@8F82.ADF IBM SCSI-2 Fast/Wide Streaming-RAID Adapter/A
194-170 IBM SCSI-2 F/W Streaming-RAID Adapter/A
4227110.EXE FWSR Option Disk, #1 v. 2.31 (zipped image)
Contains Disk Configuration Utility for "Cheetah" and "Passplay"
4227111.EXE FWSR Option Disk, #2 v. 2.31 (zipped image)
Readme for FWSR Option Disks
10L9849.EXE RAID Supplemental Diskette Version 2.0 (OS/2 command-line interface)
Readme for Supplemental Diskette
SCSI-2 Fast/Wide Streaming RAID Adapter/A
Side Card
Function of NVSRAM
Cable Parts
HD LED Does Not Work
HD LED Hack
Cyrix/Non-SOD Type 1 Incompatibility?
Cache Size
Accessing the RAID Configuration
Configuration Utility
FWSR BIOS Flash Disk
Cheetah in a 85 / 95 /95A
Cheetah in a Server 500
Channel and RAID adapter configurations (takes you to 8641 page)
Getting CD-ROM to WORK On Server 500
Linux on FWSR?
LVD Drives on Cheetah?
Logical Drive Size Limits under NT
Specifications
ADF Sections
SCSI-2 F/W Streaming RAID Adapter/A "Cheetah" FRU P/N 06H3059

D1 Motorola M 420 B34 CH1
D2 Motorola M 420 B34 CH2 / EXT
F1 PTC for CH1 150 JH9E
F2 PTC for CH2 / Ext 150 JH9E
J1 Channel 1 68-pin edgecard
J2 Channel 2 68-pin edgecard
J3 Not connected. Or used
J4 CH1 DASD Status Connector
J5 CH2 / Ext DASD Status Connector
J6 Status LEDs.
J7 Shunted. Unk.
J8 Shunted. Unk.
J9 External 68-pin MDX port
J10 Bottom two pads shunted. Unk.
J11 Solder pads. Unk.
TP1-3 Test Points. Unk
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U4 DDU8F -5006 Delay ?
U5-7 UC5603DP Active SCSI Terminator
U8,13 Outlines for flat packs
U10-12 UC5603DP Active SCSI Terminator
U9,22,23,24,28 IDT 74FCT162543CTPA
U14 189108 4L08F1449 ?
U15 NCR 53C720 CH1
U16 NCR 53C720 CH2 (or to external)
U17,21 43G6205 memory
U18 intel A80960CA40 (i960CF compatible!)
U19 34G1520 MIAMI MCIC
U30 HBIRD FLASH
U32 Dallas DS1225Y-200 Non-vol SRAM
Y1 50.000 MHz osc (SCSI, div by 2)
Y2 40.000 MHz osc (bus/DMA)
|
Note: Channel 2 is
connected to J2 (edgecard) and J9 (external 68 MDX). Do
not connect devices to both ports. One -OR- the other,
not both. It probably won't smoke things, but this isn't
a SCSI-1 narrow 5MB/s device, either.
Jumper J6 is a 6-pin
header that provides a connection for three status
LEDs. Pin 1 is to the left end of the board. In each
case the odd-numbered pin is the +5V source. An
external series resistor is not required for the LEDs.
Pin |
Name |
Meaning |
1-2 |
SCSI Activity |
One or two SCSI channels xmitting or recving data. |
3-4 |
Write Pending |
DAC960 xmitting/recving data to/from host system. |
5-6 |
|
DAC960 cache has data more current than on HDs. |
DAC960 LED Error Reporting
When any DAC960 is powered up, the i960 CPU performs a sequence
hardware tests. Failure(s) is indicated by flashing an error-code
on the Write Pending LED. An appropriate
BIOS error message is also on the system. The memory
parity error (irrecoverable), during card operation,
is also indicated by the same LED.
DAC960 Write Pending LED post on DAC960 |
1 or 2 Channel |
Header J2 (non-populated) |
3 Channel |
Pin 5-6 of 6 pin header J6 |
5 Channel |
Pin 5-6 of 6 pin header J6 |
The LED blinks will always be repeated at regular intervals.
LED Pattern |
Error Indicated |
Constant ON/OFF at 50% duty cycle |
Parity error on DRAM. FATAL Error. Check DRAM. |
2 blinks |
DRAM error. FATAL Error.
Check DRAM. DRAM support logic failure is
likely. |
3 blinks |
BMIC I/F failure. FATAL Error. |
4 blinks |
Firmware checksum error. Try
loading Firmware using DAC960FL utility. |
LED stays on at power-up |
Controller dead. |
i960CA is pin AND
function compatible with the i960CF. The i960CF adds a
4KB cache (or something). People have swapped out the CA
with a CF for @ 10% increase in performance.
