Apple Network Server 500/132

Scutboy yeah it totally bites to find those nasty surprises! I’m very sorry to hear about your experience. Every machine I own has any and all batteries removed no matter what. I just have one SE/30 that I have one in.. but that’s it. It goes without saying it can’t be repeated enough to everyone about removing batteries especially PRAM batts! It may sound repetitive but it’s a shame the carnage they cause.

ScutBoy said:

and was also able to find a nearly identical Mylex RAID card and put the socketed Apple ROM from the ruined one on and get back to functional.

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I'm glad you were able to find replacement parts. There was a guy from Germany visiting Austin for a Summer and I worked on an ANS MB he had back then. He was fairly well known in the forums. Can't remember his name though. Now you've got me wondering if that ended up being your source for the replacement motherboard. I think he was connected with the, perhaps-mythical, dual CPU ANS in some way. Either than or the ANS Macintosh ROM DIMM.

What's the story about the Mylex RAID card. Perhaps I knew this long ago, but there was a RAID card available for the ANS?

What improvement did that offer over using the built-in F&W SCSI ports?

trag said:

What's the story about the Mylex RAID card. Perhaps I knew this long ago, but there was a RAID card available for the ANS?

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Apple sold it as a part for the ANS. Gave you the standard choices of RAID 0,1,5. You can make more than one RAID group on your drives, like mirror for OS, and RAID 5 for data, etc.

It was a fairly generic Mylex card of the time, but it had a special Apple ROM. When mine got trashed, I found essentially the same model on eBay. When I put it in my machine, it was unrecognized until I took the ROM out of the Apple card and put it into the new card. Then it was recognized and configurable using the ANS RAID utility floppy.

Did not expect so many with ANS.

I have a 700/200, dual PSU. But I was uprooted soon after acquisition, then uprooted again, then a couple more times, so it still sits in storage.

What is everyone running?
AIX 4.1.4? 4.1.5?
NetBSD ?
LinuxPPC ? (linuxppc.org is no more :\ Hope it and instruction is still available somewhere)
MacOS ? (supposedly possible with a 9500 ROM and a particular graphics card, but the internal SCSI and RAID card won't function. If ever there was a machine that needed a custom ROM, ANS is one.)

I had intended (still do) to run AIX for a time, then settle on NetBSD, with which I'm far more comfortable. I had designs on the impossible, getting that Apple version of AIX to run on a 9500 (which I never got around to collecting).

I've had both AIX and BSD running on mine. AIX is more "proper" but BSD is more usable and as you say "comfortable"

Korn is so unforgiving, with none of the bells (at least in 1997). NetBSD's sh (escapes me what it actually is, but it) is Bourne-like, which is close enough to Bourne-again that I feel somewhat at home. It's not as if I have experienced all the shells, but generally I find BSD superior to AT&T System V. Everynix, however, was pretty much hybridized by the early 1990s already. SysV derivatives always have BSD-something, whether extensions, user land, or just the TCP/IP network stack. I only recently learned that Ken Thompson also developed BSD on sabbatical from Bell Labs, which explains a lot about it... it was his third or fourth swing at this type of OS, first working with Dennis Ritchie on the original UNIX code base, then with Bill Joy on BSD, and I think he may have returned to Bell Labs to work on System V. That is the true origin of the cross-pollination, and yet only POSIX ended the UNIX Wars.

Also just learned something about A/UX, srry if off topic, but I think it is interesting. A/UX 4.0 was at least a few years in development, roadmapped to switch the kernel for 4.0 to OSF/1 (which was the first implementation of CMU's Mach kernel), and merge with AIX.

I'm not clear, exactly, on how Steve Jobs' influence supposedly killed it so fast by the year of his return (technically before he had regained any corporate power), nor why Apple was so desperate for a modern OS, mucking around with Copland and Taligent for so long, when they technically had a modern OS in A/UX 4.0, but I guess the partnership with IBM cooled, and Steve's reality distortion field must have been irresistible (though Steve brought Avie Tevanian with him from NeXT, one of the principal developers of Mach at CMU, so that had to carry some weight also).

Since Ultrix used OSF/1, I think it could be as close to what A/UX 4.0 might have been as anything else (sans the familiar Mac GUI), though the last Ultrix release was in 1995, before development of A/UX had quite ceased.

