"We reject your configuration rules and substitute our own."

Dr. Franken's Frankie III Build Log

 
NOTE: The following chronicles the build of Frankie III. Comments here are from Dr. Franken and are posted with minimal edits. You can also see photos of the build.  
 
Enjoy!  
 

LAST UPDATE: February 02, 2008:  Entry 10h

 
 

Entry #1a: The build begins  
 
Frankendate: 07.19.2006  
 
Frankie III has arrived at my house. Thus far nothing has happened with him other than moving him to 'the lab'.  
 
The 5075 tower has been opened up as has the 7104 expansion unit. As expected the 7104+5075 combination is exactly the same size as a 270+7104 or 810+7104. So setting them side by side and setting the new wider top on, it fits perfectly. So cover wise we may end up OK. Certainly sides and tops will fit. Front is an issue.  
 
Now the 5075 opens on the right instead of the left as a 270/i810 does. Meaning access to the Right side is critical. The 7104 is intended to be mounted on the right side and access to IT is also from the right side.  
 
The metal housing of the 7104 is chiefly once large piece of sheet metal that starts out as the bottom, makes a 90 degree bend and forms the entire back side (meaning middle of the thing once installed) and then another 90 to form the top - a large block 'C' i.e. '[' Then a piece is riveted on the front and back. The open side is the black sliding cover.  
 
So one potential option is to mount the 7104 on the left, but mount it backwards. This would push air back to front, which is a problem because... Um, well it's not. Yah the power plug will be in the front but this is frankeni.com after all!. The other minor issue is the tab which is supposed to stick out the front to hold the front cover. It if course, sticks out the back that way. It might be able to be moved if it turns out to be a problem - drill out some rivets and bold it to the front.  
 
It's possible to mount it backwards, i.e. the open side 'In', still on the left side but there's virtually nothing in there that I need access to once it's working.  
 
Next is the issue of getting the thing to power up. The 7104 requires a 20 pin cable that connects daisy chains into the debug port on the 270. The ribbon cable that goes from the main board in the 5075 to the 'control panel' of the 5075 is this same exact format. I'm not yet comfortable with that working but it might! I need to do some electrical analysis of the signals on that cable. A second signal comes to the DASD cages to light those buggers of. I believe all that is is a parallel to the one in the main cage. Again I'll need to check that but this one should be easier. There is a little pigtail in a 'narrow' 270 that this connects to but I didn't see that in the 5075.  
 
Other items I'm gonna mess with. I intend to attempt to put a non-RAID card from a 270 (the base 4 drive only controller) into a slot next to a tape card, connect that to the internal DVD, make the pair switchable, and then hope this makes the DVD switchable! Clearly something the LVT would scream about but hey, this is Frankenseries.  
 
Depending on the way disk works out I have the FrankenTower Mini (two drive cages) that I could use to house 10 more drives as well.  
 
As I'll be heading for vacation on the 20th, build time until August will be virtually zip.  
 
- DrF

Entry 1b:  
 
Frankendate: 08.02.2006  
 
I have made small progress. The V5R2 load currently on him has been shrunk to 6 8GB disks. It will be moved to a partition when I get that far.  
 
Another thing is the use of a FC #2767 RAIDless IOA (the base IOA in small 270s) does work for the DVD. I stuck it in an open slot, re-cabled the DVD to it instead of the RAID card and it came right up as OPT02. So I think that idea of making it switchable with the FC #2749 card will get us a CD/DVD for LPARing the thing.  
 
The cable from the Planar on the FC #5075 is NOT the same as the debug cable so it cannot be used to power up the FC #7104. I'll be checking out alternatives for that.  
 
Anyone know if you can put FC #4326 15K 25GB DASD in the base 6-drive can from a FC 7116 (which goes on an i800/i810?) I intend to swap that into the base of the 270 because the base 270 cage is listed all over the place as NOT supporting those drives.  
 
- DrF

Entry 1c:  
 
Frankendate: 08.02.2006  
 
I have run into a hitch (for the moment) in that I cannot get the expansion unit to power up on it's own. When connected to the 270 in place of it's sidecar it DOES power up so I knew it's good. There are only 6 pins in the cable that are in use.  
 
1-Ground Hard to get that one wrong.  
 