Note: The i960Hx
seems cool, but lacks a DMA controller, some pins are
used for different purposes, and though 5v tolerant,
needs current limiting on the Vcc line. No Holy Joy
here, move along.
J7,8 have two
solder pads that are shunted (jumpered). Purpose
unknown.
J10 has the bottom
two solder pads shunted. Purpose unknown.
J11 is a pair of
solder pads. Purpose unknown.
U5-7 UC5603DP 9-Line Active
SCSI Terminator
U15,16 NCR 53C720 Datasheet
and Programming Guide
U18 Intel A80960CA25 Datasheet
U18 Substitution Intel A80960CF Datasheet
i960 Microprocessor Performance Brief
U32
Dallas DS1225Y-200 64KB Nonvolatile SRAM
Datasheet
Scan
Cheetah Side Card FRU P/N 06H3060
Side Card - Front

Wow. Simple but elegant. Area marked "Ground Plane"
surrounds the central
area of the side card. The individual signal lines are
on this side, and
each goes straight over to an inductor before continuing
on to the SCSI
port, J2.
J1 on this side is unusual compared to other MCA cards.
All pins on
this side are connected to ground, with the exception
being 17, 18, and
19. These three pins are brought out separate to the
center of the board,
where they cut over to the SCSI port.
The edge that fits into the MCA slot is bare PCB, no
resist, no nothing.
No MCA bus signals or power is drawn by this side card.
Side Card - Rear

This side resembles the component side. The signal
lines come off J1
(a normal looking edgecard) and go down to their through
holes, where they
cross over to the front side. Then they are routed to
the SCSI port.
Signal Lines is an area uncovered by the ground plane
where the signal
lines connect to the SCSI port header. The ground pins
are inside (and
connect to) the ground plane.
Channels
The Cheetah has two channels. Each channel
is controlled by an NCR53C720. The header J1 is Channel
1. It usually is attached to an internal array, but with
the addition of a side card, it can control an external
array. The second channel uses J2 OR the external port,
J9. This is still one channel, so one can use either the
internal port, OR the external port. Do NOT try to use
both J2 and J9 at once.
Notes:
NVSRAM is a Benchmarq 28 pin 8Kx8 bq4010YMA-200
(datasheet)
Another equivalent is a Dallas DS1225Y-200
(datasheet)
NVSRAM Functions
Each NV SRAM has a self-contained lithium energy
source and control circuitry which constantly monitors VCC for an out-of-tolerance condition.
When such a condition occurs, the lithium energy source
is automatically switched on and write protection is
unconditionally enabled to prevent data
corruption.
Cable Parts
The mini C68 for the Channel edgecard
connectors is the Molex 71660i,
part# 15-92-3068, called a half pitch Centronics, or a
VESA Media Connector. Suprise! AMP makes a similar part
(mini-C68) AMP Part 1-557089-2
Any cable with a .025 pitch, 28 to 30 AWG will work with
either connector.
A Better Cable Hack?
Allen Brandt wrote:
> A small, shotty attempt to get something uploaded
concerning the PS/2. HERE
My Take on it:
I am starting to have neurons fire.
Actually, Allen provided the push. Al went and slit the
conductors for better flexibility (in pairs).
Could you slit the flat cable up towards
the controller and get the very flexible cable bundle of
the IBM original? The black sheathing is available from
Jameco for about $1 a foot. Well worth it, IMHO. (Start
the slit with an X-Acto and use the reverse of the blade
to finish parting the conductors???)
The sheathing is Techflex Cable Sleave,
looks to be the 3/8" size. Sold in a 25' spool. Part #162157,
Product # CCPT2X per spool $14.95 Techflex is HERE
What kind of signal degradation might occur? Each signal
pair hopefully cancels it's noise out.
If the Brandt maneuver can be done from
the top drive connector to the adapter, it might be a
close match to the real thing
HD LED Doesn't Work
From Peter (or Tim?)
The fixed disk light is non-functional with
both the Server 95 A "Passplay" and Streaming-RAID
"Cheetah" MCA RAID adapter. I suspect this is also
the case with other OEM'ed Mylex RAID adapters.
LED For Cheetah
BUT if you take an LED off of J6, pin 1 and
2, it will light when the drives are accessed. Just run
a lead up to between the LED blocks in the display
panel. Watch the polarity. If the LED doesn't light,
switch the header around. You do not need a resistor for
this.
I tried this, but the LED didn't have
enough umph. Pretty dim through the LED Panel. Maybe
some sort of a drive circuit? Just had a thought-
twist the existing HD LED out of the Op Panel and put
the LED that is connected to J6 in there...
Possible Cyrix-Cheetah Incompatibility?