Sorry about the brain puke, but I find the history of technology (operating systems) hugely fascinating. This is the reason I pursued owning an ANS, that, and my mentor was an AIX guy. He made fun of me about it, told me to get a real RS/6000. They're just so ugly.

Very interesting chillin!!! Hey can one of you guys give me a hand? I've installed the HP C1533 DDS-2 DAT drive and I want to make sure I have the SCSI selector connector plugged in properly on the pins of the unit. There is a pin all the way to the right.. where it says NC then there is a missing pin.. then there are 4 to the left and then 4 blank pins one for SCSI 2 and the final for termination. I removed the termination jumper. Do I have this on properly??? So I connected it as sorta keyed.. matched up with the missing pin to the no wire on the connector pin. See photos

It's parallel SCSI, so you need one device with terminators at each the end of the bus. The RAID card itself is automatically terminated, and whatever device is at the far end of the bus needs to be terminated. If there's only one device, terminate it, if there's two, terminate the second device, if four, terminate the fourth and last, leaving the others between it and the RAID card unterminated.

I do not have a raid card in mine. And another guy who’s an expert said not to terminate it. Apparently the backplane board assigns scsi id’s to the devices. Looking at the CD ROM and the one scsi Baracuda 2gb drive nothings terminated. I’m just trying to figure out if I have the connector on properly.. perhaps someone with the same DAT drive can take a peek? From what I know this is the same type of DAT drive for it.

I'm pretty sure the SCSI bus chips assign SCSI IDs to devices, but this is immaterial. Regardless of the absence of the RAID card, all ANS motherboards have an external SCSI-1 bus and two internal onboard fast wide SCSI busses, and SCSI always requires termination at both ends, and any devices in between unterminated. The drawers are split between the two fast wide SCSI busses, and because there's two busses, if both are being used, then the last SCSI device in the top half of the drawers must be terminated, and the last SCSI device in the bottom half of the drawers must be terminated. (Now that I think of it, I don't think the backplane and drawers are evenly split between the 2 fast wide SCSI busses... I think maybe only the bottom two drawers are on the second SCSI bus. the rest of the top (should be 4) are on the first SCSI bus.)

I don't know your configuration. You're attempting to install a tape drive, which is a SCSI device. If there is another SCSI device further down the SCSI chain that is terminated, then you're both correct: you would not terminate the tape drive. But the claim that any SCSI chain doesn't need terminated due to the lack of RAID card and the backplane assigning SCSI IDs (I'm sure that is incorrect, the 2 SCSI chips will assign SCSI IDs on their respective busses) is nonsense to claim. A SCSI bus always needs termination on both ends, or it simply will not work. No exceptions.

So maybe you've got a terminated SCSI device further down the SCSI chain on that bus, at the end, actually. If so, you won't need to terminate the tape drive. But if not, if the tape drive is the last device on the SCSI bus chain, it needs terminated and everything between it and the SCSI bus needs to be unterminated (except for the bus itself, which should automatically terminate, no configuration).

Besides the Molex power connector and the 50-pin ribbon SCSI cable, I do not know what you've connected to those pins, but I believe it is incorrect. Look at the diagram above the pins, NC, SCSI 0, SCSI 1, SCSI 2. and termination

Fast wide SCSI-2 uses 68-pin connectors, and I'm pretty sure 50-pin is just fast SCSI-2. So you'd jump the two pins under "SCSI 2" to let the tape drive know it's on a SCSI-2 bus, and I mean the two pins pointed to by the < ] > bracket symbol on the bottom of the "SCSI 2" label. If that doesn't work, remove it and try the SCSI-1 jumper. If that doesn't work, look carefully at what you have and make certain the last device on the SCSI bus is terminated, and no other devices are (actually, you should do that first).

I'm not sure what that other cable you've connected is, but it most surely does not go there. It could be a redundant power connector for some other type of power plug. If so, it would be left unplugged, because you have a Molex power connector. Also, I don't see any drawer or its interconnect drive board in your pics. Just where are you installing this tape drive? It should be screwed into a special drawer with a tape drive bezel front and connected to the interconnect drive board in the drawer, and the drawer just slides into the case. But I suppose it's possible if you don't have the RAID card (which is unsurprising as it is more valuable by itself than the entire machine, so they were very often scavenged and sold to PCI Mac owners or hoarded by the scavenger), then it's possible the same is true of the interconnect drive boards that should be in each drawer, one per drawer. There are 68-pin boards for fast wide SCSI-2, and 50-pin boards for fast SCSI-2. The interconnect drive board will interface and connect to the backplane when you fully insert the drawer.