2-Fan speed return to the 270 CEC for the cabinet fan, Verified this one by pulling the sidecar fan and the 270 goes down with a power code indicating 'air movement device failure'  
 
3-Fan speed return to the 270 CEC for the power supply fan. Haven't verified this because the fan is inside the PS but it behaves exactly as the pin above.  
 
4-+5 Volts from the expansion unit. It's present as soon as the power supply is connected to the wall. (Same as expansion on the 270) When connected to the 270 this falls to 4.18volts. It does not change when the 270 (and sidecar) power up.  
 
5-No voltage when the sidecar is by itself. Gets boosted to +5V when the 270 is connected. Does not change when the 270 and sidecar power up.  
 
6-No voltage when the sidecar is by itself. Gets boosted to +5V when the 270 is connected. Drops to 0V when the 270 spins fans and lights up drive cages. Even when I try to swing this from +5V to Gnd nothing happens.  
 
So a temporary impasse for sure but frustrating nonetheless.....  
 
- DrF

Entry 1d:  
 
Frankendate: 08.03.2006  
 
Latest update is that I DID get the second sidecar to fire. Turns out the one pin that seems to be only a 5V or 0V is actually digital data. So I connected the Gnd, +5V, That floating pin and one other one at the same time as the sidecar on the 270. This powers up BOTH sidecars. Woo Woo!  
 
It does yield an SRC 1011 1522 on the front panel but everything runs. The SRC says P02 power supply fail (expansion unit) but I will explore some more and see if once the 'extra' expansion is up whether I can disconnect the extra pins without powering the thing off and thus avoid the SRC. The SRC undoubtedly comes from TWO power supplies talking back to CEC and confusing it.  
 
- DrF

Entry 2a:  
 
Frankendate: 08.21.2006  
 
Frankie III made another step tonight. He has fired up, sorta. I eventually did give up on lighting both 7104s from the CEC. I couldn't get that to be reliable and hence plan "B" was hatched. I pulled the IBM power supply and grafted in (it fit quite nicely actually) the PS from a big Compaq rack mount DASD box that I just scrapped out. That PS drove 8 'full high' drives so driving 12 half high units shouldn't be a problem. Only issue is it needs to be turned on with a switch. Oh well.  
 
I also succeeded in grafting the 7104 onto the 5075. That turned out too sweet for words! The thing fits perfectly, albeit it needs to be removed in order to play with cards in the 5075 since it's on the right side covering those cards. Yah well, that way the top front AND back covers fit perfectly. Sweeeet!  
 
Now I made a tactical error in the build because the 6 drives in the CEC now are supposed to move to the 2nd 7104 and be a V5R2 partition. They will be driven by a 4778 RAID card (and were while in actual production.) Now this is no problem except that since the 7104 covers the 5075's slots I moved things around and the 4778 is already 'upstairs' and I put the 2780 downstairs. So at IPL time the card (I believe) is re-striping those 8GB drives '2780 style'. I think this because a) They are all 6 going zonkers and b) I have an SRC B164 4605 which indicates 'bad attitude on the part of the load source drive.' So I'm letting that cook until the drives calm down or 2 hours pass because by then they are either a) Done converting or b) Oh shit.  
 
Pictures tomorrow.  
 
- DrF

Entry 2b:  
 
Frankendate: 08.21.2006  
 
Well after converting the drives to the other (wrong) RAID stripe I bounced him a nd up he came. Life is good except that now I know I need to end RAID to put those drives back on to the 4778 card. Such is life. By the way anyone know how to tell which type of RAID strip the drives have? Or do you just infer from the previously attached RAID card?  
 
Attached are some pics. Front and back of the 5075+7104 and the entire stack. Right now it's in an incredibly bad spot so I gotta fix that but it can be easily accessed there, likely the only plus.  
 
Note the single drives in each can, that's just so find out if things are working or not and they are. The drives in the 5075's 7104 report 'unresolved locations' for some reason. Hmmm. :-)  
 
Today I hope to try to get V5R4 onto the primary partition, I'm going all LAN console top to bottom (Hence all the ethernet cards you see in the 5075, useing a few FrankenRules there!) Note the power switch hanging at the back of the 7104. That goes to the Compaq power supply on the bottom. See how nice that fit? Incredible. The black strip on the bottom is Duct tape covering the 1/4" slot it left so that air flow is correct. I think I'll be OK with cooling because though small the fan in that PS is one agressive mother. (Shades of the Indianapolis Cert Lab!)  
 