Tim Clarke
Hi gang,
Just thought that I'd better
warn you. After checking out the Cyrix 5x86 at 4x
clocking (in Type-1 non-SOD w/cache) my PassPlay RAID
adapter seems to have been "duffed up". I only get a
part of the BIOS v1.05 initialization / installation
message and the machine hangs (with *any* CPU) at CP:96.
Looks as though the Flash ROM has been partially
overwritten (just a guess).
Cache Size
Go HERE for more information.
Access the RAID Configuration
Both the FWR (Passplay) and FWSR (Cheetah)
are only configurable through the RAID Utilities disk. You
CANNOT see the SCSI Disks under "Set and View SCSI
Devices" like normal SCSI drives. Boot with FWSR
Option Disk, #1 ver. 2.31 in order to view or
configure the array.
Both adapters use the same Utilities disk
of the later IBM F/W Streaming RAID Adapter /A (Codename
"Cheetah" - with external port) since both are based on
Intel i960 / Mylex / NCR technology. There was a
single-disk version 2.22, which should be unique for all
/A RAID adapters of that kind, but not the PCI versions.
The RAIDADM (manager) should work on both /A adapters.
Configuration Utility
version 2.31 consists out of two disks:
FWSR Option Disk, #1 ver. 2.31
FWSR Option Disk, #2 ver. 2.31
Readme for FWSR Option Disks
Not sure if this fits:
RAID Supplemental Diskette Version 2.0
(Readme.txt) RAIDSEND is a
utility that provides an OS/2 ONLY command-line
interface for performing various tasks on a IBM F/W
Streaming RAID Adapter/A, the IBM SCSI-2 F/W PCI-Bus
RAID Adapter, and the Mylex PL adapter for the IBM PC
Server 704.
Fast/Wide Streaming RAID Flash BIOS for "Cheetah" FRU 06H3059
Caution!
The Passplay and the Cheetah differ in the
microcode, which *may not* be interchanged. The
Passplay (FWR) adapter uses a microcode-level 1.6x
through 1.99, the Cheetah (FWSR) uses 2.xx levels. If
you flash the one adapter with the code from the other
you end up in non-functional adapters.
FWSR Flash BIOS 2.21 For RAID controller WITH external port!
FWSR Flash BIOS Readme
Cheetah in a Model 95
The RAID bay for the 85/95/95A does not have a
place for the status cable to attach. The RAID bay has a
68 pin edgecard at the back where the Molex style SCSI
connector attaches to. The 95 RAID bays automatically
terminate the SCSI drives inside. Do NOT enable
termination on the individual drives!
I installed a CD-ROM in Bay 7. I used a 68
to 50 pin adapter from the RAID cable connector. I have
installed both NT Workstation 4 and OS/2 on it. Both
were able to detect and use the CD-ROM during setup.
FWIW, I had only one bay with three drives in it.
Cheetah in a Server 500

Setting the CD-ROM ID in a Server 500
I think I saw a patch
somewhere to "fix" a CD on the FWSR under NT.
From Rich Nagle:
Following repeated failures
of NT 4 Server setup to recognize the CD-ROM connected
to the passthrough connector on the top backplane, I
noticed that the CD-ROM was showing up as one SCSI ID#
higher than it was when I checked it under the RAID
Utility View Configuration.
After checking the SCSI ID
jumper on the backplane (set to LO for IDs 0 thru 5 on
the backplane), a sudden flash of inspiration occurred
- I set the CD-ROM to ID 5, went back under the RAID
Utilities, and the CD-ROM was now ID6. I then deleted,
then recreated the array. Now when I ran NT Setup the
CD-ROM was recognized automatically.
Linux on FWSR?
From Peter:
> Is anyone running linux on one of these machines?
Not on machines with the IBM RAID controller with the
old 2.43 firmware. No Linux driver available.
The IBM Fast/Wide Streaming RAID
Adapter PCI as used in the Server 320/520 MCA-PCI
versions is derived from the Mylex DAC960PL - it only
has 128K Flash ROM (one 28F010 chip) but a second open
socket. Firmware 3.x requires 256K Flash. I'd tried to
plug in a second 28F010 ... but I think the old
software contained in that chip confused the adapter a
bit ... it behaved a little "strange" (long boot time
etc.)
What I do not have is an EPROMmer
that is capable to write the Flash ROMs of the 28Fxxxx
series or I could a) write a spare 2.4x Flash (to keep
for the "worst case") and b) clear the 28F010 ROMs I
pulled from some old boards. Else I would stuff in a
blank ROM in the second socket, have the old 2.xx in
the first and run a firmware update 3.x from the
DAC960PL on that adapter.