I really can't tell what you're doing from your pics or description. For all I can tell, maybe you're connecting that tape drive with a long ribbon cable directly to a 50-pin SCSI bus on the motherboard. But it goes in a drawer, then is connected to that drawer's interconnect drive board, which when inserted in the machine will be fully connected to the backplane once the drawer is closed.

Chillin thank you for your input. Yes there are a few different scsi busses on the ANS. If you search for the Apple Network Server Service Source document online it explains a lot. I understand the SCSI bus chain. According to another person I know and the manual it says not to assign id's on each individual device. There is a special scsi selector cable that plugs into the interconnect board. The server assigns the devices the ID. And as said in the attached pics of the manuals it says not to terminate ANY of the devices. See attached pics. My question is on the "Type 2" SCSI cable id connector if I have it on properly. I think I do. As you said normally the SCSI bus is terminated at the end. The hard drive is at the end of this SCSI chain on the tray and by pulling it out I can see it is not terminated. I know it's strange but this apparently is how the base drive bays are setup and configured.

Thanks chillin.. yeah I was just gonna try it my way first as it appears they made it keyed with the missing pin. Moving it over to the left would leave ID#0 with a jumper with no wire in it... And it appears there is a red and black corresponding for selecting ID#1 which I think is what it should be. From the images it shows CD-ROM should be ID#0 then DAT ID#1 then the HDD which is right below that would be ID#3. Speaking with Cameron at Floodgap I think he has the same setup... well we soon shall see how it goes. I'll post the results. I'm just waiting on another part. When I get it up I'll look at smit and see what it has to say for the ID's... I am familiar with Unix & Xenix and this is my first time using AIX.

I did have a Seagate DDS2 as a spare but those pins were horizontal and doesn't match my cable.... So I went with the HP DDS-2 as I am pretty sure the original OEM drive was an HP.. In the Service Source Manual you can see the Apple Logo with Apple's blessing but nearby I can spot a blurry HP trademark.... and it only makes sense the drive should have vertical pins since that "type 2" cable would be useless for a horizontal setup. When I got this server it was missing the tape drive but all the cables and connector board were already in place. I'm almost 100% positive the original DDS-2 is HP Brand...

Oh and one more thing.. the last very two left pins are for termination... so those should be blank anyways... no jumper.. pretend they are not even there.

I'm totally confused... Trag or Scutboy... would you terribly mind taking a look at your connector for the SCSI and termination pins for me for your DAT drive?? I have another person telling me the connector should plug in all the way starting over from the left over the termination pins (1st photo). Problem is it just doesn't match.. SCSI ID#1 only has one wire attached to it if I connect it that way.. it's missing a wire in the next spot on the connector. I would think this connects starting from the right since there is a wire missing where there is one pin missing (see second photo).. Look at the photos... I have it plugged in both ways.. I am not sure what one is correct. From looking at the manual it is supposed to assign the DAT drive as SCSI #1.

Well, well, well... Thanks to Siliconinsider the answer has been found!!!! It is the middle connection in the photo below!! Three cheers to Siliconinsider!!! Hope this thread helps people in the future!

So the connector was upside down?

Not really... It just needed to be moved over to the left by a few pins... I'm so grateful to Siliconinsider!

@aplmak Excellent documentation find. Kudos to @Siliconinsider .

I don't have a DAT drive in my ANS. I think the previous owner scavenged it, but since he gave teh ANS to me for free (many years ago) I can't complain. I was going to take a look at the mounting point, but you've got it covered.

It sounds like, if one lacks the proper cable adapter, one can probably make it out of Dupont Wires. I'm not sure that term is in common usage, but that's what the pack I bought called them.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01EV70C78

Yeah - I don't have the DAT either.

Nice item those dupont wires!!! They look very handy! I’m ordering a set! Could always use those!! Thanks Trag!