[weblacky]

Jwhat - Given how cheap these are on eBay @ ~$40 for a bare card. Would you be willing to start modding these and selling them on the marketplace? I don't own a Fuel (I do own Tezros, but there aren't any open drive bays in a Tezro) but I hope to someday. Given the low initial price. I wouldn't mind doing like $65-$75 for a modded (proven working with Irix out of the box) LSI SAS3442X-R and just have it for later, I mean the SATA interface alone makes it worth something to me.

You already have the PC, Firmware files, and flashing knowledge. Would you be willing to test the waters? Who knows what SGIs I'll run into in 5 years? I don't know of another SATA card anyway. So I'm sure you'll find others equally interested as time moves on.

[jwhat]

Hi Weblacky,

selling flashed SAS3442's is not really a viable prospect from Australia, as they cost about AUS $100 each from here and you have to pay postage on top of that as well.

Then there is the fact that there is no assuring the version of board you might get and a total prospect of 10 - 20 sales at best.

The main interest in these board seems to come from the "Unraid" users who did most of discovery work on the RAID to HBA flipping.

Happy to post information for use by interested SGI'ers so they can flash the cards themselves.

Should anyone wants me to flash their board, just PM me and I will do it for $30 + Postage.

For the cost and effort of getting equipment and testing of Dallas chips for Chimera based machines, I would much rather just buy 8 x chips all nicely done by Glitchworks ;-)

Keeping these SGI machines going is labour of love ;-)

Cheers from Oz,


John

[Raion]

You could use a SATA to Esata backplate adapter and run external eSATA enclosures.

[weblacky]

True, I could use the external fanout cable and do that, I already have a breakout SATA enclosure from like 7 years ago that doesn't use a multiplier (individual eSATA ports). So that's possible. I would just need the card...

[jwhat]

Hi Raion and Weblacky,

or in case of O350 you can do some wire hacking and run the SAS/SATA lines into your drive bay, which is what I have done for expansion chassis in Numalink'ed configuration:



Using some simple Molex Y extension power cable and SATA dual power cable with the existing cable and no soldering:



Here is how it turned out in the chassis:



I pulled 2 x SAS/SATA lines through as I wanted to still have option of using the existing SCSI back plane for a single 3.5 inch disk and wiring lets you get power to DVD-ROM

So it you can have: Boot Disk, 1 or 2 SATA SSD and the DVD-ROM all in a single chassis.

EDIT: To get benefits of PCIX I moved LSI board up into top slot and removed USB card (in picture). I had falsely assumed that IO9 was PCIX as it uses full slot width. But checking via L1 “pci” shows that it runs as 66MHz PCI, while having LSI in top slot on its own , it runs as 100MHz PCIX.

This was way easier than mucking around with Dallas DS1742W chips ;-)

Cheers from Oz,

John.

[weblacky]

Yo,
Adding to this thread because of relevance.

I bought a LSI SAS3442X-02C from eBay (bare) for a steal.  I re-studied the info here and on Jwhat's page: https://tips.graphica.com.au/sgi-o350-chimera-notes/

I wanted to have both internal and external SATA for my Fuel and if this goes well I'll find an external 8-port version for my Tezros.

   

Now I found a few discrepancies so thought I'd share.  For the most part things are what was said:

So I used an old Dell Precision since it had PCI-X in a slot. The firmware was VERY odd/old:

   

So this is marked as an -02C...but it carries B0 firmware, which is one discrepancy I found from the posted instructions. I tried flashing with B1 Firmware, as suggested, but it refused...so I went with what was already there (B0).

So several items (used HBAFLASH.BAT):

1. I couldn't and didn't need to program the SAS address. The operation didn't take (I used the correct command) but it also wasn't lost, same SAS Address was present after firmware conversion!
    A. command to find SAS Address: sasflash -o -listsasadd

2. I did have to use the DOS version (as told) to do a full flash, but I didn't have to erase the flash region at all, the sasflash knew it needed to do a 1MB to 2MB flash operation...and did it automatically.

3. I found a newer firmware from 2011 -> 1.33.00.00-IT
   

4. Final SASFLASH description of newly flashed card:
   

4. Resultant Fuel single-user mode boot up confirmation:
   

I haven't placed any drives or anything on it yet.  I just wanted to flash it and Irix load it.  I still need to remove my Fuel board to replace a fan header so I don't want to install too much stuff.

[jwhat]

Hi Weblacky,

great that you got this going.

FYI, I have also put a second LSI 1608 (SAS3800X) (also flashed as per tip) into one of my O350 which has 2 x External SAS connectors.

I have connected this to my HP D3700 SAS array (just to verify that it see's the disks in the array, which are all SAS flash and it does.

I have not done any other testing beyond that with the external SAS.

But I did try to connect a second SATA SSD to my O350 internal LSI 1608 and had problems.

Not sure if this was due to disk/wire'ing or some other problem but have not had time to look at it.

For the Fuel (& Tezro) the LSI 1608 (SAS3xxxX) with SATA SSD is a really good option price/performance wise.

Cheers from Oz,


jwhat/John

[weblacky]

I cannot tell from your picture but I bought a cheap cable here: https://www.ebay.com/itm/184850980395

that clicks perfectly into the wide internal connector but gives me real (shielded) SATA connectors...not SAS connectors. I've not really tried it but it advertises to do what I want.

There's also the matter if recent firmware can overcome the removable media and optical drive issues with Irix and using these adapters (HBAs). It'd be nice to have an SGI that can use a Blu-Ray burner for reading/writing media for odd projects.

[jwhat]

Hi Weblacky,

the cable looks ok.
The plug into the card is: SFF-8484
The external interface is: SFF-8470

These are all SAS standard interfaces.

It will be interesting to hear how you go with non disk devices.
I only use DVD-ROM, DDS/DAT Tape and Disk on my SGI boxes.

Cheers from Oz,

jwhat/John

[vvuk]

FWIW -- I've purchased three SAS3041X-R's from ebay, and all have just worked fine ip35 machines without any manual firmware flashing. So it's worth just trying first instead of hunting for a PCI-X x86 machine. I may have gotten lucky (cards were purchased from different vendors, though).

Also, on my O350s, I've pulled the DVD-ROM drive; you can fit up two SATA SSD in the space, and there are adapters from the 4-pin floppy-style power connector that the DVD-ROM drive uses to SATA power. So you can do that, while still leaving the SCSI backplane accessible for 0-2 SCSI drives.