PSF/AIX: Questions about S/370 Channel Emulator/A
ITEM: RTA000151119
Q:
Topic thread:
Printer Systems (PRINT)
PSF/AIX
PRINT XPSF6000
Hello,
I have a customer who wants to drive 2 Xerox channel attached printers
via S/370 Channel Emulator card from RS/6000 with PSF for AIX.
I found a PRTHELP msg and a WWQA reference for that. It seems that
only one (1) S/370 Channel Emulator card can be used in bus0 of the
microchannel RS/6000 and that printers can NOT be daisy chained
from one S/370 card on PSF for AIX.
Q: Is that correct?
Below the references:
PSF/AIX can support PSF Direct sessions from a host PSF (MVS, VM, VSE,
OS/400) to a S/370 Channel Emulator/A adapter (feature code #2759 on
RS/6000s). You must have one S/370 Channel Emulator/A adapter for each
printer; you cannot daisy-chain multiple printers off a single card in
AIX (although you can in PSF/2, which also supports PSF Direct).
You can put up to four S/370 adapters in a single RS/6000 if there are
enough slots, but I don't believe I would try any more than three, and
for the sake of conservatism, with 3900s I might not try more than two
per RS/6000. Unfortunately, we don't have empirical performance data
when running multiple S/370 adapters in a single RS/6000 so I'm really
basing this recommendation more on intuition and experience than data.
RSPVW3 Record 00289,998,788
188 Lines 33 to 48
Abstract . . . . . . . : Supports AIX 4.3 S/370 Channel emul. with PSF/A
More
Yes, there are microchannel RS/6000s still sold. The best information
is in the RS/6000 Facts and Figures brochure, G320-9878. It's available
from the MKTTOOLS disk in TERS3820 format or from the RS/6000 web site,
http://www.rs6000.ibm.com/hardware/downloads/g3209878.pdf in PDF format.
The current (4/98) RS/6000s that offer microchannel slots include the
7012-397, 7013-595, 7013-J50, 7015-R50, and SP systems (9076). Be
aware that the S/370 Channel Emulator/A adapter is only supported in
microchannel bus0 in the event that you order a system with two MC
buses.
A:
Let me first say that IBM has not tested the S/370 Channel Emulator and
its device driver (supplied with PSF/AIX or InfoPrint Manager) with
Xerox channel-attached IPDS printers, so we do not claim support and can
not ensure this configuration will work.
To answer your specific questions:
It is true that you cannot daisy-chain multiple channel IPDS printers
off a single S/370 Channel Emulator/A adapter.
It is *not* true that you can only put one S/370 Channel Emulator/A
adapter in Bus0. It is true that the adapter is only supported in
Bus0 of a microchannel RS/6000, but that Bus can have multiple slots.
You can put multiple adapters into the different slots within Bus0.
For example, the Salesmanual entry for the 7013-595 reads:
The Model 595 differs from predecessors by offering high-performance,
dual, Micro Channel* buses. Each bus is used to generate four Micro
Channel slots and supports the high-speed, data streaming protocol.
So it has bus0 and bus1, each with four microchannel slots. The S/370
Channel Emulator/A adapter would be supported by PSF/AIX or InfoPrint
Manager only in the slots in bus0.
I hope that clears up the confusion.
S e a r c h - k e y w o r d s:
psf/aix psf/6000 psf aix infoprint manager ipmgr pod channel 2759
emulator adapter s/370 bus0 daisy chain daisychain multiple ipds xerox
WWQA: ITEM: RTA000151119 ITEM: RTA000151119
Dated: 07/1998 Category: XPSF6000
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