> 
> 	The only problem with the Linux CD's is that they do not support booting from a SCSI CD-ROM, which is the most 'king brain dead idea I've come across in quote a while. They don't even support booting off the ServeRAID card itself! Too bad if you run an all SCSI setup. The raid cards **CAN** act as a general SCSI card for other devices, CD-ROM, Tape etc (althought I've found them not to be the fastest when used like this). V7 and above BIOS's are copyright IBM (1996-2002) and Adaptec (2002+).
> 	
> 	V6 and above come with a java based ServeRAID Manager, that also has the ability to connect to ServeRAID Manager Agents on remote machines. It can also email you of service/error events as well as issue SNMP traps. I've yet to find a MIB for it though.
> 
> 	The biggest problem with the OS/2 drivers, is that if the RAID array is in error/un-configured/un-initialized, then the driver, although it finds the card; it does **NOT** load! This means that the Manager can not find a card to work with and you get forced back to the boot floppy/cd. Fortuneately, I've found that the V3 bootable floppy is compatible with the V7 bios configuration so I don't need to go and find a working IDE CD-ROM.
> 
> 	I've not managed to get the controller to sucessfully import it's configuration from drives, so I had to go to the floppy each time and redfine the array. This was not that painful as it did not destroy data on the array, it simply told the controller how to look at the array.
> 
> 	Performance Tests
> 	----------------------------
> 
> 	The testing consisted of two parts.
> 
> 	A drive write (copy using xcopy) and then a read back of the data. My test data consisted of 3,475 directories that comprised 48,646 files and 15,540,820,634 bytes or 15.5Gb of data.
> 
> 	The drives (the DDRS's were SE SCSI) all connected on the one cable (all 6 of them) and the source drive was a Quantum Atlas 10K 18.4Gb drive.
> 
> Controller		Write Test		Read Test (H:MM:SS)	Throughput (Kb/Sec)
> Base Quantum		N/A			25:56			9,791.34
> 
> DAC960PD		1:12:51			42:20			5,975.03
> 4Mb EDRAM
> 
> DAC960PDU		1:05:04			44:54			5,635.57
> 16Mb 0-Wait State	1:12:52			42:19			5,977.39
> 
> (Dual Channel		1:13:03			41:53			6,039.23
> 3 drives per channel)
> 
> IBM ServeRAID		4:57:56			59:18			4,338.65
> 			4:57:05			58:32			4,322
> 
> IBM ServeRAID 3L	3:09:00			45:34			5,551
> 
> What the ...????? Why were the IBM's 3-5 times **SLOWER**? When I checked the DAC setup, they were all write back caching, ie making use of the on-board cache, the IBM cards were all set up write through, ie effectively disabling the cache. So, I configured the IBM cards to use write back caching, and now we get some sane results.
> 
> IBM ServeRAID		3:22:15			44:22			5,703.34
> 
> IBM ServeRAID 3L	46:26			36:14			6,980.95
> 
> So, ok there you have it, the 3L is a clear winner and the ServeRAID card is damn slow. The DAC960's considering their age are very impressive. They are still about 3 times faster than the equivalent IBM ServeRAID card.
> 
> The 3L is very nice indeed, although it is only a single channel card.
> 
> I did set up one of the DAC960's to have three drives on one channel and three on the other to see if there was a lot of SCSI bus saturation, but it doesn't look that way. They are old drives and not the fastest at that, so they may have been the limiting factor.
> 
> Because of the ease of management provided by the IBM ServeRAID Manager program, I've gone with it and the 3L card.
> 
> I hope that you've found this useful, please feel free to comment as usual.
> 
> 
> -Chris
> 
> WarpSpeed Computers - The Graham Utilities for OS/2.
> Voice:  +61-3-9395-1504   Internet:   chrisg at warpspeed dot com dot au
> FAX:    +61-3-9395-7633   Web Page:   http://www.warpspeed dot com dot au
> Postal: WarpSpeed Computers, PO Box 4293, Hoppers Crossing DC, VIC 3029, AUSTRALIA
> 
> 
> 

>  

> 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 

**= Email   6 ==========================**

Date:  Sun, 15 Jan 2006 19:59:05 +1100
From:  Ed Durrant <edurrant at bigpond dot net dot au>
Subject:   OOO/2 help ?

