NAME

sii− Interphase Storager 2 esdi/st-506 disk/tape/floppy controller

SYNOPSIS

controller sii0 at mb0 csr 0x7200 priority 5 vector siiintr
disk si0 at sii0 drive 0
disk si1 at sii0 drive 1

DESCRIPTION

This is a MULTIBUS esdi/st-506 disk and tape controller.  The driver software supports two winchester hard disk drives, one qic-02 streaming tape drive, and one floppy drive.  This man page documents the hard disk support.  See siq for information on the streaming tape support and sif for the floppy support. 

Files with minor device numbers 0 through 7 refer to various portions of drive 0; minor devices 8 through 15 refer to drive 1.  The standard device names begin with “si” followed by the drive number and then a letter a-h for partitions 0-7 respectively.  The character ? stands here for a drive number in the range 0-7. 

The block files access the disk via the system’s normal buffering mechanism and may be read and written without regard to physical disk records.  There is also a ‘raw’ interface which provides for direct transmission between the disk and the user’s read or write buffer.  A single read or write call results in exactly one I/O operation and therefore raw I/O is considerably more efficient when many words are transmitted.  The names of the raw files conventionally begin with an extra ‘r.’

In raw I/O counts should be a multiple of 512 bytes (a disk sector).  Likewise seek calls should specify a multiple of 512 bytes. 

The size of the various partitions supported by the driver in fact are a function of the drive itself.  Present on each drive is a boot label which contains the partitions sizes and locations. 

FILES

/dev/si[01][a-h]     block files
/dev/rsi[01][a-h]    raw files

SEE ALSO

autoconf(7), siq(7), sif(7)

DIAGNOSTICS

md%d (***NO LABEL***).  The named drive has no boot label and thus cannot be used. 
(%s Name: %s).  On a successful attach, the drive type is printed out followed by its “name” (a user specifiable name). 
%s: hard error: %s, at: %d/%d/%d, cmd: %s.  A hard error of some type has occured.  The first string printed is the name of the device where the error occured.  Next printed is a textual description of the error, followed by the physical disk address where the error occured.  Finally, the command which caused the error is printed. 

Version 2.5  —  April 22, 1987