My goal is to have this thing working and pics up on Frankenseries.com B4 COMMON. So Kev plan on a little last minute web work if you can.  
 
Gee I'd love to take FrankieIII to Miami but it would cost a freeking Shitload to ship him and it's just too dang far to drive although at 1,500 miles in my car it's less than $100 in gas. Now if Jim were to fly over here and we shift drove. Naaah it's 30 hours of driving. Each way. And we're in Anaheim in the spring. (2200 miles and 36 hours). They ain't making this easy!!!  
 
- DrF

Entry 3:  
 
Frankendate: 08.21.2006  
 
Hmm. I seem to have hit an interesting roadblock. I'm working the installation of V5R4 onto the primary partition. This has a FC #2780 RAID card, a FC #7136 DASD can from a FC #7116 and 6 FC #4326 disk units. It also has a dozen FC #4318 17GB Units in the FC #7104.  
 
The Tape drive (50/100GB QiC) and DVD-RAM drive are driven by a FC #2742 and the base FC #9167 from a 270 I upgraded some time back. These will be switchable once we get that far (and the FC #2749 that's with them.)  
 
First issue is the IPL from I_BASE (RSC) takes a freeking long time. Much of the time is spent with C1F7 280A and C167 280A alternating a few times a second. It spends like half and hour on that one. I can't find a reference ANYWHERE to what those codes mean. In any case eventually it does move on. C600 4508 also hangs on for a long time unless you do F21 right when the code pops up.  
 
Now here is where I have a problem. When I finally get the screen to install the licensed internal code it chokes. It complains there is a problem with the Load Source disk unit. It shows all the important stuff but lists the drive as a FC #6600 instead of FC #4326. If you proceed into the limited DST environment provided by the CD you can see them all in there and all 6 of them are FC #6600-050s. Looking at the detail they report in as part number 97P3030 which is correct based on a few other systems I checked with FC #4326 disks.  
 
In scouring system builders and other doco there is a note that I found that FC #4326 disks are supported by 270s only in FC #5095s. Now I expected that meant it was a cage sort of thing. FC #4326's are supported by i800 and i810s in both the CEC and the FC #7116 and FC #7136 expansion for that. Those expansion CASD Cans report in as CCIN #28CD. WHen I look on FrankieIII I see that can reporting CCIN #28CD. The FC #2780 driving those units seems plenty happy. The remaining cans report in as CCIN #283F.  
 
So now I'm wondering if 270's can see FC #4326s in FC #5095s and i810s can see FC #4326s in FC #7116s and the FC #2780 is the best card for those drives no matter where they live and if any OS can see them V5R4 should absolutsly see them then what could be missing that makes them look like 6600s to SLIC?  
 
So I flipped two SCSI Cables effectively putting the FC #4326s into the expansion and making #4318s the load source I loaded SLIC to that and IPLed to DST. The disk units still show p as FC #6600 though they DO show up as 35GB Units in Work with Disk Units. If I attempt to nitialize and format them in disk unit problem recovery procedures then I get an instant error bout there not being support for those units in the system. Boo.  
 
I have another theory that the IOP is the problem with the big drives. I swapped in a FC #2843 for the FC #2842 to see if the system gets all cranky with that. It is happy and doesn't seem to care a whit about the FC #2843. My guess was the FC #2842 was created with less memory in theory simply to be cheaper. You wanna use a 'more expensive' IOP? That's OK. Now however FC #2842s are more expensive on the used market since they are comparitively rare.  
 
So the next theory is that I may not absolutely have to put the cards in the designated slots. OK that's not a theory that's a fact. My theory is that support for these FC #4326s things is actually not in the DASD IOA/DASD can combination, rather it's in the IOP. Now if that is the case then If I were to put the basic SCSI card in C01 where the big RAID card is now and drive tape and DVD with that, leave the two line wan/modem in C07 and put the FC #2749 in C06 then I have achieved switchability as I want. I then put in a FC #2843 which in theory would support the 2780 with the big drives.  
 
