Fwd: Finally- gratification!

[Robert Repko]

John Esak’s information on how he got SCO installed on his server.  This is in response to Richard Kreiss’ asking if John kept notes on how he got it working.


Begin forwarded message:

From: "john at timescape.com" <john at timescape.com>
Date: September 25, 2020 at 12:09:00 PM EDT
To: Robert Repko <rtr at rsquared.com>
Subject: RE:  Finally- gratification!

Bob, (and Richard) (for the moment, Bob, you will have to forward this...)
Yes, I made note of what I typed in to make the Dell T7400 accept and load SCO 5.07 Openserver.

I will sell the information for 1 zillion dollars at any time, just call and ask... ��_

No, seriously, it was hard won battle of try, rinse, repat... until the two pieces of correct information floated in over the transom.  The name of the controller, which is LSIL ()that driver set LSIL contains the needed gubbins for the older SAS5 and SAS6 controllers that are not actually called LSIL or PERC, etc.  And the second needed piece of info is one I had learned by reading one of the readme.txt files on all the maintenance pack stuff... (and there are dozens of these spurious reqadme files, so I can't point to it direcxtly, but I mentioned it in my original message. One has to turn off the USB controller... at least for "bootable" devices.  It doesn't have to be turned off completely... it is a three state botton/choice in the Dell CMOS.  So, after doing that, both the SATA CDROM and the new SATA hard drive can be connected to ports on the set of 4 SATA ports which are governed by the SAS controller (ot the 3 separate motherboard SATA ports which are on the "other" side of the 20 pin connector.
At that point, you can load the system with the boot command line:

Defbootstr link=lsil Srom=(0,#,0) Sdsk(0,#,0)

Where # is the ID of the controller port you plugged the devices into. They are 0 through 3 like any SCSI designation.

Also, and this is a really critical, yet utterly stupid *requirement* for doing this obscure task... You can not use:

Defbootstr link=lsil Srom=lsil(0,0,#,0) Sdsk=lsil(0,0,#,0)

As it is *shown* in every piece of documentation you find.  The placeholders for the later SCSI releases have not only BUS#, ID# and LUN#, but a fourth placeholder for Adaptor# (the first position). If you are stupid enough to co[py all the "examples" you will find everywhere, you will have exactly zero luck as I did for hundreds of attempts throughout late nights and early, wee hours  wondering why the hell things aren't working as advertised.
So, that is part of it... There will not be a definitieve "do this and this" document anywhere for any particular machine for all the reasons many have posted here... each machine has different implementaqtions of the ATA/AHCI stuff, and different controllers, all  differing from motherboard and model to the next ...Sometimes even within the same series of stuff, small changes are made that cause you to need different parameters. The spoofing of the Western Digital driver across SCSI, USB, SATA, PATA, and all the other acronyms in the world is an amazing and incredibly useful accommodation whoever thought of it... and it was critical for the time period... Nowadays, unless you are going to need to load one of that older vintage hardware system, you really won't be needing it.
There is a new release of SCO put out by Xinios.com the new purveyors of SCO that is called SCO "Deefinitive" which was cut and released in 2018. This new system has lots of this guelingmish-mosh of requirements for older hardware built into it with most of it "smoothed" out I guess for those who need to keep using the older systems for whatever reason.  I know some have said here that there is absolutely NO reason to to do when there is Linux and every toeher variety of O/S now available... but I humbly and forcefully disagree... they would understand better if they were in the position that many hundreds if not thousands of small legacy users of such older  "bullet-proof" systems require.  There are people who still somehow use "systems" that I wrote and possibly supplied in some shape or form from the early 1990s!  Yes, I am more surprised than anyone about this, but  when people swear by the old adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it..." they do so for a reason.  Why just summarily disallow what works for them a "absolutely no good reason" to keep using something that may actually be providing some of their "living".  ��  A little more true "diversity" please... ��

Anyway, I agree that newer systems and hardware are the way to go... no one is more tied to them, than I. The latest JAWS has a "voice assistant"... the latest chips are fast enough to do miracles, etc., etc.  I *need* these miracles... some don't.  They get to work at their pace and need, and I get to work at mine... no reason we can't all get along.
BTW, the Xinios new version of SCO 5.07 and 6.00 operating systems are available from them at a licensing fee per year, or at some lifetime purchase price... you can check the Xinios site for all this should you need to "keep on keeping on..." so to speak.

/John Esak
Tucson, AZ
SCO/FilePro/Pentium T-shirts on request..."  ��



-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Repko <rtr at rsquared.com>
Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2020 10:57 AM
To: john at timescape.com
Subject: FW: Finally- gratification!

John,

Richard Kreiss asked if you made notes of the setting in case someone else needs that information in the future.

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Kreiss <rkreiss at verizon.net>
Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2020 1:39 PM
To: Robert Repko <rtr at rsquared.com>; filepro-list at lists.celestial.com
Subject: RE: Finally- gratification!

John,

Did someone make note of the setting you used, just in case it needs to be repeated?

Richard Kreiss



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