NeXT
Veteran Member
I'm reading through the manual that came with my SCSI Jackhammer and SledgeHammer and I'm trying to figure out what it's trying to make me do to setup the RAID.
A SledgeHammer fits two drives (Drive A and B) and allows two SCSI buses to pass through them. The instructions for a Quadra 9x0 state that the bus for drive A in the SledgeHammer goes to the Jackhammer. The drive B connects to the secondary SCSI bus in the Quadra with an extra cable. Makes sense as it splits the data load across two SCSI controllers and halves the theoretical load as it sends the data to the RAID. For every other configuration the manual lists however it just says plug the SledgeHammer into the Jackhammer, loop the bus through drive A to drive B and that's it. Is that actually fine?
My suspicion was that it said to do this because the 9x0 Quadras had a better SCSI chip and famously the two onboard SCSI controllers were "sharing" the role of a single SCSI bus when it was actually two internal buses. The Quadra 700 I'm trying to use has an onboard NCR 53C96. The Jackhammer uses the 53C720. From what information I can get so far (I'm not pulling one of my 950's out to open and verify the chips inside and apparently NOBODY on the internet has taken a clear photo of a 9x0's logic board) the 900 and 950 also use 53C96, albeit two of them. So should I just have Drive A connect to the external SCSI port on the Quadra 700 and drive B connect to the Jackhammer or does it specifically want both SCSI buses to be separate from the same chain as the internal system disk?
A SledgeHammer fits two drives (Drive A and B) and allows two SCSI buses to pass through them. The instructions for a Quadra 9x0 state that the bus for drive A in the SledgeHammer goes to the Jackhammer. The drive B connects to the secondary SCSI bus in the Quadra with an extra cable. Makes sense as it splits the data load across two SCSI controllers and halves the theoretical load as it sends the data to the RAID. For every other configuration the manual lists however it just says plug the SledgeHammer into the Jackhammer, loop the bus through drive A to drive B and that's it. Is that actually fine?
My suspicion was that it said to do this because the 9x0 Quadras had a better SCSI chip and famously the two onboard SCSI controllers were "sharing" the role of a single SCSI bus when it was actually two internal buses. The Quadra 700 I'm trying to use has an onboard NCR 53C96. The Jackhammer uses the 53C720. From what information I can get so far (I'm not pulling one of my 950's out to open and verify the chips inside and apparently NOBODY on the internet has taken a clear photo of a 9x0's logic board) the 900 and 950 also use 53C96, albeit two of them. So should I just have Drive A connect to the external SCSI port on the Quadra 700 and drive B connect to the Jackhammer or does it specifically want both SCSI buses to be separate from the same chain as the internal system disk?