Well the theory may be OK but in practice it's been a bitch. I absofreekinglutely CANNOT get the 2780 to stick to the 2843! No matter what set of slots I use the 2780 gets owned by the MFIOP! I'm not kidding, you put that 2843 in slot C05 with the 2780 in C04 and the two 2838's (Console and LAN) in C03 and C02) and the damn 2780 shows up under the MFIOP (EMB)!! Move the 2843 up to C06 and the same thing. Move the 2780 up to C05 to be right under the 2843 and same freekin thing! It's nuts! I never thought the silly thing could puls slots in the middle of the bus onto another IOP I always thought it was sequential with all IOAs from one IOP to the next on the same IOP. So much for THAT theory.  
 
There is some hope that when building the LPARs I might be able to make it work yet but we'll see after PTFs are applied and the system is switched to shared processor mode.  
 
- DrF

Entry 4:  
 
Frankendate: 08.22.2006  
 
FC #4326 update.  
 
IBM was sure there were reasons that the 4326's won't work in the CEC. They were quite certain they got tested in there but drew too much power and made too much heat. Also quite adamant that running a big stack of them in the CEC wouldn't be a long term good idea. They couldn't remember a specific block in there for those drives. He thought maybe a FC #2844 IOP would be a better bet to support those drives since the FC #2843 was around earlier (i.e. 820) before those drives appeared.  
 
I am currently attempting to trade the FC #4326s for at least as many FC #4319s since performance isn't huge anyway.  
 
V5R2 partition is up and running as it was the old 8.58GB Drives. I re-raided them and they are happy. V5R3 partition is going as well but so far just SLIC and basic i5/OS. My 8MM tape drive is all mad about being dirty (and I have no AME cleaning tape!)  
 
I also wonder if I can hang some more external DASD Cans on there a-la Frankie I. Hmmm more things to try, more power to burn.  
 
By the way my Wife (MrsFranken?) wants to evict the FrankenLab from the basement. She wants me to add on to the back of the garage and move all my stuff and my office out there. Now I like this idea a lot I just need to get some $$s together and then call my friend Dave the Builder. :o)  
 
- DrF

Entry 5:  
 
Frankendate: 08.25.2006  
 
Tried something else today - putting in a FC #2741 to see if I could make that switchable for a Switchable iASP. Get a nice neat SRC for that one. 2741B934. Looked it up: 'Incompatible hardware detected.' Got me on that one. I knew the book didn't list that card as supported but what the heck. Now we know.  
 
I am going to swap the 2741 from Lily into Frankie and swap it for a 2748 which IS a supported card. This card will then drive the FrankenTower Mini that I built some time back which holds 10 drives. These will become a Switchable iASP. They will switch with the tape and DVD though so when connected to the V5R2 partition it's likely they won't be recognized.  
 
Got Domino running in one partition to replace Lily so that Lily can begin her final journey. Need to pull out all the stuff that's mine yet and that will wait a bit yet.  
 
- DrF

Entry 6:  
 
Frankendate: 08.28.2006  
 
Well I powered down to put the FC #2748 card in the CEC instead of the FC #2767 base SCSI card. I also stuck a half dozen 8GB drives into FrankenTower Mini (Two DASD cans from a 720) It happily was SUCKED into the MFIOP! This resulted in a very nice SRC 27809203 which when you ferret it out says 'What the? I can't IPL with the system this way!' So I tried moving the card up a few slots so that it is immediately below the FC #2843 card. This made it much happier and the drives are now switchange along with the tape and CD. I'm not sure how usefull this will be yet but we'll figure that out.  
 
I also got the 10K RPM 35GB Drives (4319s) andstuck those in. They work LOTS better than the 15K units. The V5R4 partition now has 368.6GB usable DASD.  
 
So I get the system back up and tell it to IPL the V5R3 partition and it tells me there is NO i5/OS license available. That's when I realize that when I initially installed it I accidentally fat fingered the year as 2004. Apparently correcting that to 2006 used up about 730 of my 70 grace days. Dangit!  
 
To anyway I'm now reloading i5/OS on that partition. Grrrr!  
 
