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Introducing the AM-6060 Computer
• Enter any valid system monitor and/or initialization file to use when booting. The files must be
located in [1,4] of the first logical disk of the selected boot device
SCSI and Wide SCSI Disk Drives
The SCSI controller in the AM-6060 provides two bus interfaces, each originating at a connector on the
AM-176 board. One is a 50-pin SCSI bus interface, the second is a 68-pin Wide SCSI bus interface. Both
interfaces support Alpha Microsystems SCSI disks, streamer tapes, DAT tapes, CD-ROMs and the AM-
642 SCSI to Pertec Converter for ½" tape drives.
For peripheral compatibility and system performance, the significance of the two busses is as follows:
• The "narrow" SCSI bus is one byte wide (8 bits plus parity) and supports a maximum transfer
rate of 10MB per second.
• The Wide SCSI bus is twice as wide: two bytes, or 16 bits plus 2 parity bits. Doubling the width
of the data path doubles the maximum transfer rate to 20MB per second.
The Wide SCSI bus has the following advantages:
• Disk-intensive applications are potentially faster with Wide SCSI disk drives.
• It supports up to 15 devices, where standard SCSI supports only seven, so you can potentially
work with bigger configurations.
These busses are mutually exclusive. That is, all devices must connect to one of the two busses; the other
connector cannot be used. Although not recommended, using the appropriate adapters, you can connect a
mix of SCSI-2 drives and Wide SCSI-2 disk drives to either SCSI bus.
For optimum performance, use Wide SCSI-2 drives attached to the Wide (68-pin) SCSI
connector. Mixing SCSI-1, SCSI-2, and Wide SCSI-2 disks on the same bus tends to degrade
performance and is not recommended.
For most reliable Wide SCSI-2 performance, it is critical to follow the bus length limitations of
the SCSI specifications. For configurations requiring many SCSI devices, especially external
devices as described in the next section, this may require a SCSI repeater housed inside the AM-
6060 chassis. For more information, please see the AM-441 Wide SCSI Repeater Installation
Instructions, PDI-00441-00.
External SCSI Port
Your computer includes an external SCSI (Small Computer Standard Interface) port to which you can
attach additional SCSI compatible storage devices: a disk drive, a CD-ROM drive, or tape drive.
Whether or not you are using an external SCSI device, make sure the SCSI cable is terminated properly.
This normally means plugging an external active terminator into the external SCSI port or the last
external SCSI device.
AM-6060 Computer Owner's Manual, Rev. 00
Page 1-5
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Troubleshooting
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