HP 3000 Manuals HP 3000 Manuals
Peripheral Connections HP-FL channels Disk drives are connected using HP Fiber-Optic Link (HP-FL) on HP 3000 900 Series systems. Besides offering a fast, 5-Mbyte per second data transfer rate, HP-FL allows large disk configurations and supports cable lengths of up to 500 meters, allowing greater flexibility in disk placement. The HP-FL interface is a CPU-resident card that provides an interface between the fiber-optic cable and the backplane on 900 Series systems. The cable between the CPU and disk drive is the fiber-optic portion of the HP-FL architecture. A wire P-Bus cable, which also operates at 5 Mbytes per second, is used to connect up to seven subsequent drives to the fiber-optic cable. A total of up to eight HP-FL disk drives can share one HP-FL interface. HP-FL is required for HP Mirrored Disk/XL, a duplicate disk capability available on the HP 3000. HP-FL is also required for HP SPU Switchover/XL, which provides the capability to switch processing from a failed SPU to a secondary SPU. HP-IB channels Tape drives and system printers are connected to the systems on the Hewlett-Packard Interface Bus (HP-IB). HP-IB is Hewlett-Packard's implementation of the IEEE 488 standard interface. HP-IB is a cost-effective solution that allows customers to continue using many of the peripheral devices that they already have when upgrading from one HP system to another. Up to six non-disk devices can be connected to a single HP-IB channel. Four disk drives can be connected to each HP-IB channel. HP-IB is an 8-bit wide, asynchronous bus. HP-IB can support sustained data transfer rates of up to 1 Mbyte per second. SCSI channels Disk drives and DDS tape drives are supported using the small computer interface (SCSI) on the Series 917LX, 927LX, 937LX, 947LX, 957LX, 967LX, 937, 947, 957, and 967 systems. The HP Rewritable Optical Disk Library System is also connected to the HP 3000 900 Series with the SCSI. SCSI is a low-cost solution for entry-level and midrange systems. SCSI is an industry-standard local I/O bus that provides computer connections to mass storage devices and other high-throughput peripherals. The 900 Series SCSI implementation adheres to the HP Common SCSI (HPCS) specification, which is a superset of the ANSI SCSI-2 specification. Workstation connections On the HP 3000 900 Series, asynchronous terminals and serial printers are connected through datacommunications and terminal controllers (DTCs). For a detailed discussion of each of these products, refer to Chapter 5, "Networks".