- DrF

Entry 7:  
 
Frankendate: 09.07.2006  
 
Well another fine success. After doing most of the cluster configuration (I can't do all of it because I don't truly have switchable hardware) I created a switchable iASP on the V5R3 partition. I created a library in it and a data area with text in it. I then varied it off and switched it to the V5R4 (Primary) partition. I varied it on and shazaam! There is the library and data area! Sweeeet!  
 
All does not go happily though,you can't switch this mess with the iNAV gui. Because there is disk on the IOP, it gets pissy and says 'Sorry not a valid operation' Whatever. When you use SST to switch it you get a stack of errors, one for every disk unit and one for the 2748 card. Telling it you don't care it switches OK after that. Cool! When you vary the thing on in the new partition you also get about 100 messages but it switches!  
 
More testing will be required of course and I also may dump the 2771 card and add another IOP so that the 7208 tape drives can be switched separately from the disks, internal tape and DVD-RAM.  
 
- DrF

Entry 8:  
 
Frankendate: 09.13.2006  
 
Found out something about this switchable iASP. Turns out that as soon as I varied it on on the V5R4 partition it converted the thing to V5R4. Switching it back yields a nice error about the iASP being at a level that is newer than the V5R3 which is on the partition. So much for that theory!  
 
So I moved the FC #2748 to be sucked into the MFIOP so that the iASP is now stuck to that partition. I may use it to hose the Linux partition's disks.  
 
Another FrankenDonor hit the lab today and tiny i820 with a fully loaded (and monsterously heavy) 5035 attached. It has only two 17GB 10K Drives so I'm going to keep those as spares since there are a fair number of those in FrankieIII. There are 8 of the old (and monsterous) 17GB 7200 RPM drives in the thing and those may go into the FrankenTower mini or they may go into Frankie II to support his 'PTF habit'.  
 
These are about the last changes before COMMON as I'm severely time limited between now and then and don't want him all busted while I'm gone.  
 
Interesting side note, our heat pump siezed in mid August so we have no official furnace in the house. FrankieIII is keeping the basement at around 70 even though it's been in the 50's and 60's around here for several days.  
 
- DrF

Entry 9:

Frankendate: 10.2.2006

Finally some time post COMMON. Not a lot, just some. I had created a Linux partition before COMMON but had not had the time to crank it up. I worked on SLES9 for a while but couldn't get it to pick packages. A Linux on i expert tells me I need a PTF for V5R4. Still waiting for that. So I switched to RHEL and it came up perfectly. Currently I'm using NAT through the primary partition and the virtual LAN with no issues. We were able to utilize this for some testing at the Linux on i workshop over this past weekend.

Speaking of the workshop, thanks to Justin Haase for a donation to Frankenseries.com. A very clean wide 170 with a number of usable parts. He was in RST on Tuesday, swapped the thing to the 'Large Package' van who drove it to Chicago where I obtained it yesterday. Unbelievably quick and cheap to get the thing from Iowa. It even came with a Twinax console!

Working on ideas to remove some other lessor utilized cards so that I can maybe get some direct Linux I/O in there. Just for fun. I have my eye on a 2742 card that's not actually doing anything but occupying a slot. Hmmmm.

- DrF

Entry 0Ah:

Frankendate: 10.7.2006

Frankie III is just too dang heavy! It's in a bad location and due to the 270 not having wheels, well it's flat stuck there. So today a donor FC #5035 was stripped to the base. My son and I removed most of 100 screws from the top 2/3rds of the thing and pulled that off. This left the bottom section which normally holds power supplies, batteries, a UPS and the lowest two drive cages and their fans.

Having this piece free we flipped it upside down and swapped out the straight casters with a set of swivel units. Now it can be pushed in any direction and rotated as needed. I figure the thing is strong enough to hold up the old red Wheelhorse plus the generator the lawn mower the snow blower and a years worth of gas for the lot of them. As a consequence I don't figure Frankie III will strain it at all.

Now thinking about the fact that it holds drive cans quite nicely and has a spot for fans for those cages, hmmmm. Can you see more drives coming to Frankie III? :-)

-- DrF

Entry 0Bh:

Frankendate: 10.8.2006

Ah the Frankenbase. This is the name I gave to the new unit that will soon hold up Frankie III. As mentioned in the last log entry it now has four swivel wheels to go in any direction. I have also expanded the width of the lowest bays in order to mount drive cages in all four slots. The next challenge is to get power to everything down there because besides the drives, power is required to the fans needed to cool stuff down there.