The machines with the older
RAID-adapters ("Passplay" and "Cheetah") based on MCA
technology are out of the discussion anyway. They are
based on the DAC960M technology basically but an older
draft of that concept. They use some of the chips of
the -M and early -Px adapters (PL / PD) and they are
developed by Mylex - but the firmware 3.x is PCI
specific, not MCA. So you can practically forget about
using them under Linux since the driver is
*particularly* written for the 3.x firmware level.
LVD on Cheetah
>What kind of drives does the
RAID take? Is F/W DIFFERENTIAL SCSI the right kind? Or
are LVD (low voltage differential) different and it
needs them instead? I've never dealt with RAID before.
From Peter:
Remember the "Cheetah"-Adapter's "Real Trade Name"?
IBM Fast/Wide Streaming RAID Adapter /A. It it an
ordinary F/W intended for single-ended SCSI devices.
It does however take U/W LVD drives, because these are
downward-compatible to single-ended, which the old
"high-voltage differential" are *not*.
If you get - for example - a set of U/W "Low Voltage
Differential" (LVD) IBM DDRS 4.5 or 9.1GB drives then
they will nicely run with the Cheetah. I have some of
them in "Starship" - my Server 520 attached to the
Fast/Wide RAID Adapter PCI. No problem. You can even
mix them with "ordinary" F/W or U/W drives. Same for
the Cheetah and even the older Passplay.
Logical Drive Limits under NT
Tony Ingenoso speaks with conviction when he says:
I've got Cheetah
running a rack of 9G drives in a MCA Server 320.
One issue seems to be it won't configure a logical drive
larger than 32G (you can have several of these
though). Not exactly crippling for modest use, but
a limitation none the less. I haven't tried to see
of NT's volume spanning tricks could be layered atop
some of these 32G drives - might be one way around that
issue
Specifications
SCSI type |
SCSI-2 Fast/Wide |
SCSI bus path / speed |
16 bit at 20 MB/sec |
MCA bus path / speed |
32 bit at 40 MB/sec streaming
(80 MB/sec on PC Server 720) |
I/O features |
Streaming data xfer Address and data parity |
RAID levels |
RAID 0, 1, Hybrid 1, 5
4 ind (A, B, C, D) / 8 logical arrays |
Tagged Command Queuing |
Yes |
Processor |
i960CA at 25 MHz [accepts i960-CF25] |
Size |
Type 3 (full length) |
Channels |
Two (one internal; one internal or
external) |
Connectors |
Three 16 bit wide connectors:
Two internal, One external
*Can only use two connectors at once |
Devices supported |
14 per adapter (7 per max per channel) |
Cache std |
4 MB (with parity) 60 ns soldered on. |
Cache write policy |
Write-through or write-back |
AdapterID 8F82 IBM SCSI-2 Fast/Wide Streaming-RAID Adapter/A
Interrupt Level
Set the interrupt level for the
adapter.
<"Level
E">, A, B
BIOS Base Address
BIOS base address. Each adapter must have a
unique address range.
<"C0000-0C1FFF">,
C2000-0C3FFF, C4000-0C5FFF, C6000-0C7FFF, C8000-0C9FFF,
CA000-0CBFFF, CC000-0CDFFF, CE000-0CFFFF, D0000-0D1FFF,
D2000-0D3FFF, D4000-0D5FFF, D6000-0D7FFF, D8000-0D9FFF,
DA000-0DBFFF, DC000-0DDFFF, DE000-0DFFFF
I/O Address
I/O address. Each adapter must have a
unique address range.
<"1C00-1C1F">, 3C00-3C1F,
5C00-5C1F, 7C00-7C1F, 9C00-9C1F, BC00-BC1F, DC00-DC1F,
FC00-FC1F
DMA Arbitration Level
DMA channel used to transfer data.
<"Level 8">,
9, A, B, C, D, E, 1, 3, 5, 6, 7
Tower Configuration
How many towers of seven drives will be
presented to the user. Any messages regarding drive
status are always presented in terms of bays in the
tower. When each channel of the Streaming-RAID Adapter/A
is connected to a different tower select the '2 Towers'
Configuration and when both channels are connected to
one single tower select the '1 Tower'
Configuration.
<"2 Towers">,
1 Tower
Data Parity Exception Handling
Support
Enable / disable Micro Channel data parity
generation Note:
System must support it.
< "Enabled ">,
Disabled
Micro Channel Streaming
Enable / disable MCA streaming.
Note: NOT available if system
does not support it.
<"Enabled ">,
Disabled
INT 13 Support
Provides limited support for BIOS INT 13
function calls and is required if boot devices are
connected to Streaming-RAID Adapter/A.
Note: If system doesn't
support this (T1 upgrade-66 or T4) then this is NOT
available.
< "Disabled">,
Enabled
|