SUMMARY: On which Sparcs does the NC400 work?

From: Jiri Dvorak (dvorak@iam.unibe.ch)
Date: Thu Jul 18 1991 - 12:49:47 CDT


My question was:
Does the NC400 work in Sparc3X0 systems (and not only in Sparc4X0)?

The answer is yes, but in a Sparc3X0 it's called a NC300. The hardware is
presumably the same. The only limitation in 3X0 systems is that you can have
only two NC300, whereas a Sparc4X0 can have up to 6 NC400 (or something
between 4 and 8). There are even installations with 4/200 type Suns.

<taylor@astro.ufl.edu> reported an important limitation with the NC300:
> Anyway, I highly recommend the NC300 as long as you can use it in
> place of, instead of in addition to, the built in le0 interface on
> the Sun4/3xx series mother board. Unfortunately, there seems to be
> a bug in the le0 hardware on these boards which cause the system to crash
> if le0 can't get control of the VME bus when it wants to.
>
> It is my understanding (and experience) that this problem is not unique to
> the NC300 but will occur with any high performance, bus-mastering controller
> (disk, ethernet, i/o, etc.) that you may try to install and use in
> conjunction
> with the built in le0 interface (further indicating that the problem is with
> Sun's motherboard, not the third-party controllers and is probably also why
> Sun won't support the NC300 on the sun4/3xx series machines).

It's the first time I hear about such problems, can anybody confirm or deny
these statements? It's rather important for me, as I planned the NC300 as
a second ethernet controller. With this problem I would need two NC300's
to keep the system running.
The question is: has anybody a Sparc3X0 running with NC300 and with a
working le0 interface?

I also got some contact addresses at Interphase (and asked them the same
question).

Many thanks to:
sbradley@iwarp.intel.com
<drk@igor.Rational.com>
<deumens@qtp.ufl.edu>
<bob@omni.com>
<zjat02@trc.amoco.com>
<oconnor!miker@oddjob.uchicago.edu>
<scp@acl.lanl.gov>
<kevins@Aus.Sun.com>
<long-morrow@CS.YALE.edu>
<taylor@astro.ufl.edu>

Jiri Dvorak



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