Looking at the power issues it seems that this is virtually identical to the original Frankentower! http://www.frankeni.com/gallery-frankentower.html We've got the same power distribution available with cables that will power three cages and both fans with no customization whatever. An easy add gets power to the fourth cage. Extending one cable will also get power to a tray that holds three CD/DVD/ or full high tape drives such as the QIC or 8MM variety that are so common in the Frankenlab. (Note, anyone with an extra System i Ultrium drive of any size variety or flavor PLEASE Let us know!) I have plenty of power supplies for this unit but they have one significant problem: They require 220v. Of course the Frankenlab HAS 220v but I have no 220v UPSs available. It would suck to have most of the system stay up but lose a bunch of drives every time the power hick-ups.

So looking at ways to use two 110v UPSs to get 220v. Shouldn't be a problem with the power on as the UPS will lock frequency to the grid. As long as they are locked to the grid (and connected to the opposite sides of the feed) there should be no problem getting a nice solid 220v. Problem is when there is power there is, well power. I'll have to hook the dual trace scope up to the output of the two UPSs and then kill power to both of them. My guess is they will drift slowly apart eventually when they are out of phase by enough the 200v will fall below the minimum and down she goes.

-DrF

Entry 0Ch:

Frankendate: 11.19.2006

It's 4th quarter but the Frankenbase is nearly ready for deployment. It is now completely wired. The PDU built into the UPS in there has been re-wired simply as a PDU. The fan that was in the UPS is now wired to the power supply on the right side as have the other fans in there. (A total of three, one large on the right, two small on the left. The SCSI Cables run out the back and should be JUST long enough to reach the RAID cards which will be above it in the 270 and 5075.

The Power connectors from the right side power supply have been re-worked to support four disk cans instead of the stock three. My theory is the power required by the fourth can is offset by the fact that we're not powering the big planar board in there it's three IOPs, up to 15 IOAs and IPCS Card. I can't imagine all that doesn't add up to more than one drive can. In addition the power to the removable device bay has been greatly extended so that can be placed on top of the whole tower.

Hopefully I'll get some time over the Thanksgiving weekend to install this latest addition to Frankie III.

Of course there is still that UPS experiment to perform....

- DrF

HO-HO-HO!

Entry 0Dh:

Frankendate: 11.26.2006

Well Frankie III is back on line though not completely happy at the moment. He is now sitting on top of the new FrankenBase which, besides casters, is also providing power distribution, room for 20 drives, and power for the external DVD-Tape (which is actually the right side removable media tower from a doner 720.) Running on 230V he's drawing right about 5 amps or about 1100VA. Let's not tell MrsFranken about that OK?

In order to make a second switchable tape controller I removed the production Ethernet from the V5R2 partition. So that thing has only a LAN console port and a RAID card. How do you get to it then? Well if Proxy Arp works for Hosted Linux partitions why not Os/400? And so it is that the V5R4 primary partition provices access tot he V5R2 partition through proxy arp and the internal Virtual Ethernet. Nice!

So the new stats for him are:

  • 1070 cpw
  • 4GB RAM
  • 56 drives turning with several hundred GB of storage.
  • Drives range from 8GB to 35GB.
  • External 3490 switchable.
  • Dual 7208 tape drives. Switchable.
  • Internal DVD-RAM and 100GB QIC is switchable.
  • External DVD-RAM and 6390 8MM tape, 'switchabe' (by moving cable!) This part is giving me fits though. The dang thing makes the console port go away on the V5R2 partition! Hmmm.

- DrF

Entry 0Eh:

Frankendate: 12.28.2006

I learned some things about memory that annoy me. The RAM in Frankie III is DDR and is variously stacked or unstacked 256MB Technology. So is the RAM in small i810s. A donation of leftover parts from an i810 to i5 upgrade put a pair of 512MB and a pair of 1GB DIMMs in my hands. The chips are identical near as I can tell so I loaded them into Frankie III and fired him up. He was happy too and the DIMMS reported in with the correct features codes even! Alas the size reported as zero. Thanks for that. So I pulled them back out and am trading the 3GB i810 memory for 2GB of 270 memory with my favorite used guy. Oh well.