Hi,

  Does anyone on this list use Open Office v 1.1.5 for OS/2 ?

  I've hit a setting somewhere, which I can't find and cannot seem to 
find reference to what I have in the help file.

  TABs are showing throughout my document as a series of dots.

  Also when I change the font to remove the relief-emboss option in 
format / character / font effects althougnit changes on screen, after 
saving and re-opening the document, the embossed effect comes back. Any 
ideas what could be overriding my change ?

Cheers/2

Ed.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 

**= Email   6 ==========================**

Date:  Sun, 15 Jan 2006 12:19:44 +0100
From:  Kris Steenhaut <kris.steenhaut at hccnet.nl>
Subject:  Re:  OOO/2 help ?



Ed Durrant schreef:

> Hi,
>
>  Does anyone on this list use Open Office v 1.1.5 for OS/2 ?
>
Of course we do.


>  I've hit a setting somewhere, which I can't find and cannot seem to 
> find reference to what I have in the help file.
>
Ugh!?

>  TABs are showing throughout my document as a series of dots.
>
Yes, you can have returns, tabs, paragrafs etc... visualised. It's as 
well in the edit menu as in the preferences.
In the preferences you have to set it for each part (writer, calc etc...)

Running a Dutch 115 here, so I can't point you to the exact items.

-- 
Groeten uit Gent,

   Kris


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 

**= Email   7 ==========================**

Date:  Sun, 15 Jan 2006 23:14:46 +1100 (EDT)
From:  "Chris Graham [WarpSpeed]" <chrisg at warpspeed dot com dot au>
Subject:  Re:  RAID Card Performance Test Results

On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 19:35:30 +1100, Ed Durrant wrote:

>Hi Chris,
>
>   Thanks for documenting your experiences. It's a real shame that we 
>don't have somewhere that we can store these sorts of e-mails - a 
>knowledge base of sorts.

The Hethmon mailed (used by OS2-ISP) has a web interface, but I don't think
too much of it, Perhaps I should look into the DB2 Text Extender and dump
the emails into there... :-)

>   By the way, as far as I know Mylex were never owned by IBM, however 

I read it in one of the Mylex PDF files... It surprised me, which is why I
remembered it.

>IBM did re-badge the Mylex board (and change its firmware) and sold it 
>as the ServeRAID II I believe.


-Chris

WarpSpeed Computers - The Graham Utilities for OS/2.
Voice:  +61-3-9395-1504   Internet:   chrisg at warpspeed dot com dot au
FAX:    +61-3-9395-7633   Web Page:   http://www.warpspeed dot com dot au
Postal: WarpSpeed Computers, PO Box 4293, Hoppers Crossing DC, VIC 3029, AUSTRALIA


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 

**= Email   7 ==========================**

Date:  Sun, 15 Jan 2006 21:58:13 -09:3
From:  Wayne <datablitz at optusnet dot com dot au>
Subject:   OT Leds (was  IBM ServeRAID 3L)

** Reply to note from Peter Moylan <peter at ozebelg dot org> Fri, 13 Jan 2006 22:32:31 +1100 
>    
> Wayne wrote: 
>    
> > Holden has a concept car called Efijy that uses 20W leds for 
> > headlights. 
>    
> That sounds promising. Lately I've been seriously considering using 
> sunglasses for night driving, because of all the new cars that seem to 
> have megawatt-rated headlamps stuck permanently on high beam. The 
> blinding effect is as bad as being tailgated by a 4WD. There oughta be a 
> law! 
>    
> --  
> Peter Moylan                          peter at ozebelg dot org 
>                                        peter.moylan at optusnet dot com dot au 
>                                        http://www.pmoylan dot org 
 
 
There are laws against these issues but they are conveniently ignored! 
Modern ultra-bright leds put out the same amount of light as a halogen, so 
a led h\l would be just as annoying if it is adjusted incorrectly.  Whilst led 
technology is moving fast,  I doubt that 20W leds are enough, yet. 
 
Cheers 
Wayne 
 
 
 
 
> Please note the changed e-mail and web addresses.  The domain 
> eepjm.newcastle.edu.au no longer exists. 
> My e-mail addresses at newcastle.edu.au will probably remain "live" 
> for a while, but then they will disappear without warning. 
> The optusnet address still has about 6 months of life left. 
 


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