I'm having some issues with the DVD-RAM up top and it's tape drive buddy. They seem not to report the correct SCSI addresses or something and freak out the partition. I've pulled that off for now as I need the DVD for a customer install coming up anyway.

On another note the Big Red Dodge has been officially re-christened 'Old Red' as he's no longer a daily driver even for the franken kids. Nearing 200,000 miles He'll ease into retirement eventually but for now he's the utility truck needed to haul old systems and firewood and such.

Oh and Frankie I is still missing. I'll pass along word through the frankennews service if he's found.

- DrF

Entry 0Fh:

Frankendate: 04.07.2007

Been a while since the last update so several things to share. First off FrankieIII has obtained some new tape drives. A donor 3590 leads the list. It's a big sucker too and the autoloader hangs off the front of the rack! The next is a dual 8MM drive. These were once the cat's meow, ok that was before my beard turned gray, but hey, it works!

Besides the new tape drives I have figured out how to address removable media. From donor machines I have the removable media tray from both sides of a 720. The left side one holds two removable media while the right side holds three. Now it turns out there is some strange rule that the lowest slot in the right side needs to be a 2 byte (i.e. wide scsi) device. Not sure what that's about but break that rule at your own peril. Now the cage from the left side has an 'in' and an 'out' SCSI port while the right side has only an 'in' port with built in termination.

I hooked the stack to an open port on the RAID card. Unfortunately the corresponding slots in those trays have identical SCSI Addresses so hooking them together means duplicate addresses. In the IBM supported (read 'normal') configuration of these devices will have them each on separate RAID controllers so the duplicate addresses are not an issue.

To overcome this I disconnected the ribbon cable in each tray from the devices (i.e. Tape/CD/DVD) and using jumper pins, set the addresses myself. I IPLed the partition and found my drives were quite upset and many not even working. Hmmm. Then I remembered a friendly IBMer mentioning that for some reason the SCSI address is inverted. So No jumpers (binary 000) would normally set the address at 0 but IBM inverts it to 7 (Binary 111.)

Armed with this information I re-addressed the drives and now have a total of 8 drives on that partition plus two DVD-RAM Drives. Many options exist for tape conversions!!

Oh, also some of the drives were upgraded from 8 to 17GB 10K too. More space!!

Finally the new Tripp-Lite UPS is in place and working marvelously and has already sustained two short power outages.

- DrF

Entry 10h:

Frankendate: 02.01.2008

Been a long while since the last update so several things to share. First off thanks to Carl Novit of FRS in Charleston SC FrankieIII has obtained a FC #0595 expansion drawer! Yee Ha! Of course this means he has another i5/OS as well. In addition the 0595 came equipped with 8 35GB 10K RPM (FC #4319) disk units AND a FC #2892 IXS Card with 2GB RAM installed. Oh and Dual power too. Thanks Carl!

In addition to the 0595, Frankeni has a shiny used i810! Can you say "FrankieIV"? Because technically it's less powerful than FrankieIII and has less memory it may operate standalone for a while as soon as I can come up with V6R1 keys for it!

So the new partition is just laying there for the moment but the IXS card is already loaded up with a trial copy of Windoze server 2003. Lots of thoughts as to what might get loaded on there. Probably some form if VMWare and maybe Linux. Hmmm.

There are a few things that seemed odd about connecting the 0595. First the SPCN numbers didn't come up quite right. The existing 5075 tower became *03 and the new drawer assumed the *02 address. No big deal with that of course but slightly more interesting the 0595 doesn't show up in Service Tools! There is a row in there for frame *02 and all the stuff inside it shows up just fine but the row that should show the 0595 is just blank. Hmmmm. Maybe the fact that the 270 is supposed to have only one tower means there is only one memory slot for that???

I have been activily swapping the disks in partition 3 and that is working very very well. I use that partition to create distribution media and it works very well!

Rumor has it that several large cache RAID cards may be coming Frankie's way along with a handfull of disk units! Updates as they happen!

One other thing: FrankieIII is now turning 68 Disk units with a total of, well, LOTS of GB!

- DrF

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